CHA Winter 2013: More inspiring products and projects

I spent another exciting day at CHA yesterday; today I'll hang out for an hour or two, then I'll head home. I wanted to post more inspiring projects, then late tomorrow or Wednesday I'll post about trends and exciting products that we all need but they may not be visible in the gorgeous layouts in the booths.

Here's the first:

 

Paper Smooches sells adorable stamps and coordinated dies. I love to be reminded of ways I can use both on my pages, and this layout does that. The booth was filled with adorable cards. Check out this one that made me chuckle:

I love it.

Next was Technique Tuesday:

The layouts on the booth were 8x8, a size I rarely scrap, but how lovely it is. The above page is from Ali Edwards, and this one from Linda Barber.

Love how it uses the white space of the photo to stamp on.

Next was Jillibean Soup, which I almost missed and am so glad I didn't:

Their collections were among the best, in my opinion. Every one was gorgeous, and the company does a terrific job of using the B-side of the pages to create usable themed papers. Not all collections were themed. The Placemats--die cut 12x12 paper--were inspiring. The above layout trimmed down the circle paper, and the next one:

This one cut apart the photo frames paper. It also used the die cut stickers (everyday) and the typical adorable Jillibean Soup stickers  and papers to embellish.

(Note: Project Life, which is something I don't do, has become an industry standard when it comes to sizing. 4x3 sized cards and cards-within-12x12-paper fit perfectly for those who do Project Life.)

Doodlebug had their usual bright, fun products and pages:

I liked the colored washi, which serves as the background here.

GCD Studios also had some amazing collections and pages. This one shows off Heidi Sonboul's new line Special Delivery.

Prima...I have to admit I tend not to go in that booth because it is not my style, but I did check it out with Donna Januzzi, just to see how the other half (mothers who scrap girls) live. Here's one project I really liked:

Not too dimensional, and nice use of several photos. Prima did have nice collections of wood veneer; you can see the plane here.

Jenni Bowlin also tends to be a style that for me tends towards the feminine, but the collections were very usable for masculine pages, perfectly demonstrated by Lisa Dickenson's amazing pages. Here's one that uses feathers and her new papers:

Lovely, and not girly at all. I may have to get those feathers.

Little Yellow Bicycle was one of the only booths that had some two page designs. Their Vintage Summer collection was USA-patriotic in its colors, but the patterns were more versatile.

Glitz had some of my favorite collections. This one shows their summer collection Uncharted Waters. Absolutely gorgeous.

Finally, the big section that was American Crafts and its satellites contained lots of inspiring projects. Here's some from Crate:

 

Maggie Holmes' collection had a lot of buzz. It is gorgeous. I love that cloudy-dreamy background paper. I'm not so keen on the glitter thickers--Dear Lizzy had some clear glitter thickers that were nice, but these are just too much bling for me. I love the die cut collection--it's smaller, so easier to cluster.

Though Maggie's collection had more buzz, I love the DIY Shop collection:

 

Again, smaller die cuts, and the papers were fun. There was one that was sort of like a rainbow-ish TTV frame. Sigh.

And from AC Dear Lizzy, Lucky Charm:

Notice the navy blue. Dear Lizzy has always had gorgeous product and patterns, but this one, with its navy touches, feels more masculine to me, but still playful, so perfect for scrapping boys as well as girls. I like that companies like Fancy Pants, American Crafts, and Jillibean Soup are making die cut papers. Not everyone has a Cameo.

Thanks for reading about my second day--I'll share some of my favorite products that you might not have heard about tomorrow.

What are you excited to get that you've heard about so far?

Patterned paper bits

This is my last GCD Studios post. I had a wonderful year with the team, and I am so excited to share the wonderful products in this line.

I'd like to share a technique I used recently to dress up a page with lots of patterned paper bits.

The spring here in Minnesota has been so gorgeous, I felt the need to scrap some spring photos. I pulled an unscrapped photo from last year--remember last winter and how welcome spring was?--and paired it with with the lovely Bonjour line. I was inspired by these papers:

The blues and greens are lovely spring colors that I can use on a page about my boys. The colors made me want  to pull out some mists and use them too.

First, I set up the layout of the page. I grabbed a template from Pink Paislee to make the background:

Next, I misted over the template in light blue.

I wanted to use two other colors of mist, but only inside the template. To cover the paper above and below the template, I taped some wax paper to it, then misted with green and brown:

Next, I added some patterned paper strips. I also wanted to add patterned paper to the misted circles, so I used the misting template to trace and cut a scrap paper template. I used this scrap paper template to trace and cut out small pieces of patterned paper to glue over some misted spots.

Finally, I added some other shapes and brads just because.

Here's what the final page looked like:

I hope you enjoy using your templates to add a fresh mix of patterned paper to your page in little bitty doses!

Yellow and brown and blue

I thought I'd share a sports page I made using non-sports papers, using some amazing GCD Studios papers.

My younger son loves sports, even though he's not a formal participant right now. I have a collection of photos I've taken of him messing around with various athletic gear, so I decided to put them together on a page.

I LOVE this yellow paper "Sunswept" from the line Splendor:

It reminded me of the colors in the basketball photo of my son, so I used this paper as the backdrop. I then picked a bunch of brown and dark yellow papers from the same line to add to the page, "Letter Tiles," "Zig Zag," and "Heirloom." To add some contrast, I picked this energetic paper "Woven Chevron" from Splendor as an accent paper:

I hand cut a line and added it to the middle of the browns.

I wanted small bits of blue throughout as well, so I punched tiny circles from the B side of "Pink Flora." I added them to the yellow paper and did some hand stitching. Here's how the page ended up:

I love how versatile this collection is! Have fun playing with Splendor, even for some pages that you might otherwise only use themed products on.

Goofy and Happy

I wanted to share a page I made recently that I love.

First, I had some wonderful photos of our trip to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, a wonderful and free museum in the Twin Cities.  A docent marked up a map for us of all the boy friendly art, and we went on an adventure finding it all. The boys acted goofy the whole way. Here's the page:

I designed it a little differently. Normally on a two page LO, I box it into a mat or spread it across the page, but that design felt a bit staid to me, so I put the photos instead in three clusters across the spread. Underneath each cluster I misted, then laid some strips of my favorite GCD Studios paper from last year,  The World's Greatest. I also cut frames out of one side of the paper and housed images I punched from the MIA map we'd used.

 I was very happy to use some older Jenni Bowlin letter stickers on the layout. I actually used up the sheet--no more e's and a's, so out it went! I stitched over it in orange for interest, then added some cross stitches under the hand cut banner.

I stretched the journaling over the two pages to move the eye across the page.

This was a layout I smiled the whole time making. Most happily for me, my boys kept coming over and looking at the photos then the journaling, and they both asked when we could go again. We decided we'd go in February when Grandma D comes.

Another thing making me happy: looking forward to playing with this paper line:

GCD Studios is releasing Heidi Sonboul's first line, Oh Happy Day! Maybe because it finally started to feel (and look!) like winter here in Minnesota,  I can't wait to play with these happy, happy colors and patterns. One image of a girl, but don't let that turn you off if you have boys: the patterns are happy and playful, and boys are happy and playful too. Awesomeness!

Christmas boys

Before the holidays end and I take down the decorations (which will be soon, since there is more tree on floor than on tree), I wanted to share a couple pages I made for Sketch Support this past month.

Both are pages of my boys. I tend to scrap Christmas layouts for the family, not for their albums, but I decided since they love the holidays so much, I should put together a page with their memories from the holiday too.

I didn't worry about journaling. Instead, I selected pictures from the season to represent the month for them. Here's what I did:

It was a two page sketch, but I narrowed it to one since I used fewer photos.

I added stars and stitched glimmer for fun!

Here's Dominic:

I used GCD Studios' Scandia Jul for this page--the bright colors and graphic patterns were perfect for the sketch.

I have trouble stitching with twine, so I drew a line with a ruler and pencil, laid glue down, and stuck the twine down. I did something similar with the bows: I tied them, then glued them down.

Another fun thing: Rather than having the ornaments overlap the photo and papers, I used my circle cutter to cut a slightly larger circle to house them.

Have a great New Year's weekend! I plan on (finally!) editing my Disney photos from 2010 using my Christmas gift, PSE 10 (woot!) and going to a crop on the second at Archiver's with some friends. And hopefully, we'll get snow so my boys can play outside in their boots.

Muted Christmas hues

A holiday confession:

I really don't love scrapbooking Christmas.

There! Off my chest! My month is so packed, I can't even begin to think about December Daily, and scrapbooking with traditional colors makes me never want to look at anything red or green again.

But this combo of colors makes me want to scrapbook the holidays:


See how subdued they are? Classy and fresh!

To get over my dread of making innumerable layouts from December, I used PSE 7 to make a collage that captured the entire month of December 2010:


I used black and mint for accent colors and depended on the light orange and cranberry red for the main hues.


I couldn't find a cardstock hue in just the right orange, so I created my own with a texture wheel and a light orange ink.


I wasn't much for extensive journaling, so I made a list and printed on a transparency to make the stamped background paper visible. To make the numbers stand out more, I punched mint circles from cardstock and set them under the numbers.

Here's the GCD Studios products I used:


Spring in Bloom Tags, Ribbons, and Mosaics


Funhouse Coney Island


Funhouse Shooting Gallery (I hand cut the mint-green stars from this paper.)


Funhouse The World's Greatest (I also hand-cut this one, the mint green banners this time.)


Funhouse Ribbon Spool (The red and white striped twine is like a candy cane!)


Die cut borders from Homespun Chic

Have fun experimenting with a subdued version of the traditional colors!

Black Friday tradition

The Mall of America is a special spot for my family, most especially because my husband and I first met there. Every year we go to the Mall of America on Black Friday. It's honestly not as crazy as it sounds! We went again this year; I'll post that story soon.

I took our pictures from last year and made a mini album using the following color combo as inspiration:

The desaturated colors are warm but not to showy, perfect for my bright photos.

Here's the mini-album:





I used paint on my stamps to make the images stand out on the black paper. I also used some gems and baker's twine to add some texture to the pages.

And here's the GCD Studios products I used:


Animal Crackers for boys Cube Leaf


Animal Crackers for boys Wallpaper Stripe


Animal Crackers for boys Fauna Stripe


Animal Crackers for boys Quirky rub-on letters


The Great Outdoors Trail Blazer


Chip Art Stars


Chip Art 5x7 mini album kit

Enjoy these muted hues, even when scrapping a bright and wild event!