Memorable Year November Project Kit

You are not going to want to miss out on this one! Our talented Design Team member Nicole put this adorable album for our November project kit filled with little pieces of goodness together for us.

It is titled "A Memorable Year" because it is the perfect place for you to gather your favorite photos and memories from this past year and put them all in one special place.

For starters, the felt album is so cute. The double-sided paper is perfect for adding a warm touch to your album. You don't need much paper because the album is only 4 X 4 inches and many of the pages will be taken up by your photos.

Here are a few of Nicole's finished pages (more coming soon!):











This really is a simple project that will allow you to easily share your year with your friends and family.

Add dimension to your flower!

One of the easiest ways to add dimension to your layout is by layering elements.

The Cosmo Cricket patterned paper from the Oct. Kit had images of pretty flowers in different sizes. I cut out a few of the different sizes then crumpled up each piece. Then I layered them on top of each other and topped it off with a brad. The different sizes mimic the look of petals and the crumpling helps give the texture.

November Kit Peek

It's up HERE!

Let me know what you think.

Oct. Album Idea from Bethany

I know you all enjoyed checking out Bethany's creations in the gallery this month since she is our Guest Designer and now Bethany is sharing her album for the October kit.

Here are Bethany's pictures and directions...enjoy!







If you are a mother, aunt, grandmother or friend of children, you are the lucky recipient of beautiful artwork and schoolwork. However, these gifts can quickly become overwhelming. But, what if you were to use them in your scrapbooks as an embellishment? Mixed media artists use various found images in their works, why can’t scrapbookers? The mini-album from this month’s kit was the perfect place for me to experiment with this idea. This is what I did.

1. I removed the rings and painted each page (front and back) with gesso. This is a preparatory paint that can be found at an art supply store. If you don’t want to invest in this product, just use acrylic paint. Then when the gesso was dry, I dry brushed a bit of light blue acrylic paint to give some dimension.
2. I punched out circles from my children’s artwork, schoolwork and old phonetics readers and attached them to the front and back covers using matte (not gloss) decoupage glue.
3. I spelled out CHILDREN using Heidi Swapp’s alpha mask then painted over the circles using orange acrylic paint mixed with matte medium, which makes the paint more translucent.
4. I doodled and added buttons to the front cover.
5. I cut out a quote from a too-well-loved children’s book by Judith Viorst and adhered it to the back cover using decoupage glue.
6. I took some very cool sketches that my daughters did of me and copied them onto a transparency using my ink jet printer. I purchased the transparencies from an office supply store and they are made for home printing.
7. On the first inside page, I adhered (using spray adhesive) the trimmed transparency of my dancing self. And on the second page, I adhered the very thin woman.
8. I cut out a dress using paper from April’s kit. I added an undershirt and the scallop hem. I used a Sharpie paint pen to highlight various lines and acrylic paint with a small brush to add color to my eyes and lips. I dressed the thin me in the same manner. The crown was cut out of thin chipboard using a Heidi Swapp stamp as a guide. The chipboard was part of some packaging.
9. I doodled around and added silly phrases and doodled on some buttons with a paint pen for the crown. The crown is glued on using PVA glue.


Have fun with this idea! I’d love to see what you come up with when using children’s art as a basis for your own embellishments!

Oct Sketch

Happy Friday everyone!!

Hope you are enjoying the Oct kit. I am in love with the new October Afternoon papers and journaling tags. Makes it so easy to put together a layout!

Here is a layout I created and a sketch.

I challenge you to create a layout using the sketch.

I'll draw a name Nov 1 :)

Meet Our October Guest Designer!

Bethany Kartchner!

I know you are going to LOVE what Bethany did with this month's kit. She has such a beautiful style and I love all of the sewing she did on her pages. You can check out her work in the Idea Gallery.

Here's a little more about Bethany:



"My name is Bethany Kartchner, and I am a life artist. I was born in Chicago and had an idyllic childhood filled with imagination and love. I went on to graduate with a Master’s Degree from the University of Arizona in French literature with an emphasis on West African literature by women. I am now a SAHM of 4 children, 2 dogs, 36 fish, and a busy attorney husband. I am well organized, however and find joy in my hectic lifestyle.

Thanks to my creative mother, I am a strong crafter with experience in paper crafting (including stamping, scrapbooking, mini-book crafting, and card-making), photography, soldering, sewing clothing and soft toys, knitting, and jewelry-making. Even though I love to try new things and always have multiple projects running simultaneously, my favorite medium is paper and I particularly enjoy scrapbooking (and have now for about 12 years) because it combines my love of photography, stamping, sewing, design, color and journaling."

You can check out more of Bethany's blog HERE.
Thank you so much for sharing your talent with us!

A little challenge...

How many of you have gone through your photos and LOVED a particular one, but didn't feel it was "good enough" to use? Well, I took this picture of my darling little Cooper over the weekend and even though it was blurry, I knew I had to use it anyway. And you know what, I *love* this layout so much...it's one of those layouts that guarantees me a smile every time I look at it.

So, my challenge to you...scrap that imperfect photo!!! I hope that you'll be pleasantly surprised by the results.