Layout of the Week - 'Tis the Season!

I'm so sorry I missed posting this layout as my Layout of the Week for last week!  Forgive me!  I was 'a bit' crazy trying to send out packages, cards & deal with Delaney's class party.  Oh, gee, I can hear so many of you who know me saying, "Shocking, Julie took on too many things at once!"  OK, I admit it, YES I DID!  But it's all over now & I'm on to taking on too many baking projects in one week!  But boy those cookies sure taste good!  Apparently my problem with not knowing how to say NO extends to cookies too!

Well, this layout is one of my favorite recent projects.  It's a photo taken last Christmas of Jake in his Christmas jammies just after he opened his Toy Story phone.  He was SO excited!  Who knew he would later eat off the number sign & I would have it handed to me by the nice lady who works in the nursery at our church.  She just laughed, having a little guy just a month older than Jake.  Then she told me what Delaney had said when she found the rubber key in his mouth, "You know, I told Mommy that the phone says it's for ages 3 and up!"  Out of the mouths of babes....  But still, his expression and those two teeth are priceless.

As far as the layout goes, the wood background is from LUXE (which sadly has closed up shop) and the other papers are new this year from Creative Imaginations.  I used three colors & two sizes of the Mark Richards mosaic tiles on this one, along with two different sets of THICKERS.  I'm always trying to create just one more title out of a set of these and darn if I don't use each set on 3 or 4 layouts!  Just mix & match if you don't have enough to write out your whole title.  And if you're, just a bit psycho, about color like I am, don't be afraid to paint them or just add a coat of glitter glue to them.  On the " 'tis," I used red paint & red glitter.  On the "season," I left them brown & added a coat of red glitter.  The "the" is created from Mrs. Grossman's stickers, an old set I have used many times.  The cute little letters at the bottom are some of my current faves from My Little Shoebox.

And do take a look again at Mr. Jake's darling smile, my next post will be yesterday's visit to Santa and he certainly isn't the one smiling!

Tips

Again, I'm mentioning Costco, but they really do make great large prints, like this 8 x 8 one.  Give them a try for your next printing job.

Don't be afraid to mix your font styles in your titles.  Just stay with one or two bold ones and try to stay with the same color or coat of glitter.

When mixing patterns, try a few large rectangle blocks on your page and round the corners for a unique look.

Supplies

Background paper - LUXE Designs - :( not around anymore

Patterned papers - Creative Imaginations

Tiles - Mark Richards

Titles - THICKERS - American Crafts

            Mrs. Grossman's

            My Little Shoebox

Happy 100th Post to Me!...and boy, did I have fun being creative this week!

As I came to the blog to write this post I realized that it's my 100 Post! YEAH me! (as London Tipton says...if you're forced to watch Disney Channel as much as I am, you'll know just what I'm talking about, if not...count yourself among the lucky ones!) Help me celebrate my 100th post by signing up to be a follower while you're here! I'm hoping to get to 200 followers by the end of the year, so tell all your scrapbooking friends, bloggers or not, to stop by JulieChats. I promise to bring you all the greatest new scrapbooking products & techniques. And of course, if you're looking for more inspiration, be sure to check out my "Get Your Creative On" section, for links to other creative blogs all around the world & the web!

You'll probably notice that I don't have a Layout of the Week this week! Well, it wasn't because I wasn't creative...I did create a Christmas layout, it is quite cute, if I do say so myself. But since I submitted it in Ella Publishing's December cover contest, I can't share it right now! Hopefully I'll be back to tell you that it's going to be on their cover...if not, I'll share it with you soon! I used LUXE's wood design paper for the background and Creative Imaginations' bright new Christmas paper, a couple types of American Crafts' THICKERS, 6 different mosaic tiles from Mark Richards, those cute little black letters that look like they came from my mom's Dymo Labeler, my large corner rounder and an 8 x 8 photo of the cutest boy in the world...you want to see it, don't you! Well, soon you will, one way or the other, did I say to wish me luck! Oh, and be sure to stop by Ella Publishing's blog and website to check out all their great scrapbooking ebooks available for download, they're only $5.99! I just downloaded two and can't wait to share all the great layouts I create with them!

But even though I can't inspire you with my Layout of the Week this week...don't fret! :) I was lucky enough to attend a fun creative workshop put on by EK Success and Petersen Arne this week here in Portland. The event was for scrapbook & craft stores and Twila, the owner of Whimzee's Scrapbook Studio, where I work, invited me! And boy did I have fun! We got to create some wonderful things with products that aren't available in stores yet and some that we just hadn't gotten a chance to try out! After getting our kids off to school & driving across town, we were a little late, but arrived just in time to create THE cutest canvas bags with Jolee's Jewels and the Hotfix tool. The bags, even without all the bling, are so cool. And I mean COOL, my 8 1/2 year old was so sad, as she grabbed the bag & started carrying it around, showing it off to her friend....I had to tell her, "You know, Delaney, that bag is Mommy's!" So when I say cool, I mean it, just check it out for yourself:



Cool...right??? :) Well, I wasn't really so mean, I did tell her that we'd have these pink bags designed by Carolyn Gavin and the other cool turquoise ones in the store soon and she can make her own. The crystals are kind of difficult to see on the first photo, so I did take a second close up photo. But really, the photos don't do the crystals justice! They certainly aren't your run of the mill rhinestones! So if you're looking for a way to put some bling in your life, don't miss the Jolee's Jewels Swarovski crystal collection and be sure to pick up EK's Hotfix tool too! We'll have them at Whizmee's soon, so if you're in the Portland area, stop by the store to see our cool bags!



I promise to share more of the cool projects I made next week! Just let me tell you, we were all VERY excited to find out we could take home the new Martha Stewart Around the Page Punches that we made one of our projects with! I'm ADDICTED to them now, I MUST have them all!

Layout of the Week Bonus - Girlfriends

This week I have two layouts to share with you. Today I'm featuring one of my favorite layouts using the American Crafts Teen collection papers. I created this layout for Delaney, as a way to remember a fun day out with her girlfriends. Some moms & I got together and planned a little surprise for the girls. We took them out for lunch and to see the very first showing of the Hannah Montana movie. The girls were lucky enough to be out of school that Friday and they LOVED getting to see the movie before any of their other friends.

I chose to print this photo in black & white because lunch that day was at Red Robin and their restaurant colors didn't coordinate well with my paper choice. This is one of the reasons I love black & white photos...they go with EVERYTHING!

I love the bold papers of the Teen collection and it was fun to combine them with American Crafts' THICKERS vinyl letters and accents. I framed my photo with Prizm cardstock and added black & white floral papers from LUXE and black rhinestones from Kaisercraft.

I know that I have featured this layout before without the photo. I thought it might be fun to have an extra Layout of the Week this week so I could share the finished product with you.

Enjoy your week!

Layout of the Week

For this week's layout, I chose a variety of items from around the store, some brand new and some older. For my background, I used Class President from American Craft's Teen collection. This paper has a big, bold, colorful diamond pattern. I know many people shy away from this type of paper in their layouts. This is exactly why I wanted to use it. I think boldly patterned papers can bring a great pizazz to your layouts. I look at the bold pattern and choose my favorite colors to highlight in my layout. In this one, I chose the pink, black & white.

After making that decision, I walked around the store looking for papers & embellishments that were pink, black or white. I didn't make it far. In the same paper collection, I chose the white background, pink dot pattern of Pop Quiz, another of the papers from American Craft's Teen collection. I was in need of some black & white accents, so I chose the floral pattern Chick Flick from LUXE's Classic Black Collection. I used both sides of this double sided paper as accents behind the matting of my photo. One side is predominantly black and the other is white.

In addition to showing you how to showcase a bold pattern in your layouts, another goal of mine with this project was to use some embellishments left over from previous projects. I know that everyone is trying to save money right now, so I decided to use some of the THICKERS Vera Accents I had leftover from last week's project. The Vera Accents are vinyl die cut shapes. They are versatile and can be used in so many projects. I used my black accents left over from last week and also opened a pack of the Vera Accents in Taffy for this project. The flowers & flourishes from the Taffy pack help bring a little "girly" to this page. Another leftover on this layout are the letters. I opened this package last Fall, for a Halloween layout. These letters are also THICKERS, they are Daiquiri black vinyl letters. I love how THICKERS give my pages an added dimension, without making them overly thick in my books.

I haven't had a chance to get a print of the photo I'm planning to use on this page, but I wanted to share this layout right now anyway. With so many bright colors, I'm going to print my photo as a 5 x 7 in black & white. The photo is one of Delaney & two of her friends cuddled together in a restaurant booth, just before we headed out to the Hannah Montana movie on opening day. The girls are so excited, I just love the photo. With the bright colors that I often use, black & white photos are my savior. No matter what color people happen to be wearing or what colors are featured in the background of my photos, black & white always brings everything together. People's faces stand out with black & white and everything in the photo seems softer. In this particular photo, the girl's clothing matches my layout perfectly, but the background of a Red Robin restaurant just clashes with all I have going on...so black & white it is!

I only have one photo of Delaney and her friends, so I wanted to really set it off by using three mats behind it. For the mats, I have chosen Passion Fruit cardstock from World Win Papers' Caribbean Colors collection. This paper has no texture, but it appears it has one, the bright pink has a spotty surface, almost as if someone has dropped water on it. Behind the Passion Fruit, I used a Black & a White from World Win's regular selection of cardstock.

For a final touch on this layout, I used Kaisercraft Black Rhinestones. These rhinestones are a bargain at $1 for a pack of 60. I used 4 of the large ones to set off my photo and two smaller ones as the centers of my flowers.

I hope you enjoy this layout and my tips. Please let me know if there are certain techniques that you'd like to learn more about. I can feature them in a future edition of Layout of the Week.

I also plan to use the leftovers from my Taffy THICKERS and Kaisercraft Rhinestones in a future layout. I think it's very important to get your money's worth out of your scrapbooking supplies by using up those leftovers.

Layout of the Week Valentine Party Invitation

Hi there! I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! I promise to post a photo of our cupcake-covered boy soon! He had a great birthday, thanks for all the good wishes!

I'm busy working on some invitation for the scrapbook store today. Here's a photo. This one was my sample. I did end up making the type bold so it was easier to see on the final invites. I just thought you might want to use it as inspiration for a Valentine card or two. The background paper is from LUXE's Trinket collection. I chose 4 different papers from this collection and made invites from each one. I think it's fine to use a variety of paper for your invites. Don't worry about them not all being the same. The recipients usually don't compare their invites anyway, but even if they did, I think they'd love the variety. And using a few different papers keeps it interesting for those of us doing the creating. I tend to get bored making 50 of the exact same invites.

Here are the details, if you want to copy them. The background paper is 4" x 5 1/4". I mounted a 4" x 1" black strip to the background paper with glue stick. I did lay the vellum next to each sheet before gluing the strip down, just to be sure I was adhering it in the correct spot. The vellum overlay is cut 3 3/4" x 5". I used Microsoft Publisher to design the vellum overlay. I created the overlays on an 8 1/2" x 11" page. I created a text box 3 3/4" x 5" with margins of 1/4" in the box. I centered the text both vertically & horizontally and used the font Gaston (the extended version). I thought Gaston looked great with the black lines of the Trinket papers. I copied and pasted the text box three times, so I had a total of four boxes on my page. I printed the pages on my ink jet printer. I cut all my papers on a large Fiskars rotary blade cutter. It makes a nice clean cut without the "fuzzy" edges you can get from smaller cutters.

I laid my vellum on top of my background paper with black strip attached. I placed 2 1/2" pieces of dark pink ribbon and black sparkly ribbon over the hole. Next, I used a Making Memories paper piercing tool to create a hole directly in the center of the black strip. For the final touch, I placed a heart shaped brad in the hole. I loved the shape of some bronze brads I found in the bulk embellishment section of the store. But the color wasn't my favorite, so I took a cardboard box and pushed all the brads I needed into it in rows. Then I sprayed them all black with a satin finish black spray paint. For just a little extra effort, I had perfectly matching embellishments.

To hold everything in place, I used a couple of mini-glue dots under the vellum. I didn't want my vellum & ribbon to spin around the brad.

I used black envelopes for these invites. A silver pen was perfect for writing the recipients' names and return address.

I hope you try this technique for creating your next invitations. It's a simple, cost-effective way to create something very personal for your friends & family. Stop by your local scrapbook store to find the perfect papers, ribbon and any advice you need. If you're in the Portland area, stop by Whimzee's Scrapbook Studio, we'd love to help you find everything you need for your next event. Check out our blog for more creative ideas.