Echo Park: Victoria Gardens

Good morning! Today I have my projects to share using Echo Park's "Victoria Gardens" collection, all created for my guest design spot with Emma's Paperie. I love how the chevron trend has taken off and to me it just screams Easter eggs! I created this two-page layout of my girls with their Easter baskets this past spring. I cut the chevron pieces from a variety of patterned papers in the collection. 

I cut the eggs (ovals) with my Cricut and masked and misted the grey with a punched heart. 

Check out that pouty face (Nora)! 

The next layout is all Miss Lily and is actually from Easter too, but you couldn't tell it from the photos. I cut the hexagons using my Cricut again and used one as a journaling block. The sticker on the side is also by Echo Park. 

I love mixing and matching alphabet fonts! The resin heart is by Melissa Frances. 

Here's a closer look at the hexagons. I misted the background with white mist by Studio Calico and then added a few colors on top of the hexagons. 

I'll be back tomorrow with a project for Noel Mignon and then back again Friday with the rest of my guest projects. 

Have a good one! :)

More Simple Stories!

Good morning! I have more projects to share today that I created for Emma's Paperie using the "Life Documented" collection by Simple Stories. For this layout, I used an older photo of the girls and their bottles when they were 11 months old. We had to get pretty creative in feeding twins but by this point we had it down pretty well. (It definitely helped when they could hold the bottles themselves!) :) It's a moment in our lives I'm happy to have finally documented. I used a starter background by Sassafras Lass as my base and built the layout from there. 

The title is a combination of Simple Stories stickers and thickers by American Crafts. 

I created the banner by misting pieces of canvas by Maya Road with a variety of colors and interchanging them with Simple Stories sticker banner pieces.

Next, I created a couple of simple cards with birthday and love sentiments. 

For this card, I punched the "i" and "u" directly from the tiny alphabet sheet.

Finally, I created a banner with a "Bless our Home" theme. The canvas pieces are by Maya Road and I lightly misted them with "Coffee Shop" mist by Tattered Angels. I die-cut the doily pieces with a PaperTrey Ink die using my Big Shot. 

The alphabet stickers are Simple Stories and the resin star by Melissa Frances. 

The number garland is by GCD Studios. 

And that's the rest of my projects using "Life Documented"! I'll be back tomorrow to show you part of what I did with Echo Park's "Victoria Gardens" collection.

Have a great day! :)

Guest Designing at Emma's Paperie!

I'm honored to be guest designing at Emma's Paperie this month. I've been a customer of Cindy's for a long time so I was excited when she e-mailed me about designing this month. I worked with the "Life Documented" collection by Simple Stories and the "Victoria Gardens" collection by Echo Park. I ended up creating a lot of projects with each collection so I'm going to share them over the next week on my blog. First up is the "Life Documented" collection...

We finally took the girls in for their very first haircut this past April. They really didn't have any hair until after their first birthday and it just needed evened out. We went to the salon where I go and my stylist did a great job. The girls' favorite parts were the balloons and suckers they got when they were done. I had to hold Nora the whole time during her haircut but Lily was a big girl and sat in the chair with the cape and everything. I created a two-page layout with the idea in mind that the girls could actually split this one up someday as there are pictures of the two of them on each page plus each girls' individual photos on their respective pages. 

You will be able to see in the next two shots that I created stitched vellum pockets in which I placed a lock of their hair and sealed them up. 

For my next layout, I had cute photos of Miss Nora having her first pony ride at the pumpkin patch last fall. I loved the colors in the "Life Documented" collection...they have a great fall vibe. I put together a lot of bits and pieces here on a background sheet by Sassafras Lass. 

For this section, I actually cut a portion of the tiny alphabet stickers and adhered them. I stitched through them too just to make sure they wouldn't come off accidentally. I like this effect a lot on a child's page. 

So there's my first two projects....I'll be back tomorrow with the rest of my projects using "Life Documented". 

Have a great day! :)

The Great Pumpkin Adventure

While I'm waiting a few minutes for my iPod to charge up so I can clean this morning, I thought I would share this layout that is in the October issue of BHG Scrapbooks Etc. (click to see larger) I used the "Dear Diary" kit from Noel Mignon and lots of Lily Bee Designs products to create this two-pager. I have a slight obsession with creating two-pagers lately as it's a great way to tell a story with lots of photos. The paper pieced pumpkins were fun to create with lots of punched leaves to ground them and the mist adds a lot of texture to the pages. 

Have a great Saturday! I'm off to clean! :)

The Best Gift!

I consider it a true gift that my girls have so much creative influence from both their daddy and grandpa - both are artists. My layout today recognizes that gift using the "Salt Water Taffy" kit from Noel Mignon and a photo from Father's Day this past summer. I kept my design fairly simple and utilized several banners - one I created myself from patterned paper and then stickers by Sassafras Lass and Lily Bee Designs. 

Here is the banner I made from patterned paper and then a Sassafras Lass sticker on top. I strung twine by My Mind's Eye between two Maya Road wood buttons. 

Make sure you stop by the store at Noel Mignon to pre-order the September kit "Study Hall"! 

Have a great day! :)

Princess Crowns & Wands

Good morning! I can't believe summer is slipping away. We've been cramming in as much fun as we can and I think we're heading to the splash park for one more time before it closes today. This has been the best summer! Aside from a couple bouts of sickness, we have enjoyed the outside so much! 

Today, I have a project to share that I created with indoor play in mind. Because of the somewhat fragile nature of what I created, it's definitely something to play with under supervision unless you want your hard work to disappear! :) I used Pebbles Inc.'s "Ever After" collection make these princess crowns and wands. I'm no stranger to creating crowns as I've made them for each birthday so far but these I made a little more "princess-y" with tulle and ribbon cascading off the sides. And this time I used tissue paper fringe by Melissa Frances on both the wands and crowns. (Before, I made my own fringe). This simplified the process so much! 

The doilies were die-cut from patterned paper by Pebbles with a die by PaperTrey Ink (one for each side) and then I hot-glued them together around a painted dowel with the tissue paper fringe. I stamped a sentiment by Pebbles on a punched scalloped circle and then accented each side with a dimensional sticker. 

To make the crowns, I drew a large circle on one piece of patterned paper, cut it out and then cut it in half. By folding the half-circle into a cone shape, I was able to create a triangle for the crown. Again, I die-cut a doily and accented it with a dimensional sticker. I placed fringe at the top of the crown and hot-glued it around the bottom. I also adhered a flag from the "Happy Go Lucky" collection by Pebbles at the top. 

And here are my sweet girls playing with their new treasures! They were so cute waving their wands all over as I taught them how to "make a wish". We'll definitely have more fun with the crowns and wands during the winter months. 

I'll be back tomorrow with more! :)

Celebrate Sweet Sisters!

This month I was a guest designer for Shannon Tidwell's "Products You Love Every Which Way" class over at Two Peas. The theme for this month was stamping and when I heard that I thought "Yikes!" I'm not exactly an experienced stamper (although I have plenty of them). I am very selective on what I buy these days and one of the stamp sets I recently picked up was a doily set by My Mind's Eye. I knew that was the set I wanted to work with and set about creating a subtle stamped doily border. 

Among the things I love these days is watching the relationship between my girls develop. They are pretty affectionate with each other but what I love most is when they give affection without being prompted by mom and dad.  :) 

On this layout, I started with a "starter" background by Sassafras Lass and went from there. 

The "Celebrate" part of my title is a stamp from the Jubilee collection by The Girls' Paperie. 

I stamped half of the doily to highlight one of the photos. 

To bring out the grid on the background, I cut out squares from various patterned papers in the Jubilee collection. 

Here's another peek at the stamped doily border. I heat embossed a couple of the doilies, stamped the larger ones on kraft cardstock and cut them out. I accented the border with brads by My Mind's Eye, The Girls' Paperie and Melissa Frances pearls. 

Thanks again for all the sweet words about my Pebbles Inc. news! We're having a rainy day here so I'm not exactly sure what's on the agenda today. 

Back soon! :)

Pebbles Inc. Design Team! :)

I received some news Friday that I have been anxiously waiting to be able to announce! I'm joining the Pebbles Inc. design team for the next year! Check out the full announcement here to see the rest of the team! 

I loved the new Floral Lane collection and created this layout as part of my submission. I've been holding onto this photo of the girls at 6 months to use with just the right collection and this was it! I did a lot of punching - circles, starbursts and hearts and added a little vintage dictionary paper for a little extra something - and then stitched it all together. 

I'll be back with more soon! Thanks for letting me share my excitement! :)

Out for the Count!

Happy Thursday! I used the beautiful "Salt Water Taffy" kit from Noel Mignon for this layout of my girls sleeping. (Don't let the "sleeping angel" act fool you....ha!) The girls were out cold after swimming at a pool close to my parents' house. I love how their little heads just drift naturally toward each other. I'm in LOVE with the yellow hexagon patterned paper in the kit by Echo Park, but instead of using it on this layout, I pulled out my Cricut Accent Essentials cartridge and cut my own from a variety of papers in the kit. 

The Lily Bee "A Happy Place" sticker was the perfect accent for the theme of the layout. 

I had some black space in the photo so I added a strip of patterned paper to the top and then added a "cute" sticker with a few banner pieces at the bottom. 

And some fun news to share today....earlier this week I received an e-mail from Authentique Paper inviting me to join their design team. I'm very excited to be joining the team! They currently have 6 beautiful collections...I have a layout below that uses Blissful and Uncommon and I'm especially looking forward to working with their Halloween and Christmas lines.

Have a great day! :)

You & Grandpa

My grandpa absolutely adores his great-granddaughters. Anytime he makes a trip into "the city", he makes sure to stop at our house to see them. He always says he's just going to stay for "a little while" but  spends more time with us. When the girls were really little, they would just hang out on grandpa's lap and let him hold them but now that they are on the move, it's a little more difficult to get them to sit still. Over the 4th of July, little Lily climbed right up into grandpa's lap and stayed there for a while and we were able to get a few photos of the two of them. 

My layout uses the "Antique Store" collection by Pretty Little Studio. I pulled the colors straight from their dress and shirt for this one and kept some of the embellishments "old-fashioned" for this family layout. 

For the title, I used one of Pretty Little Studio's die-cut journaling blocks and adhered stickers by Sassafras Lass, Basic Grey and Fancy Pants. 

And here's another instance where I used Pretty Little Studio's vintage buttons. Also of note is one of my favorite die-cuts from this collection, the half-slice vintage bottle caps. These make great banners and I used a few of them below my focal point photo. 

This was my last project to share from my term at Pretty Little Studio. I had a wonderful time working with Melissa and creating with her collections. I know she has some great ideas in the works for Halloween and Christmas so I'll be keeping my eye on her next releases. 

Have a great day! :)