It's Celine here with your new Sunday Sketch, based on a beautiful layout from Davinie's October Field Guide gallery...
I took the sketch and created a 8.5x11 layout using the new Studio Calico stamps...
Supplies: Papers ( Studio Calico Memoir Wallpaper/Heirloom); Stamps (My Happy/You are the Best); Veener Asterisks; Die Cut Tags Autumn Press; Chipboard alpha cream; 6x12 book plate
Leave a link to your layout here by Monday, October 17 for a chance to win a SC GC! Good luck!
Sometimes when I’m crafting I get tired of following the traditional rules. Sometimes I have a hard time with the white space on my layout, or feel there’s a lack in texture, or have a story I’m trying to tell through the products I am using, and in order to do so, I need to use products in a different way.
Titles are normally in a straight line and in a distinct place to set the stage for the photo and the moment that was captured. But sometimes coming up with the wording is difficult, or it feels like the placement of a title will take away from the design of the rest of the layout. It’s time like these when thinking of the title as a shape, an embellishment, is in order.
A fun thing I like to do with my titles is to curve them into circles. To me it makes things more interesting. It also often helps take up space in order to fit all the letters. Making a clean, pretty circle for a title is important to me. I just like the clean look. This is what I do in order to capture that:
Using a punch, a plate, a CD, or other embellishment as a guide, I determine the placement of my title on the layout, and place that object in the general area to see if it’ll work. Then it’s just a matter of placing the letters around it. The key is to layer your letters perpendicular to the edge of the guide. I usually lightly press the letters until I have them all lined out, and then adjust them as needed to better fit the circle and for a more even placement.
When you remove the guide, it’s a perfect circle, a title, and a great embellishment.
This card was made with the September kit, Glee Club.
The challenge for you this week is to create a layout or project incorporating a circular title. Here’s a closeup to a layout I created for the Glee Club gallery using a circle as part of my title on a layout.
As always, a gift card is up for grabs. The shop is going to be full of delicious goodies this month, as always, so this prize is worth going for! Have a great week! I look forward to checking out what you come up with.
July’s main kit, Mind the Gap, comes with a main kit stamp that looks like an open circle border. I think this is my favorite Studio Calico stamp to date, probably because it reminds me of a quilt pattern.
Inspired by this stamp, I recreated this image with paper for one of my layouts, and for an insider tip today, wanted to share this easy process with a quick tutorial for you.
First, start by punching several circles out of double sided patterned paper. I used the Picnic pattern from the Countryside Collection.
After punching your circles, it’s just a matter of folding over a corner at an equal distance on both sides, and layering them together. Remember, the outside circle only needs to be folded once.
After you have created all of your shapes, adhere the back of them on your layout. In the past I have sewed these down, but it makes a fun alternative to the ruffle or floral border, so this time, I let the flaps flip up.
Layer a few rows together, and you can come up with a fun design, this one in honor of Independence Day in the US. I’m out of veneer stars, so went with white cardstock and a Fiskars punch. Kraft cardstock is a standard base, trimmed for a card size of 4.25 x 5.5”. Wouldn’t it be great if I had kraft colored star stickers to use for this card? Maybe I could Huey them. Maybe not?
I hope you’ll give this quick and easy technique a try!
With Paper Moon, the June kit, I created a couple of layouts for my gallery using a new punch we have in the shop, the Everywhere punch from Fiskars.
I have long wanted a punch that could create a shape in the middle of a 12x12 layout exactly where I wanted to be, and this punch does it. I’m so happy with it! I currently have the square and the circle punches, with the scallop circle on the way to my house with the next kit. I can’t wait to play with it.
One of the layouts in my gallery this month was called “Spring Portrait” and featured a super cute 5 year old as well as a grid pattern made with this punch set. I wanted to share a bit on how I did that.
First, I wanted my grid to sit inside the 12x12 layout, so I trimmed a piece of kraft cardstock to 10x10. To make the grid pattern, I made a mark across the top and bottom every two inches, creating 5 columns, and then turned the layout and did the same on the perpendicular, creating a grid pattern.
After that, it was time to break out my punch. The starter set comes with the square punch. There’s the punch base, and then a clear piece with a guide, that is magnetic which made it easy to get the punch base lined up in the perfect space without possible shifting. I set the punch inside each square, lined up the grid until it looked centered, and then punched away.
Repeat inside every box, and you will have created a fun grid piece that works as a fun embellishment for your pages. I layered paper underneath and on top of this grid pattern for this design, and plan to use it again. I had fun with it, and it makes for a great addition to my growing basket of punches.
When I first saw Sasha's layout, I was immediately drawn to her clever use of white space. I determined it a great opportunity to create a layout with a lot of journaling on it, and decided to tell a story I needed to document about a balloon that got away and "miraculously" returned to our house on Payton's 5th birthday.
I used the Partly Sunny kit for this layout. The theme was appropriate, and I really wanted to use that cloud paper. This kit is in bits now, so for my title I trimmed a "K" to make an "l" and used a button for an extra "O". The tiny Basic Grey alphas make a great addition to the title and work well against the sketch.
I challenge you to go after this sketch and do something that needs a lot of journaling to tell the story. Leave a link to your layout in the SC gallery here by Monday, June 6th for your chance to win a SC gift card!
One of the embellishments in the recent Lawn Party kit were flag picks which were a fun alternative to the usual options. As I used them on my layout, I’d run out of my favorite style or color and have to be selective in how I utilized them in my work. In doing so I thought it would be fun to simply make my own, so I wanted to share how easy that is to do with a quick tutorial.
Supplies:
1 x 3.5” pieces of patterned paper
Toothpicks
Start by trimming your favorite patterned papers to approximately 1 x 3.5 inches. After that, simply fold that piece of paper in half.
After doing that it’s time to have fun with your flag’s shape. With a large scallop punch, I was able to create two different types of flags, one with a large rounded shape, and the other with a pendant shape.
After you have trimmed your shape, it’s a matter of inserting the toothpick. Because these picks were going to be adhered to a layout, I just ran my tape runner on the inside of the paper, stick my toothpick in the center at the crease, and fold the paper over.
To make the traditional flag shape, make a mark at ½ inches and then trim from that point to the top corner, and bottom corner of your flag, at the crease.
The other flag shapes were made by trimming in a diagonal. I created flags trimming from the upper left to the lower right, and the opposite, from the lower left to the upper right side of my folded shape. There are a lot of different border punches out there for a lot of different flag ideas.
Below is a simple card with these flags using the current kit, Paper Moon, which will be perfect for Father’s Day.
I hope you’ll give handmade flag picks a try. I can’t wait to see what you create!
Love you Mom by Davinie Fiero
(supply list : cardstock - vanilla ; patterned paper - State Fair Midway, Countryside Wildflower, Countryside Barn Swallow ; stickers - yellow labels, pink Addy alphabet ; chipboard - Tan chipboard alpha ; other - circle punch)
1. Trim card base to the standard size (4.25 x 5.5 inches)
2. Trim patterned paper 4 x 5.
3. Trim floral patterned paper 4 x 1.5 inches high.
4. Using a border punch, trim two 4 inch wide strips from a third pattern.
5. Layer prints and adhere. Stitch around the edges.
6. Use a circle punch to trim extra images from the patterned paper. Use pop dots and adhere.
7. Layer label sticker at top and adhere.
8. Apply sentiment stickers.
We'd love to see your cards based on this make & take - link them here by 5/13 for a chance to win a $5 gift card! We'll post a winner on 5/14.
I’m so excited to be co-hosting with Davinie a challenge for you all here for NSD!
I love to add a bit of stitching to my projects. I think it adds a perfect finishing touch to a project, or an added dimensional value as well.
For my projects, I cut out some circles and placed them on cardstock and sprayed with Mister Huey's Bonny Blue and lemonade, then used the scallop attachment around the circles. I also wanted to add a bit more to the design, so I used the blanket attachment attaching the 2 pattern papers together. I find it fun to use the stitch tool with out stitching, you will see how I did this on the inside of the circle.
(Supply list- Cardstock: More Vanilla; Papers: Studio Calico State Fair-Best in Show and Guess your Weight; Mister Huey’s: Lemonade and Bonny Blue; Sew Easy Tool and heads- Scallop, Blanket and straight stitch)
For the past few months, a fun addition to some of the Studio Calico kits has been a 4x6 background stamp with various patterns including ledger, alphas, polkadots, herringbone, etc. I have loved them and added them to my stash but admit to being a little perplexed with what to do with them.
Enter the Fiero birthday party and holiday gift season, which runs Christmas - March, really. I have been overwhelmed with the need to send thank you cards to family and friends, but the thought of making 30 cards has been quite daunting.
A while back I ordered card blanks and envelopes to help make the process simple. However, when they arrived, I realized that great deal I had made on my card bases was actually for announcement style cards, not regular 4.25 x 5.5 cards that open up. You don't open an announcement. It's just front and back. At first I was quite bummed, because I didn't want to pay to ship these back, but then I realized in the end I was quite brilliant. You don't often display thank you cards, especially thank you cards for a gift or a jumpathon donation. But they are a polite gesture and one that small children should often partake in when they've just finished hassling grandma for $5 to get to the "free prize" level on the fundraiser.
Supplies: Stamps - Studio Calico Ledger stamp, Cardstock - AC Vanilla cardstock, Ink - JBS Chicken Feed ink, JBS Chewing Gum ink, JBS Stick Candy ink
The use of a background stamp on an announcement style card makes thank you cards the easiest things to create and send. Simply ink and stamp the image, add a sentiment, write on the back, and slip it in an envelope.
It's cost effective too. You can create 6 thank you cards on one 12x12 piece of paper by trimming two rows of 4x6 cards. My sentiment was also cost effective in that I printed it out on my computer and used a fun label punch.
My challenge to you this week is to use those background stamps. Create a bunch of simple thank you cards with them. Use them for a photo mat on your layout. I want to see the fun 4x6 stamps put to use.
My favorite piece of October Afternoon paper allows for a lot of fun design ideas. I used circle punches and patterned papers to create some fun dimension to my layout, adding the large cloud punch for fun. One of the great things about a shaped punch is that you can use the negative part of the image as well as the shape you have punched out. The pink circle has been punched with the cloud punch, and then I took a blue cloud trimmed from another circle and layered it with a pop dot and placed it right over that negative spot in the pink circle. The cloud fits perfectly and adds fun texture and dimension to that spot.
Because this isn't a new kit and I have been working with it, when it came to my title, I was short on an E. This worked perfectly, however, in that my title included a number word, so an easy fix is to add the number 3 which also helps with the story I was trying to tell.
You can't have a Spring color palette without butterflies either, so I used my Classic butterfly punch to bring butterflies to my layout. We've had several different butterfly punches in the shop and recently added a dragonfly. Keep an eye out for restocking of the bugs for those spring projects. The large and the extra large cloud punches are currently in stock.
Another product I wanted to give a quick shout out to was the fabulous Martha Stewart glue pen. If you are a repositioner like me this is a perfect tool to use if you finally find your placement but don't want your paper to shift. It is also the perfect adhesive for attaching skinny journaling lines like I used for my layout.
This layout was made entirely with the main kit from Partly Sunny, with a few punches from the shop. I also used new Mister Huey's in Bonny Blue and a touch of Lemonade on my background cardstock, which is another reason to justify hoarding kits. There is always new stuff coming out to add to them!
Napa Valley has a gorgeous color palette for fall photos (and aren't fall magazine calls happening now/soon? ??) It has a rich orange color palette, and I love what Stephanie did with the Sassafras die cut month cards from this kit. P.S. DID YOU SEE THE MAIN KIT ALPHA stamp????? How on earth is this still available? That alpha can be used on every layout.
Back 40 is another kit still available. Hello? Sassafras Indie Girl and my favorite sticker alphas? Maya Road chipboard frames? This is another great kit for spring/summer photos.
Summer Camp. Journaling stamp. JOURNALING STAMP. CUTE AC thickers. Sassafras whimsies and a fun color
Have a great weekend! While you are at it, for my American friends.... hit up a Girl Scout for cookies. They only have another week or so to get you those Samoa's and Thin Mints, and Girl Scouts is such a great organization for nurturing strong, independent, confident, and empowered girls who will eventually be leaders, and mothers someday.
