An Echo Park "Country Drive" Easter Layout

How are you?  Are you feeling ready for Easter this weekend?  I'm hosting so we are knee deep in doing our deep cleaning that only comes when we are expecting company.  ;)  I thought I would take a mini break and share an Easter layout that I never got around to sharing from last year.

I used Echo Park's Country Drive papers for this one, picking up all the colors that coordinated with my daughters' Easter dresses and Silhouette's Echo Park Easter Basket cutting file.  I had some fun adding some machine stitching & paper flowers to enhance the basket feel.

 

Thanks so much for stopping by.  I hope you all have a very Happy Easter! 



An Echo Park About A Boy Easter Layout

Well, true to my word I decided to challenge myself to use Lori's new Echo Park collections to create an Easter layout.  What took me by suprise though was that rather than going with the more girly "Sweet Girl" line, I ended up using her "About A boy" line almost exclusively.  Just goes to show how versatile these papers can be for all sorts of themes including one that turned out pretty girly.  ;)

The chevron paper found HERE was my jumping off point and my main inspiration for the rest of the colors found in the layout.  I loved how it picked up the colors in our eggs!  Originally I had the chevron strips with the "arrows" both facing the same direction, but somehow it felt off to me.  As soon as I flipped one, I realized it finally felt right--Almost like they work to direct the eye around the page like a race track.  ;)

 

I used Lori's LW Happy font for my title, topped with some Glossy Accents.  I love how doing this gives you the feeling of a Thickers alphabet sticker, but the beauty is it's always the perfect size to fit the space and you're never running out of vowels.  :)

I think one of my favorite things about diecutting my own embellishments (aside from saving loads of money) is dressing them up.  With the help of some chalk ink, hand stitching, foam tape and buttons, Lori's flower shapes totally came to life!  :)

And once again here is my layout design before cutting.  As you can see sometimes things just don't go as planned.  I really struggled to find the perfect placement for my little chicks and ultimately decided the chevron eggs were too busy for my design.  I also played with my wavy borders (A TON).  I couldn't decide which colors to use or what direction to turn them so I literally cut out a dozen of them.  I also cut my pink flowers in about 4 different shades before finally arriving at one that felt right with the reds found in the collection.  Oh, and that little flower on the egg ended up being layered on a flower below instead.  I love how it now almost looks like a daffodil now.

For today's layout I used the following cutting files available at Lori's Shop:
4 Easter Set
Chicken and Chicks
Easter Egg Set
LW Happy font (title)
Simple Borders

Also don't forget that today is the last day to get 25% off your purchase using the promo code "March25" at checkout. 

Thanks so much for stopping by.  :)

A Jillibean Soup Southern Chicken Dumpling Card

I'm back with another Easter card I created using the second sketch found in the March~April issue of Papercrafts

I used some of Jillibean Soup's adorable Southern Chicken Dumpling Soup papers from last Easter.  Their cardstock cutout label worked perfect for this sketch!  Pretty quick and simple.  Now I'm going to see about getting it in the mail to my dear Grandma--She lives alone and I know she will cherish it. 

Don't forget to take some time to brighten someone's day this Easter with some happy mail.  ;)

Another 8x8 Echo Park Sweet Girl 2-page Layout

I'm back with another double page 8x8 layout I'm sharing on Lori Whitlock's Blog today.  I made this one to coordinate with the colors of my layout I shared last week from our same vacation.

I was inspired by a beautiful sketch created by Allison Davis which I simplified a bit in terms of photos to work well for my smaller 8x8 canvas.  The thing I loved about her sketch was that it called for lots of flowers and Lori definitely has plenty of beauties to choose from.  I set to work layering them up using her newest Echo Park "Sweet Girl" collection papers and brads.  There are so many irresistible papers to choose from.  I think this collection would also work well for so many darling Easter & Spring projects!  Hmm... Maybe I'll work on that for next week.  ;)

In an effort to avoid seeing adhesive below my vellum, I decided I would stitch it on.  It's the first time I did this without using something to tack it down first so I was worried it would shift, but it actually seemed to work even better (without the puckers I sometimes get when I adhere it first).

Once again I thought I would share a screen shot again showing my design process before cutting out my shapes...

To create todays layout I used the following cutting files designed by Lori:
3D Flower Set 1
3D Flower Set 4
Bird Flourish Set
'1 Great Day' Phrase (Silhouette store only)
Flower Leaves (Silhouette store only)
3 Flower Leaves (Silhouette store only)
Flower (Silhouette store only)

Thanks so much for stopping by.  :)

A couple Papertrey Ink Easter & Wedding Cards

It's hard to believe Easter is right around the corner--It has nearly snuck up on me this year!  I thought I better share a couple cards I made before the holiday completely passes me by.  I made these both of these using a Paper Crafts sketch found in this month's March/April Issue.

I created this one with Papertrey Ink's Scrambled Eggs Stamp set and Doodlebug's Hello Spring patterned papers.  I wanted to carry the rainbow throughout and was totally stoked to find the rainbow ribbon by Offray in my stash.  The "happy" diecut is from Papertrey Ink's Wonderful Words Die Set which I colored with Copic markers.  :)

For this one I wanted to try a really clean and simple approach.  I turned to my Papertrey Ink Beautiful Butterflies Stamps and coordinating dies.   The sentiment is also from the set.  Such a great, vesatile set--A must have in my opinion.  ;)  The background was dry embossed with a Cuttlebug embossing folder.

It was fun trying different looks with the same sketch!  Thanks for hanging with me today.  :)

A Lori Whitlock Sweet Girl 2-page Layout

It's Monday which means I have the privilege of sharing another project over at Lori Whitlock's blog today!

For today's layout I got to play with the new papers she created for Echo Park called "Sweet Girl". In fact with the exception of my cardstock, I made this entire layout with a 6x6 pad! They really are such playful & versatile papers. I love her little pie chart paper and how they mimic the look of beach balls for my summer layout.

I had so much fun playing with Lori's layout files for the blog hop (shared HERE) that I decided to give them another go in a 8x8 format.  I am keeping a small album for my mother-in-law in Japan and this layout file was so perfect for my needs.  I took Lori's single page Summer Layout found HERE and I mixed it up a bit by rearranging all the existing elements to match a sketch I had already planned out.  I'm telling ya... I love how many elements you get with these files!

I took the sunshine shape and duplicated them 3 times in various sizes, dispersing them through the layout to create a visual triangle.  You can never have too much sun here in the NW.  ;)

For the notebook paper journaling card I enlarged it be basically 4 times as large.  However, I didn't want to simply enlarge it and have an oversized notebook torn edge so I duplicated the shape 4 times and lined them up with two on the top and two of them on the bottom.  Afterwards I just welded them together to form my larger mat.

For my title, I couldn't really truthfully use the SUMMER word because these were taken in Hawaii during the dead of winter so I once again mixed it up by using Lori's Summer Fun Titles found HERE.

The "Soak up the" portion was originally attached to the word "sun", but using my knife feature I chopped off the excess and cut it out as shown.  Then once it was passed through my Silhouette, I just took my scissors and cleaned up the bottom edges to make it match better.  Below is a screen shot showing my design process and how I planned the colors and sizes before cutting into my precious paper.  :)

Thanks so much for stopping by.  If you haven't given Lori's layout files a try yet, I highly recommend checking them out.  More styles are available HERE.  I'll be back next Monday to share another fun "Sweet Girl" layout I've been working on from this same vacation.  ;)



A Spellbinders Rose Creations Tissue Paper Card

Hi there!

Just thought I would pop in real quick to share a little card I made for this month's card challenge at my local Craft Warehouse store.  For this months challenge we were given a 12x12 piece of Tim Holtz Idea-ology Terminology Tissue Wrap and a small piece of the black ribbon.

As soon as I saw our challenge materials I knew immediately that I wanted to use Spellbinders Rose Creations die set that I special ordered over a year ago and had yet to actually use.  Debbie Olson shared some beautiful cards using tissue paper or coffee filters that had inspired my purchase of the dies in the first place. 

The newsprint paper is printed on a white background so I inked up my many layers with my Colorbox chalk inks before scrunching them up.  I also saved out a straight piece which I pleated and tried cutting with a scalloped edge with my scissors.  I wanted a scallop, but I didn't have faith that I could run it through my border punches (especially after folding it).  The gorgeous, sparkly button is by Bazzill Basics available at Michaels. 

I finished off my card with a sentiment from Papertrey Ink's All About You stamp set.  I had already attached everything to the polka-dot background before picking a sentiment so I was so happy to find the word "you" in this set matched perfectly. 

Thanks for taking a peek and for all the sweet comments that have been left.  :)

A Lori Whitlock Rainbow Hexagon Card

It's my new favorite day of the week!  I have the privilege of getting to share another Lori Whitlock project which is being featured over on her blog today!  Yay!   I also have overcome a fear of mine and put together my ever first video tutorial to go along with my project!  Woo-Hoo!  So are you ready to see what I've made?

I altered Lori's Hexagon Card cutting file to form my card background pattern along with one of my all time favorite paper lines:  Echo Park's Summer Days collection (also designed by Lori).

And here's my video explaining how I achieved that.  Please go easy on me.  I am still learning to experiment with the sound concerning voice levels and minimizing background noise with the cheap microphone I have.  Also after a lot of fussing over saving my video in different formats and ratios, I finally got it to work on you tube (without it being completely fuzzy or having a warped image), but you must click on that little gear shape in the bottom right hand corner of the screen and click either the 720p or 1080p HD option.  For all you veterans out there, I welcome your pointers.  ;)

I hope the video helps you to better understand how I used Lori's file with a twist to create my card.  I think with great basic shapes and a little creativity, you can really get a lot of mileage and different looks from a single cutting file!  :)

Thanks so much for stopping by!  :)

A Creative Scrappers Guest Layout

Happy Friday!!!

This month one of my favorite sketch websites, Creative Scrappers, will be taking a bit of a break to refresh and rejuvenate and as one last celebration they invited several guests to come play for their 250th sketch reveal.  I am so excited to be able to be joining them today! 

Here's a peek at some of the details of my layout...  My full layout can be seen HERE.  :)

I had so much fun being able to take part in the festivities.  Thank you Kristine for inviting me to join you!  I hope you feel rested and inspired soon as we will all miss your talent greatly!  ;)  The silver lining is that in the meantime she plans to keep her past sketches up and available so if you aren't familar with the site make sure to check it out. 

Thanks for stopping by and hope you have a fun-filled weekend!  ;)