Studio Calico

Insider Tips: Nicole Samuels

According to Mae West, "Too much of a good thing is....wonderful."  And in the case of certain scrapping supplies, such as SC's new wood veneer shapes, I'd have to agree with her!  I often take cool embellishments and use a whole bunch of them on one page.  It can make a strong visual statement on your layout.  So, for this page I tore open a pack of the wood veneer frames and went to town!  Did you know the packs come with two sheets?!  That wiped away any momentary guilt I felt about using more than one on a single layout.  Anyways, first I needed to come up with my overall design.  I decided to use 4 frames nested inside each other.

Then I pulled out the photos I had printed to use and realized they weren't going to work at the printed size.  Too big for the frames I selected.

So, back to photoshop to resize and reprint.  I just measured the inside opening of the frames I wanted to fill and plugged that into the width value on image size.  I should have done this before my first printing! 
 
Once I had the photos figured out and cut down to fit the right frames, I pulled out a pack of the Wood Veneer Stars and the Stars Ledger Rub-ons.  I love that the size of the star rub-ons coordinates so well with the sizes of the veneer.  Brilliant!  And they go on to the veneer like butter!

The last little tidbit I'll share is about Mister Huey's.  I won't lie... I am a little afraid of misting.  I've admitted that before.  I mean, what if I mess it up!  But one misting technique I've come to LOVE is using mist to color something like chipboard, alphas, or in this case, veneer.  I used some of the Elementary colors of Mister Huey's to create custom letters for my title.  It worked fabulously and gives the title the pop I wanted.  Here's my completed page...

Supplies:  FabRips - Elementary;  Stickers - Elementary; Paper - Anthology Periodical; Wood Veneer - Stars, Frames, Alphabet; Rub-Ons - Star Graph; Mister Huey's -  Applejack, Schoolhouse, and Atmosphere

Okay, THIS is my final insider tip.  The fabRIPS are great for doing print journaling on.  Just print out what you want on a normal piece of paper.  Adhere the fabRIP over top of the printed section.  Re-run it through your printed and viola... perfect!  And since it's not overly sticky adhesive, you can pull it right off the plain paper and stick in right on your page. 
 
Hope to see you using "too much" of something wonderful some time soon! 

Hi there Studio Calico friends!  I have the pleasure to share some fun and creative ideas on how to use Mister Huey AppleJack mist from Nicole Samuels, Nicole Harper, and myself. 
I wanted to see all the different ways I could use this product and am very happy to report that Mister Huey makes an awesome background on homemade shrinky dinks! 
Supplies: Mist - Mister Huey Applejack, Stamps - Mini Doily, Cherries Mini, Mini Star, Ink - StazOn

These little wine charms are a perfect gift that I will be sharing with my friends this Christmas.  I purchased some plain shrinky dink sheets and used my scallop circle punch to create the charm. Then I stamped the image on first and after it dried I sprayed Mister Huey AppleJack over the top.
Punch a hole in them for the wire, place 2" apart onto a foil lined cookie sheet, and bake in oven  This is fun to do with little ones too, they love watching the shrinking process.  It only takes about 30 seconds and they are done!

Nicole Samuels came up with a fabulous layout using Mister Huey Applejack and chipboard masking. Supplies:  Patterned papers - Harper's Rule, Penmanship, Nibbles; Mist - Mister Huey Applejack; Stickers - Elementary; Chipboard - misc. chipboard letters as masks and Drafting Table kit; Punch - Postage Stamp border punch; Fabrips - Documentary

Nicole used leftover mismatched chipboard letters as masks on the Penmanship paper to make the large title.  For the banner she used some fabrips and twine.  Just cut off a little strip of the fabrip and folded in half over the twine to make a "flag".  The B side of Harper's Rule is the perfect place for her son to write down his teacher's name, favorite part of the school day, new friends, etc.  Nicole loves that she will have her son's 2nd grade "stats" in his own handwriting on the page. Isn't that so clever and fun?
Look at how Nik H masked a cool heart image on her Layout title background and layered it into her creations as an embellished background. Love this! Supplies: Patterned paper - Blue Ledger Die Cut,  Journaling tag - Elementary; Stickers - Elementary; Rub-ons - Orange Clocks

Thanks for stopping by and seeing some fun and new ways to use your Mister Huey Applejack. I really love how these mists work on other products, not just paper. You can spray plastic, clay, transparency, you name it... try it!

As soon as I saw the My Mind's Eye Alphabet Soup cards I knew I wanted to use them in some sort of decor piece for my 11 month old's room.  I love the colors of the cards and the designs are adorable.  Plus, they match the theme/color of his room perfectly!  I wasn't sure quite what I wanted to do though... spell out his name with the letters, hang them on a little "clothesline" on the wall, frame them individually?  But finally I decide the easiest and least expensive way to display them would be in a poster frame.  I happened to find this frame at my local Target and it was actually marked down on clearance to $10.49.  It's a 16x20 brown wood frame.  My next issue was what to use as a background in the frame.  Cardstock or patterned paper obviously aren't large enough.  And I didn't want to spend the extra money on getting the piece matted or anything.  So, I went to my local fabric store and got some white (sort of off white) muslin.  It was $3.99/yd and I got 1/2 a yard just to be safe.  Although really you need less than that...1/4yard. 
 
Once I had everything ready I started to get an idea of how to organize the cards so that they all would fit in the 16x20 space.  This was trial and error and I used the paper insert that came in the frame as a guide.  Here's my layout...
I put 5 cards in each row with 5 rows total.  I left some spaces in between certain cards knowing that I'll fill some of those in later with patterned paper and border stickers.  And I had to show only a sliver of the "Q" card because I didn't have enough space for all 26 cards otherwise!  But I think it works out okay....unless your child's name is Quinn or something.  In that case you should hide a different letter!  ;)
 
Next I worked on attaching the muslin to the frame back.  I'm not sure what the technical name of that piece that fits in the back of the frame to hold the photo in place is... but I'm just going to call it the frame back.  It's the piece with the hangers on it and everything.  But I thought it would work just fine as a "base" for my muslin.  I laid the muslin down on a flat surface, laid the frame back down on top of it, pulled the muslin edges tight around the frame back and started glueing.  I used Alene's Quick Dry Tacky Glue and it worked just fine.  Just put a line of glue along the edge of the frame back and pull the muslin around to glue down.  I had to use some binder clips to hold it in place and keep it all taut while it dried.  (NOTE:  I tried to first glue the muslin right to the other side of the frame back, but the glue showed through and looked bad, so I tore that muslin off and started again this way.  Just in case you think that might work... I want to save you some muslin!)

After the glue dried, I just trimmed the muslin edges down a bit and then started glueing my cards right onto the muslin front in the predetermined order.  Again, I used the tacky glue for this and it was perfect.  Then, I added bits of patterned paper from Drafting Table and some border stickers from En Plein Air to some of the "blank" spots in between cards.  I left some "blanks" open to avoid it being too cluttered looking.

Finally, since the pack of alphabet cards comes with 2 of each design in it, I decided to cut out the images from the duplicate cards and use pop dots to layer them on top of the same image.  This gives it some dimension.
Supplies:  patterned paper - Drafting Table; border stickers: En Plein Air; alphabet cards: My Mind's Eye Alphabet Soup; muslin; 16x20 frame; tacky glue; and adhesive foam

I decided to leave the glass off the front of my frame because I think the colors look nicer with out it.  But if you like the glass on, it will certainly still fit.  And viola... a cheap and easy wall decor item that's educational to boot!  How fun!