Childish Things!!

Have you seen the gorgeous new collection from Fancy Pants Designs yet?

Childish Things is packed with bright colours and fun designs!

I sent Lisa-Jane the papers, alphas, stickers and buttons to "play with"!! By using some of the bolder designs alongside the plainer "b" sides she has really made the bright designs "work" and I love these layouts.

The title and green gingham border are from the strips paper and LJ used glossy accents on the "dreamer" title to give it shine and dimension. The little blue journalling box is from the cards paper and a few buttons and stickers added to finish.  The heart was collaged with scraps.

Lisa Jane explains ...

One of my favourite papers is the orange woodgrain which marries so wonderfully with the orange and aqua polka dot.  I used my sewing machine to stitch around each block and around the page edge.

Taking inspiration from Glitter Girl's hand-made embellishments and loving the double sided designs on the papers I made my own pin-wheels. I added some brown glitter Thickers, and letter stickers and a few other embellishments from my stash.

For my next page, I knew immediately which story and photo I was going to scrap with these bright and bold papers.  Last Christmas my son got the weekly trophy at football club and the colours and stars on the imagination paper were perfect for this layout.  The alpha stickers in this collection are a good size for titles and there are loads on the sheet with plenty of punctuation marks too.

For the chevrons, I was inspired by this fab tutorial and again used my sewing machine.

I also made a card for my daughter's birthday using the bookshelf paper. I love the bright floral pattern with its bold colours and the cute chipboard piece is from October Afternoon.

This collection may be called Childish Things and it really is great for layouts featuring children of all ages but many of the papers would work equally well for more "grown up" themes.  A lovely, versatile collection that was a real joy to work with.

To see more of LJ's work pop over to her blog here!

Jenni Bowlin Hexagon Love!

Every now and then a new trend hits the scrapbooking world ... one of the latest seems to be hexagons!! So today I would like to hand over to DT member, Louise to share her fab ideas with hexagons!
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Hexagons seem to be everywhere in scrapbooking at the moment so I was pleased when Sarah sent me these lovely Jenni Bowlin vintage journaling tags, Identify, Numbers and Memo stickers.

         

      

To go with the hexagon based stickers I cut out, by hand, lots of hexagons from papers from my Dilly Dally 6" x 6" pad. My journaling is on the Jenni Bowlin vintage tag which you can just see peeping out from under the photo.

So that I could get the placement of the hexagons exactly where I wanted them I first mounted the stickers onto card. This also made it easy to draw around them onto the patterned papers.

Stanley Age 6 - hence the number 6 stickers.

Some of the stickers are specifically for journaling or recording on, you can see in the above photo that I put words on these ones using Glitz white alphas.

Wondering how these hexagons would look on cards I used the same papers and some of the Jenni Bowlin stickers to make up a couple of cards.

Firstly, a card for him...

....and this one for her, using paper scraps from MME's lost and found two collection . The Jenni Bowlin identify sticker that you can just about see under the best wishes flag actually had "Place" written on it so I turned it upside down and placed the flag over the word.

I really enjoyed working with these stickers and as the sticker sheets are so generous I was able to use them on several different layouts and projects.

You can see more hexagons on this layout and also on this mini book!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Monthly Challenge 4 (April/May)

A huge thank you to everyone who entered last month! The prize winner and our Top 3 will be announced shortly!

So, onto challenge No: 4 (April/May)

Please remember to check out the monthly challenge rules on the tab at the top of this blog, before entering. We have tried to keep our rules fairly straightforward and fair to all who join in.

A quick reminder:

Your entry may be a card, scrapbook layout or any other papercraft project.
Please link directly to your post & not a general link to your blog.
You may combine your entry with other challenge(s)

No more than 3 entries per person please.

You must mention and include a link back to the challenge in your entry post.

No back linking please - new work only.

Please ensure your work is your own and not copied.

One random entry will win a prize. The winner must contact me by e mail to receive their prize. A few of our favourites will also be selected to be featured on this blog!

The final (& most important rule) is to have fun!!

Challenge # 4

Our theme this month is: Favourites

Just a few ideas to get you started ... You could create a layout on "My favourite things" "Favourite Place" "Favourite Food".
Use your favourite technique, a favourite photograph or how about a favourite colour? Dig out your favourite stamp or punch!
Have you been hoarding a favourite sheet of paper that is just soo nice you've been saving it ... go find it and USE it!!

Closing date for entries is: 16th May at 1pm.

One random winner will win a "mystery prize" !!!

If you need some more inpiration take a look at the samples from our amazing DT.

If you want to see more of their work, just click on their name to visit their blog.

Louise

Louise .... "I used used my favourite paper (one I've been hoarding for a while!!) and favourite photos."

Supplies include: Jenni Bowlin memo stickers and tags, scraps of patterned paper from MME Lost & Found Two collection.

Lisa-Jane

Lisa-Jane .... "Lots of my favourites here .... paper I had been hoarding from my fave manufacturer October Afternoon. I also used my favourite bunting punch and the photos were taken in one of our favourite places - Beaulieu, and everything is edged with my favourite distress ink pad  - Vintage Photo."

Jennifer

Jennifer .... "I've got a lot of favourites on this page - beach photos are my favourite to scrapbook with, my favourite colour is the turquoise blue shade of the MME woodgrain paper and I've used some favourite techniques of painting, machine stitching, and scattering gems/brads."

Supplies include: MME Kraft Funday Good times paper, MME Miss Caroline favorite madras paper and cute brads, Glitz Teeny teeny alphas, Prima pearls and crystals.

Jenny



Jenny .... "I've gone for favourite stamp Puff Heart Dragon from Whiff of Joy and my favourite colour turquoise!!"

Supplies include: MME lost & found two papers, all edged in Tattered Rose distress ink and lots of crystal stickles.

I hope the DT projects inspire you!

Please remember to link directly to your project and not just your blog and to include a link back to the challenge.

Also, just a quick mention about blogger's word verification thingy ... we do try and visit every entry so it would be helpful if you could consider taking the word verification off your blog (if you have it!) as this would enable us to visit and comment much quicker!! My eyes go funny deciphering the letters!!! Thanks!

If you do not have a blog, please e mail your entry to me at sarah@sjpapercrafts.co.uk and I'll upload it for you.

We look forward to seeing your "favourites"!!!

Simple Recipe - For Uk Scrappers!

Each month over on UK Scrappers a sponsor is setting the Simple Recipe Challenge.

S J Crafts were delighted to be invited to "cook up" the recipe for April!!

The aim of Simple Recipes is to give you a starting point to kick off your creative time. Often, when we sit down to scrap, actually getting started is the first hurdle we come to, so the recipes are designed to give you a helping hand to pick out your papers and get started.

Each month's recipe has a colour scheme and some "added ingredients" to help you put your supplies together. There's samples and sketches too and of course you can take as much or as little from each recipe as you like.

As Spring seems to be here (hopefully!) I came up with a colour combination full of spring colours!

The added ingredients for April are:

To use stickers as part of your design and feature twine, wool or thread!!

April's recipe can be downloaded in full from here - it has lots more ideas for using up stickers and twine, a sketch to work from and shows how my layout came together!!

Supplies: kraft cardstock, MME Miss Caroline papers, Echo Park This & That Chipboard, twine, Cosmo Cricket yellow tiny alpha stickers, Prima pearls, AC thickers letter, brads.

If you do use the recipe to create a layout we'd love to see .... upload your layout to your blog and link us up in the comments so we can stop by!!