Easter Card & Egg Holder!

Hello everyone, Jenny here today!

I have a quick and easy Easter project to show you, I made both the card and the egg holder from 1 sheet of Kraft card, with 1 sheet of 6 x 6 paper as the main decoration!

The card is 10 x 10 cm which was cut from the sheet of Kraft card. The paper is from MME Now & Then Mildred pad. I simply cut a strip from a sheet mounted it onto pale yellow paper and stuck it down the centre of my card blank. I coloured a cute Easter image from Pink Petticoat and mounted it on a die cut yellow scalloped circle which is then stuck to the card on foam pads to give it some dimension. 

I added some Studio Calico wood grain enamel dots to the corners and also in the centre of the flower on the top of the egg. Lastly I used Glossy Accents to make the chicks beak shiny.

Onto the egg holder I cut a piece of Kraft card 27 x 9 cm and then scored 11 cm, 17 cm, 19 cm and 25 cm. I made up a template below if you want to use it! Between the score lines at 19 cm and 25 cm I die cut a circle for my egg to sit into:

 Once folded up you can see you have almost a box shape with a flat back. I decorated the back similar to my card adding a strip of paper with die cut image attached. I also added a strip of paper and some enamel dots to the front of the box.

Here's the template:

I hope you have enjoyed my projects today, you can give them so someone this Easter for a really sweet gift!

Jenny is a busy mum of three who makes lovely cards and other projects and shares them at her blog Dragonllew's Spot!

Cutting Into A Collection!

Hello everyone, Jemma here today!

Are you a photo-first scrapper? Someone who selects a photo and then chooses just the right papers, cardstock and embellishments to showcase it? Or do you see a paper collection for sale and fall in love with the colours, textures and ephemera, hoping that the perfect photos can be located in your to-scrap pile?

I'm generally in the latter category, partly because there are no bricks & mortar scrapbook shops nearby, meaning that I generally shop online, and partly because I have years of photos to scrap with so it's easier to start with stash that I want to play with.

However making that first cut in the first sheet of paper of a kit or collection is always a little tricky:

Which side of a double-sided sheet should I use?

Would those stripes be better cut vertically or horizontally?

What if the next page's photos needed this paper design?

What if I run out of a favourite pattern?

Here's a look at my Seven Step Process for cutting into a collection; specifically what I did with the Teresa Collins' My Name Is Collection.

Step One - Look at the Collection

First of all I emptied out all the papers and thought about the sorts of pages I might use them for. Highlights from the A sides included:

• a whole sheet of monthly 3x4 cards for a year-long project

• lots more 4x6 and 3x4 cards with quotes and phrases or space for journalling

• a sheet of 16 fun kraft polaroid frames

• a sheet of words and phrases that could be cut into strips

Flipping the sheets over, I discovered that there were some versatile background patterns amongst the B sides and realised that I would have to choose which 4x6 or 3x4 cards I definitely wanted to use before cutting up any sheets at all.

Step Two - Reserve "Special Sheets"

I'm not a pocket page scrapper but I do like to scrap monthly summaries each year so my first job was to cut up the sheet of calendar cards for this year's album. I'll use these with scraps from the other papers and some of the left-over 4x6 and 3x4 journalling cards. I'm full of admiration for the designer at Teresa Collins - if I had been using divided page protectors the designs are intact on both sides after cutting.

Step Three - Grab Some Photos

I had two (sets of) photos in mind for these papers by now: a selfie of my son's girlfriend plus kitten, and a set of photos from a visit to a match museum last summer.

Step Four - Extract/Discard Journal Cards

I cut the 'Polaroids' sheet to release my favourites (the B side pattern didn't need any special consideration) and chose 3x4 cards from 'Record' that would work with the photos.  I knew I would never, ever use one of the 4x6 cards from 'Love' ("Don't Forget You Are Awesome") so it was an easy decision to cut it free and use the B side instead.

Polaroids                        Record                           Love

Step Five - Start Cutting, Shuffling, Sticking

I decided that I would never use the A side of 'Journal' and therefore paid it no attention when cutting the sheet up. Some paper & card shuffling took place before I decided to add a block from the 'Words' paper to to align with the back of the 4x6 card, again paying no heed to the B side as it was a uniform pattern:

The second set of photos needed a double layout, plenty of "white" space and non-intrusive patterns.  Along with another 'Polaroid' frame, and a 3x4 card from 'Record', I cut two horizontal strips from 'Noted' to stretch across the entire width of my sheets for continuity. Having used/reserved a number of the 3x4 cards from 'Record' I had to be creative with the remainder of the B side and lay short strips of the graph paper just under the photos. It was a real jigsaw!

At this point I did make a mistake and tried to use strips of the kraft ledger paper from 'Tag's before deciding that I hated it and replacing it with strips of red cardstock. No matter though - I need scraps for my monthly pages!

Step Six - See What's Left

OK so that was a single and a double page done and all but one sheet of paper ('Lucky') cut into ... so I cut it up to stop myself being too precious with it!

Step Seven - Go Back to Step Three & Repeat

Time to take stock and start thinking about the next pages ... my yearly album needs some of those reserved polaroids, journalling cards and scraps, but I'm sure that there's at least one more 12x12 to come ... I'll be back!

Are you tempted to cut into a collection? SJ Crafts stocks a wide range of Collection Kits to play with, check them out!

Jemma x

Jemma blogs at Just Jimjams where she recently celebrate her 400th post, pop over there for more inspiration!

April Challenge - A Spring-Time Mood Board!

Hello and welcome to our April challenge!

Thank you to everyone who took part in our March Challenge, we loved looking at the entries, and we'll announce a few of our favourites and a winner here on the blog soon!

If you haven't seen our challenges so far this year, then here's the "scoop" Each month throughout 2014 we will set a challenge and we'd love it if you would play along. Each month the challenge will vary - sometimes we'll have a sketch, sometimes a colour palette, a photo inspiration or a "recipe" of stash to use or maybe a technique.

At the end of this post there is "linky tool" for you to link up your challenge entry so we can pop along and see and we will feature a few of our favourite projects next month.  
There's even a little prize to be won - more on that further down!
We really hope lots of you will play along!

During April we'd love you to take your ideas from this mood board:

Take ideas from this however you choose. You could: 

Use the colours - Yellow, Green, Peach, White, Cork/Kraft

Use the quote 'Look How They Grow' 

Make a page about flowers or plants

Use some of the elements, eg. feathers and stars on your page 

Use the composition somehow (eg. two lines along the base of your project)

Or anything else you get from the mood board!

The SJ Crafts Design Team have created some projects to show what ideas they got from the mood board...

Louise:

Louise took the composition of the mood board to put together a layout of a (rare) photo of her with her three sons. Her page supplies include the Teresa Collins Family Stories Collection Kit, camera and heart wood veneers, enamel dots, and an Amy Tangerine Badge.

Annie:

Annie was inspired by the mood board to create a pinboard-style page, following the composition and using sticky pearls and enamel dots to "pin" items to the background. To echo the fresh, spring colour palette she used peach/green/yellow/pink - the chalky pastels in the Chalk Studio 2 collection were perfect and contrast beautifully with the Chalk Studio chipboard pieces, frames and stickers. Other elements picked from the mood board added some interest and fun to Annie's page - washi tape, flowers, cork arrows and wood veneer stars. Finally, the quote inspired her journalling!

Jemma:

Jemma was inspired by the 3 columns and the colours from the mood board to create a holiday album page.

Jenny:

Jenny was inspired by the colours and some of the elements on the mood board. She has used kraft card, some pretty yellow striped paper from MME Now & Then Mildred pad. Jenny printed her sentiment onto vellum to look like the title on the mood board, and added some paper flowers and adhesive pearls. 

Jennifer:

Jennifer mainly took inspiration from the colours, using yellow, lime green, and some cork elements (including the American Crafts Cork Alphas and Arrows), though she swapped the coral hue for a bolder orange from the Amy Tangerine Cut & Paste collection. She also used some feathers, along with some Studio Calico Stars and Enamel Dots!

Lisa-Jane:

Taking her inspiration from the colours, gold highlights, the feathers and flowers Lisa-jane created a pretty card for a special girl's birthday. Those enamel dots finish it all off perfectly.

We have a little mystery "Spring themed" prize this month for one entry picked at random from all those who link up! The winner will be announced after the challenge has closed along with a few of our favourites! 

So, will you take up our challenge this month?

Use the linky tool below to add a link to the blog post (or your gallery) with your layout or card and a link back to this post is much appreciated.

You will need to ensure your link is added by the 30th of April (11.59pm).

Enjoy x

Mix It Up - Different Collections!

Hi there! Its Lisa-Jane here today with a confession... I'm addicted to patterned paper!  

At the moment I am rather enamoured with Crate Paper and I can tell you that having a bit of a love affair with one particular company can really expand your options when you are making layouts. Because of the printing processes that the companies use, you'll often find that the colours are very similar across collections. I have an album in the making where I am using entirely October Afternoon products from about 10 different collections because they all go so well together and I am really finding that the same is true for Crate Paper.

Take this layout for example: beachy photos made me reach again for The Pier Collection which I am still loving to bits. But I really wanted to bring out the red in that pretty watery floral paper and the red chevron in the collection was too big for what I had in mind.  Instead I reached for a rather unusual option - Bundled Up, the recent Christmas collection! The little red triangles on the cream background were a perfect foil to the prettier piece and the subtle aquas on the reverse went really well too.

I used a few of the Splash Cut Outs, some Simple Stories Homespun alpha stickers and some American Crafts rose trim and everything came together very quickly.

For this next layout I used The Pier again but this time I wanted to really home in on the textures and colours in the photo.  I instantly reached for that glorious turquoise distressed wood paper 'Found' from Maggie Holmes Flea Market as well as adding in a couple of smaller pieces from the Flea Market 6x6 paper pad. 

 Some of the stickers here are from The Pier and I also managed to use a few more of my Simple Stories Homespun stickers too because the layout was about a family of stones that we hid in a crevice on the beach. I definitely made the most of the alpha sheets that came with Homespun as you'll see from another post coming soon!

This final layout merged The Pier with Maggie Holmes Flea Market AND Bundled Up for a very pretty subtle feel. I mounted the Bundled Up ledger paper onto pink Bazzil cardstock, added a strip of Flea Market washed out woodgrain, topped that with some floral from the Flea Market 6x6 pad and then added a couple of scallop border pieces from The Pier to highlight the aqua tones. 

I die cut the title and made the banner from the 6x6 pad too because the smaller print is perfect for these little areas. This gave me lots of room on the ledger paper to tell my story about a picnic we had there a couple of days after the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers. The photo may be from Christmas but it doesn't stop me scrapping a memory from the past which I don't have a photo of.

Mixing up collections like this gives your layouts a little spark of difference and can really extend the life of those ranges that you might normally only think of for their specific theme. Picking out the colours you want to use and choosing your papers accordingly can really open up new possibilities of coordinating patterns and shows that you really can combine beach and Christmas papers with more generic styles. 

What collections would you use together? We'd love to see!

Bye for now, Lisa-Jane

xx

You can find the Crate Paper products in the S J Crafts Shop by clicking here .... and some of them are REDUCED in the Spring Sale!!

Lisa-Jane blogs lots of scrapbook pages and life stories at her blog Inside My Head - stop by and say hello!