Inkspiration Meetings

I had a team meeting here earlier this week. Not everyone can make it because of distance, but we always have a great night. We swapped, shared projects we're working on/teaching, talked shop, ate yummy snacks (thanks Christy!), and made a great make & take (thanks Jamilla!). And I remembered to take pictures this time - yeah! Here are some of the projects that various team members are working on this month - from altered items, to cards, to scrapbook pages, we've been busy stamping! Hope you've enjoyed these - next time I'll share our swap cards - the theme was new sets. Happy stamping! - Ann

When You Love Something, Go With It!

I shared this layout with you back in March or April. It was one that I copied almost identically from my friend Janet. I showed it to another friend Christa, who was hosting a show for me and we brainstormed about how to turn it into a class. She really wanted to incorporate Stampin' Up!'s kits in the project. Here's the kit version of the earlier layout, using the hostess kit, Friends & Flowers kit. This layout made such an impact that 2 of the guests wanted to use the same kit. Another guest used the I'm Here - Girl kit to create a very soft, very pink, very sweet version of this layout. These bright colours definitely call for some summery pictures to drop in - or I could even go retro and hunt down some pictures of when my brother & I were kids... This is the layout I did at the class, to walk them through the steps. I had an All the Trimmings kit open from a Christmas card class last fall, so I thought I'd use some more of it up. I may do some embossing with my VersaMarker and Irridescent Ice just to add some Christmas sparkle to the layout, and then add my pictures. I've got some great photos of Sarah when she was a toddler, looking up at the decorated Christmas tree with that awestruck sense of wonder that young children experience when it's really the first year that they are "getting" what Christmas is about. The techniques, as well as the layouts, are identical on these, incorporating sponging, dtp, punches, frayed ribbon, stamping, etc. Well, there you go - three layouts all the same, but each with a VERY different feel to it. I won't put them one after the other in my scrapbook, and I don't think anyone will notice that they are almost identical, especially once the photos are on there. All of this to point out to you that you do not have to invent something new every single time. If you don't have much time, but want to get a layout done, copy a layout you have already used. It will work. And of course our kits make it fast! The kits you've seen on this blog this spring are all retiring - if any have appealed, now is the time to get in touch with me, or your local SU! rep. I am really looking forward to seeing the kits that will be introduced in the new catalogue. And I've heard of some demonstrators in Canada getting their catalogue. Not here, yet, in Ontario. Still waiting... By the way, I LOVE teaching scrapbooking classes, so if you're in this area, I'd love to get together with you and a few of your friends for a night of scrapbooking!

I got to scrapbook again!

My friend Joyce was over the other day. We try to get together to scrapbook about once every month or two. Well she got 6 page done to my 1 - wow is she fast! My phone rang a few times and I would stop to share an idea or two with her, but she just gets it done. My page took some time to complete. The right hand border is a collage I created using up all those rub-ons and stickers that have been laying around for a few years. I do mean years, and the one page of rub-ons were really really tough to rub-on - I was burnishing like crazy! Then I inked the edges with Mellow Moss craft ink and took my distressing tool to it. The photos are trimmed down to 2 x 2" squares. The title is another clear sticker. The journalling chronicles all the sites we saw and visited on the 2 day leg of our big trip. London was our last stop before flying home again. This title page for my London layouts will sit next to this page that I did of our visit to the caves at Gibraltar and because I used some of the same colours here that are on that page, along with some of the border strips from the At Home kit that I used for that page, this one flows beside it quite nicely, I think. See what I mean: I am actually REALLY pleased with this page, despite its apparent simplicity, because this is not a CASE of another page, and it didn't start with a sketch - it all came out of my own head. Who knew?

Scrapbook page to show you...

About two weeks ago, I got some scrapbooking time with my friend Christa. That's when I started the Itty Bitty book for my mom. But before I moved onto that project, I got a page done for my travel scrapbook. Christa had shown me the may/june issue of scrapbooks etc. magazine because it has a fairly big section on stamping this month. As I paged through the magazine, I spotted a kit that I immediately recognized as one of Stampin' Up!'s. It was a feature article in the "Goods" section, titled "Supply Smarts". The magazine was showed a layout and a page, both 8.5 x 11 and a card all using the kit(pages 28-30, if you have the issue). I imagine there was still TONS left over yet. I don't have the kit they featured, Party Pieces, nor do I scrapbook in 8.5 x 11. But I really liked the one page, so I thought I'd adapt it to 12 x 12. The original page features a photo that is probably a 5 x 7 portrait. I have more space to fill, and 0 photos that big, so I worked with what I have, trimming the photos to similar sizes. I had already broken into an "At Home" kit, so I took this opportunity to use more of it up. I loved layering on the border stips to create some fun and easy bordering/framing for my pix. For the title, I used a scrap of patterned paper to cover a chipboard "c", sanded the edges, and tied on some hemp for a rugged feel. The rest of the word is stamped in Chocolate Chip with letters from the Collage Alphabet set (yes I am sad to see this one go!)These caves are inside the rock of Gibraltar, and this page is the last of the ones from Spain. Onto London next... but first, I have to sort through my photos - there are just to many to scrapbook - they'd make a book of their own! hehehe. Anyway, once I figured out what to do photo-wise with this page (I omitted one other picture that I had originally wanted to include), it came together very easily. The joy of kits - all the co-ordinating is done for us!

Itty Bitty Love

I've been working on a special project to give to my mom on Mother's Day - it's less than two weeks away, boy that's coming up fast! Ever since these Itty Bitty Books showed up in the Holiday mini, I've been wanting to play with them, and I finally got to it. These ship flat, so you do have to make up the box that the book slides into for storage, but some Terrifically Tacky Tape makes quick work of that. This book came together fairly quickly. There are 10 page protectors, so 20 pages. I just started cutting the adorable two sided paper, Petals & Paisley, from the spring mini. I chose this paper because I thought the fun, bright colours and images would work for both recent pictures and older pictures that need a bit more of a retro look. AND I've used up almost all of my Au Chocolat paper! I started cutting 3 1/4 x 3 1/4 inch square of the Petals and Paisley paper. Because the pages are so small, the embellishing isn't heavy in this book. I matted some photos, but not all of them. I made use of the slot punch, brads, lots of dtp, and some ribbon on a few pages, glitter on one, and that's about all little pages like these can hold. Stamps included words from Everyday Expressive Phrases, Everyday Flexible Phrases, Warm Words, sayings from Polka Dots & Paisley, and Summer by the Sea, as well as a some of the corner flourishes from the Doodle This set. The front cover of the book is inspired by an idea presented in a recent copy of the monthly Stampin' Success magazine sent by the company to all demonstrators. It's a great place to get the creative juices flowing. When I started my version, I didn't have the same stamp set that SU! used but thought I'd use the flowers from Doodle This! I didn't like the pointy look of the flower once I had it cut out for this project, and the smaller flower seemed too small and so it just wasn't cutting it either. I started my work on this book at my friend, Christa's, and she gave me this textured chipboard flower. So the bright pink flower, which works well with the colours in the paper, is layered onto the book that is covered in the 2 sided paper. I stamped the greeting "home is where your mother is" from the spring mini set, Just So Sayings,in So Saffron, cut it out and glued it on. The "m" comes from the big deal alpha set - it's stamped in craft white on white cardstock and heat embossed in white. I wanted just a bit more gloss yet, so I also went over it with Crystal Effects. The photo is probably not showing all the stamping on the box - I used Doodle This!, Alphadots, Burst into Bloom, and the hostess set, Riveting. The bling on the For You piece are 4-pronged gems meant for use on clothing and they pre-date my joining Stampin' Up! They weren't easy to work with, so I will definitely be looking forward to playing with the new Fire and Ice rhinestone brads joining the accessories section of the upcoming 2007-08 catalogue. Check out the link to a previous blog entry if you missed this bit of news, or want to see those again. Hope you like the book, and even more importantly, I hope mom loves it - I'll let you know after I give it to her on the 13th of May.

Wanted to post sooner...

... but it's been an incredibly busy week. I do technical writing for my father-in-law's business as well and I was trying to make a deadline with that, contracted a weird flu over the weekend, planned a workshop for this past Wednesday and did a lot of prepping for the full team meeting my upline, Joanne, is hosting tomorrow. So, I will have lots of great ideas to share with you in the next while - coming out of the meeting (such a great place to see creative ideas other demonstrators are cooking up) and just get my own creative juices flowing! I'll take pictures and share! I'll also share some of the things we did at the workshop this past week. But for today, let me show you my swap card for tomorrow: We only need to do cardfronts, but this card wouldn't have worked as a swap if I didn't do full-sized. This card features that gorgeous Au Chocolat 2-sided paper found in the Spring mini. The front of the card folds back about 1 1/2 inches from the right side and I stamped it with the flower outline from the Polka Dots & Paisley set in Chocolate Chip ink. I ran a length of Chocolate grosgrain near the edge and used a chocolate chip marker to make an edge of dotted faux stitching - just palying on the dots on the paper. The far right of the image is actually the right side of the inside of the card. I just wheeled the new Petals jumbo wheel up there using chocolate chip ink. The greeting is the Smile stamp from the Be Happy set stamped in Chocolate Chip ink on vanilla paper, punched out and layered on a punched Chocolate Chip circle. I did this card at a class recently and the ladies liked it so much that I thought the demonstrators I'm swapping with tomorrow will like it too - it's simple but elegant, I think. Well, since it's been so long since I posted, perhaps I'll share one more stamping idea. This one uses the Polka Dots & Paisley stamp set on a scrapbook layout. This is a total CASE (copy and share everything)of a layout my good friend and fellow demonstrator in my downline, Janet created. I loved what she did so much, that I made up the same layout. I still need to drop photos into it so I'll have to go hunting through my stash. I usually scrapbook the other way around, choosing the photos first and building around it, but this layout was one I knew I wanted in my book. So the Certainly Celery is background stamped with the flower and outline stamps in Certainly Celery. The Happy tag is made with the tag punches and features the frayed ribbon in rose and celery grosgrain, as well as some repeat stamping with the paisley stamp. The squares in the lower corner are paisley stamped and sponged on the edges. The borders on both pages are made with the Petals and Paisley 2 sided papers, along with a strip of So Saffron stamped in More Mustard with the polka dot stamp. The circle details come from the Little Pieces stamp set. The right page is background stamped in celery with the paisley stamp. The flowered paper is assymetrically cut. Here's a tip on doing that: Put your paper in the trimmer at about twice the length you would like for one page and trim. Now put the trimmer piece back in your trimmer, placing the upper right corner on the cutting line, and the lower left corner on the cutting line. Then trim. You'll have 2 assymmetric pieces, one for each page. The Round Tab punch was used to create the faux clipboard in the upper left corner, along with the spiral punch. I borrowed the spiral punch to do this, but now that I've seen how eas it is to use, I may get one for myself... the parentheses are made with the round tab punch too. Sponging, dtp, punched flowers and buttons finish the details. Thanks Janet for sharing your creativity with me - I can't wait to put my photos on here and add these to my scrapbook!

Travel Album

I had wanted to post these before the weekend, but it was March break and the time was just FLYING by on me. So for those of you who were looking, so sorry to keep you waiting... A few summers ago, Brian, Sarah & I family made a trip with my father to Europe to visit some friends in England. We toured parts of England with them, and holidayed in Spain with them (people in England head to Spain for holidays the way people in Ontario head to Florida), and before we caught up to them, we did a car tour through Belgium into Holland. It was an unbelievable three weeks, and while it's taking me awhile to get the scrapbook done, I am enjoying every bit of it - especially reliving the memories! I am up to Spain,now, so there's not much left. So last Wednesday, Mom came into town for a craft day - she made cards the mass production way and got I think over 20 cards in about 4 designs done. She's set for awhile! I used the day to scrapbook and got two double layouts done. They both are set in a Gibraltar. The first layout shows the sights of Gibraltar a little bit. I used some leftover designer paper I had from the Summer mini called Petal Patch for this one, and the layout itself comes from one of those Becky Higgins sketches books. I stamped the Fine Lace background stamp in craft White on Bashful Blue for the left page and layered on a scrap of the striped paper. The tag came from the Just Delightful SAB kit. I punched flowers from in Bashful Blue and Close to Cocoa, inked the edges with craft White and started layering them using brads from the Soft Subtles. The non-SU fabric tag at the bottom of the page has been kicking around here a long time and the colours worked. The right hand page is also a simple layout, and both the flowery paper and the stripes come from the same collection. The barbary apes that inhabit the rocks of Gibraltar aren't native, but were introduced during the war (soldiers brought them back from Africa, which is just across the sea and can be seen on a clear day without a telecope). They are semi-tame, at least with the mini-bus guides. I knew my very good friend and customer got this Monkey Business set for Christmas, so I scooted down the road to borrow it.Thanks Christa! The left page features a photo of an ape being fed by a tour bus guide and I love the expression on Connor's face (right behind the ape)- he's just so caught up in the moment! I layered the photo onto a Certainly Celery piece stamped with the vine in Almost Artichoke and layered that onto a vanilla mat, sponged in celery. That then is layered onto a vine-printed scrap from the same collection as the previous page. I used the Big Deal set to stamp the title along with some hand-writing. For the right hand page, I used the emboss resist technique: I stamped the vine with Versamark ink onto Vanilla cardstock, sprinkled on clear embossing powder and heat it. Once melted and cooled, I sponged on four shades of green: Garden Green, Certainly Celery, Mellow Moss and Almost Artichoke. The monkeys are stamped and clear embossed,trimmed out and raised up on Stampin' Dimensionals. So that was my play time last Wednesday - what do you think?

Scrapbooking with Kits

I wish I could take credit for this, but it is pretty much a straight-up copy of a page by Lauren483 that she posted on an on-line gallery. I really wanted to show my scrapbooking guests how quickly a page can come together when using the Stampin' Up! kits. This kit is the Just Delightful kit, available free during Sell-a-bration with a $75 order. For those of you who haven't really checked out SU! Simply Scrappin' Kits, there are 6 6" x 12" die-cut sticker pages, along with 8 sheets of 12 x 12 cardstock and 4 sheets of co-ordinating patterned paper. This paper has a white core, offering chalking and inking options when torn, or leaving it plain white, like I did on this page. All I added to what came with the kit was a length of celery grosgrain, and some hodgepodge hardware. I was thinking as I did up the page that I might use pictures from our trip to England (way back in 2004) on it, but somehow I started focussing on the idea of "dream" and ended up digging up these baby photos of Sarah when she was sleeping. These pix are even older than the trip phots, so I suspect I'll never be "caught up" in my scrapbooking - which is kind of a good thing! So there are a few things I love about our kits.

• One is the speed - sometimes I just don't have a lot of time to put into a layout, but I have the desire (NEED) to get some scrappin' done. These make it easy because I don't spend time on paper selection and matching.
• Another thing I love is that stamping is still possible if I want to - most of our kits have at least one stamp set that will co-ordinate or work with them, so additional embellishment options are available to me.
• And I love the value of our kits. They only cost about $18 and they include a ton of stuff. When I attend a class or buy a kit from the local scrapbooking stores, I get a nice layout, but just one layout for my $15 to $20. With these kits, I can do up several layouts.
• I did not mean to turn this post into a "speaker's corner" moment - I'm just a little enthusiastic about our kits, can you tell? And I'm SO loving this page!

By the way - TODAY is the very last day for Sell-a-bration. Call me right away if you would like to get a SAB set free with a $75 order. And I have to say, a LOT of these sets have grown on me over the last 2 months and I'm going to miss them.

Scrapbook make & take

This was our make & take the other night. It's a 6 x 6 page and I showed them other layouts that incorporate 6 x 6 's so they'd see that they can use this at home, no matter what size they scrapbook in.

This page was inspired by a card I saw on the SplitCoast gallery. The creator of the card used the background set and designer paper up one side and that was all I needed to get the page started. This paper is the Dots & Dashes designer paper. The Green Galore, Tempting Turquoise and Only Orange come out of the paper colours. We stamped the Word Play background on the Green Galore. We used the slit punch to create the scalloped edge. (These are deeper scallops than the ones I made on the Doodle This card.) The accents on this page are stamped in Tempting Turquoise on Whisper White using the Be Happy set. I love the way that set works for both scrapbooking and cardmaking. A knot of Tempting Turquoise finishes the accents. I made the page up and then went hunting for a picture, which is opposite the way I usually scrapbook, but was fortunate to find this photo. Sarah is wearing a shirt that matches the layout perfectly and she's goofing around with her Papa's sunglasses which fits with the share, laugh, play, be happy theme of the accents.

Scrapbook Page

I had the honour and pleasure of doing a workshop Wednesday night and at the hostess's request, the focus for the entire evening was scrapbooking. Sounds easy, right? I mean, scrapbooking is what got me into this business to begin with. But when I scrapbook for me, I don't compose my pages or layouts thinking about whether it's teachable - I just do it. So, I am so grateful to Janet, a friend, downline and beautiful scrapbooker, who showed me some of her recent layouts. She inspired this page that I demonstrated to the scrapbooking crowd. The 12 x 12 page starts with French Script inked in VersaMark and stamped in the upper left and lower right corners. Then I used a cottonball to brush Bravo Burgundy chalk over top to pop up the script. Chalks are safe for scrapbooking and I love using it this way. I used the Artifacts set in the upper right corner to do the same technique. The journalling is tucked into a pocket made with the mini envelope template and stamped in Bravo Burgundy with French Script. I used the Close to Cocoa ink pad directly on the edges of the paper to give it that shabby look. Because I love the overlay look and because I was eager to play with my new White Staz-on ink, I finished the page by stamping the curlicues, and the Artifacts clock on pieces of acetate, and attached the pieces over the photos with brads.