Finding Inspiration Inside a Cereal Box?

Well, maybe not INSIDE the box, but certainly the design on the box itself can be a jumping point for your creativity! I thought I'd share one of my layouts from the Summer Camp gallery to prove my point... inspiration can be found everywhere!

The whole idea for this layout was born one morning while I was feeding Will his baby food. And while this is a fun milestone in your baby's development... you moms know that after a while feeding them little spoonful by little spoonful becomes quite the chore! Anyways, I was sitting there in between spoonfuls and glanced over at the back of the Cheerios box... and it hit me. THAT would be a great design for a layout! The big heart... filled with photos... oh my. Perfect. And fun! Here's the box with my little model....forgive the diaper showing because mama didn't bother snapping his romper shut after the last change. oops!

How fun is that box? Now, how did I take that box design and transform it into what you see below?

Well, I was going to do the photo filled heart idea. And I think I may at some time. But it just didn't work with this layout obviously. However I used the same idea in cutting out different squares/rectangles of patterned paper to fill in the heart shape. (This was a super fast technique b/c I didn't measure my paper scraps or cut with a trimmer... I just randomly cut squares and rectangles placing them in the heart as I went.) I also let my heart wander off the edges of my paper like the heart on the box. Finally, to make the heart shape more dominant among the mish mash paper scraps inside, I did some simple handstitching around it.

So, the moral of the story... be on the lookout for inspiration everywhere. Scrapbooking magazines are an obvious starting point, but don't overlook non scrapping mag ads, tv commercials, website design, product packaging, etsy, stationary/cards, etc. And if you're really organized you could create a little scrappy notebook to store all these great bits of inspiration. :)

(On this layout I used bits of the main kit, Summer Camp as well as bits from Footpath and Adirondack. And they are still available... so grab them quickly if you can! The Real Estate punch is also in the shop!)

Insider Tips - use stamps for your title

Hello everyone!

I made a special layout for today's insider tips - I couldn't resist using my left over products from my Elk Lake & Adirondack add-ons :) I just LOVED playing with these two add-on kits, not only they match perfectly with my Main Kit, but the colors are exactly what I'm craving for at the moment :)

Here are a layout for my two of my best friends, a special gift for them : Amelie is an excellent cooker and Ben simply ADORES food :)

For this layout I used :

Elk Lake & Adirondack add-ons
Stamps : Tweets, Sewing Machine Set, Months stamps, Noah alphas
Raspberry Maya Mist
Punches : Bubbles border, Double Embossed Dotter Lace border , Photo Labels punch, Royal Butterfly
Foam squares


For my title, I simply combined one of Jenni Bowlin's journaling tags, the Months stamp and Noah alpha stamps to make my title : simply use different fonts, different ink colors, different elements to make a unique and urban background.
Feel free to mount one of the stamps with foam squares in order to add dimension to your layout.



Here I first stamped my label stamps that I got in a previous kit (available soon at the shop) that PERFECTLY matches my Photo Labels punch - could it be even more perfect?! So that means : you need to order that punch and then order the stamp soon available :)


Thank you and I'll share a layout I made inspired by Sasha on Saturday :D
Take care!
c

Insider Tips: "The first few days" layout...

Hey everyone! Susan here (again) today... :)

Wanted to share a little bit extra about one of my layouts in the August Summer Camp gallery: "The first few days"...


As mentioned in yesterday's post, I have a ton of newborn photos of my newest son - Noah. This page showcases just a few, in a grouping that I created BEFORE I put together my layout.

To print smaller sized photos that all "fit" together on the page, I first started with a blank (white) 8x10 @ 300 dpi image in photoshop. I then opened up each image that I wanted to use, and cropped it, then copied and pasted it onto my blank 8x10 image.

If needed, I used the transform tool to adjust the size of each image slightly (holding down the shift key while you 'transform' will avoid skewing your image too much in one direction).


After adding all of my images, I had an 8x10 print made at costco. The white background that I used lended itself to the white frames around my mini-pics (I simply trimmed the images with a little extra white space around each).


I hope seeing how I easily fit so many photos onto this page helps you try something similar on a future project!

:)

ps - The Summer Camp kit is STILL AVAILABLE... grab one while you can!

granny's cupboard

Partly Sunny shipping notices are showing up in inboxes all over the globe - so I thought we'd give Granny's Cupboard a proper send off. There are so many gorgeous pages in the member gallery and I'm going to share a few with you today. While these pages aren't summer themed, you can use the colors, designs and page ideas as a jumping off point to get your summer photos scrapped.


(by Linda Sobolewski)

I love how Linda used the wave of the scalloped envelope as a guide for her titlework - this design would look beautiful with a series of beach pictures. I could also see photos from an ice cream shop on this page - those colors would be perfect!


(by rmoliverio)

I love this multi photo design - it would work well for recapping a week of your summer, or for an activity where you have more than one photo you want to feature. And the topic? Perfect. Summer isn't all sunny days and running through the sprinkler -go ahead and capture the "but mom, I'm booooooooooooooooooooored" and "but it's too HOT to play outside" moments. They might be frustrating now, but I promise you'll look back at them and laugh (at least, that's what I tell myself! ;)


(by Nora Griffin)

How gorgeous is that masked off tree on Nora's background? It's a perfect accent for her page about family, but when I saw it, it reminded me that I need to get some photos of my littlest guy hanging out in the shade with the other little kids at his big brothers' ball games. It's only natural to head for the shade to rest and recharge on hot days - those quiet moments would make a great photo opportunity.


(by astrid)

This page by Astrid just looks like a sunny day, doesn't it?? Her design is perfect to feature that one great summer photo you've been hoarding - the subtle circle created with the clear buttons really brings the focus to the photograph, and ties all of the main elements together.


(by allieh)

I love the simplicity of Allie's design - it really lets her photo shine. This would be a perfect way to scrap any detail shot of summer - dirty toes, scraped knees, popsicle covered faces, wrinkle-y fingers after being in the pool too long.


(by qingmei)

I love the side by side photos here, and how Geralyn uses photographs from the same place at different times. This would work well for a this summer / last summer page - I'd love to do one of my littlest then and now on the swing. It would also work well for first day / last day of school photos, or for showing growth in your garden.


(by reeni)
I adore how this page records a new summer tradition - it has me making a list of our usual summertime traditions so that I can get them onto pages. What sorts of things do you do in the summer that you don't do other times? My boys and I love to take advantage of the lunch specials at the pizza place on our corner - something we can't do during the school year.

There's still a couple days left to make a page for our summer challenge - I hope this has inspired you to get scrapping!

Member Spotlight

For this weeks member spotlight I chose Miss Rita. You can find her on the world wide web on her weblog Here's the Story and on the Studio Calico message board under the pseudonym rmoliverio. I chose Miss Rita from among the many wonderful Studio Calico members because I possess information about her that the rest of you ladies may not know. I know that she is a world class scraplifter!

I know that Miss Rita scraplifts in different ways. Some days she will just take an idea from a layout she sees and make it her own, and other days she will copy most of the layout. Rita chooses not to upload her layouts that she copies exactly, but I was able to obtain a few of them as evidence. I will also share a few of her inspired by layouts and original pieces.

What I love about Miss Rita is that not only is she an amazing artist in her own rite, but she also knows when to successfully use others ideas to quickly create some wonderful layouts with her own photos and journaling.

First though, I asked Miss Rita a few pressing questions:

1. What 3 items can you not live without?

My daily latte, cell phone and DVR. I'm cranky without my morning coffee and I can't remember the last time I watched a show live with commercials! For scrapping, it would be patterned paper, tiny alphas, and my exacto knife. I love using my exacto knife to cut out bits from my favorite patterned papers to use as embellishments.

2. What are your thoughts on scraplifting?

My approach to scraplifting has changed over the years. When I first started scrapbooking, almost all of my pages were lifted from a magazine or sketch book. It was a great way to try a lot of different techniques and styles without the fear of messing up. As I have become more immersed in this hobby, I have come to love the creative process as much as the finished product. There is something about pushing around the papers and embellishments on my desk and coming up with something I love on my own that just makes me happy. I know my creativity ebbs and flows, and scraplifting is a great way to get the creative process flowing when I'm in need of some inspiration. Sometimes it is just a little detail, and sometimes it is the whole layout. When I scrap at home, I am relaxed and it doesn't matter if it takes me one night or a whole week to feel like my page is complete. I tend to scraplift more when I'm scrapping away from home because I have this irrational fear of wasting my precious scrapping time, lol. I love knowing I can pull out my SC kit, my favorite DT layouts from the gallery and get to scrapping with my friends!

3. What's your favorite Studio Calico kit?

That's a toss up between Whodunit and Baker's Dozen, for very different reasons. Whodunit got me excited to create again after the busy holiday season. It seemed like those layouts just fell together perfectly. I love the colors and patterns in that kit! For Baker's Dozen, it was all about the embellishments! I loved the doilies and AC frames and made some of my very favorite layouts with that kit.

4. What are you listening to right now?

I'm old school all the way and mainly listen to the radio. My DH got me a Zune two years ago for Christmas and it still has the original songs he downloaded on it, lol. Wouldn't that playlist make a great scrapbook page? Some of my favorites right now are One Republic and Kings of Leon.

5. Any guilty pleasures?

Watching whole seasons of TV shows on Netflix. I'm addicted to the instant streaming feature and am watching the old seasons of Bones right now, one of my favorite shows. I caught a few episodes that I missed the first time around. I just added Buffy the Vampire Slayer to my instant queue...should that embarrass me?

6. Choose a layout that best represents you as a scrapbooker.

Here are 2 of Rita's CASE (or in her case, CASA(almost)

Rita used Jenn O's "perfect mix" for this gorgeous photo of her little sweetie. I love how she added a few pieces that personalized her work, but her basic layout replicates Jenn's design.

This layout is a CASE of Kelly N's "yard work." I love the addition of the Dear Lizzy chick that matched her title instead of a butterfly.

This layout "Preschool" was inspired by Lisa T's "eight" Rita liked how Lisa used the striped paper and recreated that feel on her own layout.

Rita used a few of the elements of Kimmithy's "The Fair" as inspiration in her "Circus" layout. She loves the way Kimmithy did her title, and felt like it went well with her theme. She also included several other elements from Kimmi's layout. When you look at the next to each other it is obvious that Rita was inspired by "The Fair," but "Circus" could also stand alone.

These last two are some of my favorites from Rita's gallery at Studio Calico.

This layout was for some of the NSD challenges at Studio Calico. I LOVE the color scheme and the white space. The textured cardstock with the bit of inking is fabulous too.

This last one has great colors too! I love the cutie photo of her oldest son, and how she cut out the stamped letters for her title!

Well, I hope you have enjoyed this short journey through Miss Rita's gallery. She has a LOT of layouts posted, so you should go and wander through her layouts. They are pretty awesome!

member spotlight : qingmei

Happy Friday, all!! I'm super excited to sspotlight one of our members today - the lovely and talented Geralyn! She goes by qingmei on the message board and I'm sure you've noticed her beautiful pages in our gallery. Geralyn's work shows a wonderful sense of color and design, and I can't wait to share a little more about her with you all.

1. What 3 items can you not live without?

Studio Calico alpha stamps (particularly the Carter & Storytime alphas).
Label stickers.
Border punches.

2. What's inspiring you right now?

These days, I find a lot of inspiration from browsing through tumblr or design blogs (one of my favorites is http://ohjoy.blogs.com/). I also get inspiration from JCrew and Anthropologie catalogues. If I ever feel like I'm stuck, the amazing DT gallery at SC never fails at inspiring me; I love browsing through the past galleries as well.

3. What's your favorite Studio Calico kit?

Joyland - I love the color palette and the mix of papers, alphas and embellishments is perfect. I find that my layouts with Joyland are coming together pretty quickly because I love the combination of supplies so much.

4. What are you listening to right now?

Hmmm...The Fray, Jack's Mannequin, Joshua Radin, Matt Nathanson, Explosions in the Sky, and Voxtrot. Oh, and songs from Glee!

5. Any guilty pleasures?
CW's The Vampire Diaries. I thought it was a silly show, but my sister got me into it at the beginning of this year and now I find myself anticipating the newest episode each week :)

6. Choose a layout that best represents you as a scrapbooker.

Hmm, I don't really know how to define my 'style', but perhaps this layout:



I picked this layout because it shows that I scrapbook 8.5x11 pages (I'm more comfortable with the smaller size than 12x12). I feel that my layout designs are pretty neat/clean, but I love adding details and embellishments. Oh, and I always handwrite my journaling! :)

Here are a couple more examples of Geralyn's work:


How fun are those fisheye pics?? i love the added patterned paper borders on two of her photos, and titlework here is perfect.


More beautiful titlework on this page - and I absolutely love the misted background and all of the little bits sprinkled around the page.

I hope you enjoyed this inspiration - please stop by Geralyn's gallery for even more gorgeous projects! If you have any questions for her, please ask away - I'm sure she'd be happy to answer.

insider tips : from inspiration to finished page

On Tuesday, I shared a few inspiration pieces with you. Today, I thought I'd show you how I used those ideas on a page.



I started with this piece as my main inspiration. I loved the way the hexagons were scattered on the background, and wanted to use a similar design on my page. I cut one hexagon from the Studio Calico exlcusive paper in Granny's Cupboard, and then used it as a pattern to cut more from other patterned papers from Anthology and Granny's Cupboard.



I played around with the placement of the hexagons and drew in where I wanted to add stitching, stamped journaling lines and some border punched paper. I use this trick a lot - once you stitch and stamp, there's no going back! This gives me a better way to visualize how it will look once I've added those elements. Once I'm happy with the basic design, I usually snap a quick photo. Because if I'm going to add stitching to the background I've got to go back to the beginning.



Yep. Everything came off the kraft cardstock. I added the strips of red at the top and bottom and stitched around my border, then added the graph patterned fabrip and the blue punched paper and did some zigzag stitching. I also stamped the journaling lines in pumice stone down in the bottom corner.



Then I need that photo that I snapped so I remember how to put it all back together! I added a few more hexagons and another fabrip to the page, and the stitched them all in place. The American Crafts glitter brads from Linens and Lace were the perfect accent to my small punched circles. At this point, if at all possible, I walk away from the page for a while. It's almost done, but I know it needs some finishing touches.



The next morning, I added the tab at the top of the photo (it's a sticker from the Anthology Labels - I punched a few hearts in it and backed it with the grey Aperture paper), the layered accent at the bottom right of the photo (that space just felt empty to me - I layered a piece of October Afternoon Thrift Shop paper punched with my Fiskars L Seal of Approval punch with a stickers from October Afternoon and Anthology, and then topped it with chipboard hearts). I also added a couple more small chipboard hearts tucked in with the other elements on the page. I added my journaling and did some stapling with my tiny attacher to finish the page.



I used some of the other ideas from the original inspiration post - the circles within the hexagons and planning my cuts around an element in the patterned paper. These ideas helped make my groupings more interesting than if it had all just been patterned paper.

So that's a little peek into my creative process - let me know if you have any questions! =)

"Leftovers" Challenge!

Hi Everyone!!!

Susan here today to post the challenge of the week... Lisa and I will be hosting the blog this week, and after all the fun of NSD this past weekend, we thought it would be a good idea to do a "second-chance" or "leftovers" type of challenge.

Soooooooooooo.... Our challenge for you is....

Pick one of the NSD Challenges that you didn't have time to do, and do it!

You can see the blog post that links to all of the challenges HERE.

Your "second-chance" challenge can be any of the listed challenges, but just to share what Lisa & I came up with, here is Lisa's "scrap a camera phone pic" challenge layout (which i LOVE!!!)...

(sorry, Lisa's LO is out for publication!!)

And my "favorite SC stamp on a card" challenge card....


So go ahead and choose one of the challenges that you didn't have time to get to, and upload to the SC gallery, and then link your project to THIS BLOG POST by midnight PST on Saturday night...

Can't wait to see everyone's "leftover" challenge projects!!!

-Susan

Insider Tips - dye your tags using Maya Mists!

Hey everyone! :)

You know how much my Maya Mists? Well, I wanted to show you a new way to dye paper tags : I think you might like it! :)

We're going to make a layout and this is what I used for my layout :

• Anthology collection papers (including Aperture, Bouquet, Periodical)
• Anthology stickers
• Anthology Alpha stickers
• Maya Mist (Amethyst mist & Blue Raspberry mist)
• Kraft sheet
• EK Success label punch

Simply choose a cardstock that is the same color as one of your favorite alphas and glue all the letters, words, sentences you want onto your cardstock (you probably want to cut the cardstock first before adhering all the chipboards, otherwise might be a pain to cut afterwards).


Grab your kraft sheet, 2 tags and 2 small zip lock bags.


Spray Maya Mist in each plastic bag (one color per bag).


Open and put one of the tags inside a plastic bag. Use your finger to make the ink move onto the tag.


Use your heat gun to dry each tag.

Once your tag is dry and ready to use, you can also fold it and put it back into the same color bag.

All the wrinkles will get bolder and darker because of the ink. Use your heat gun to dry again.

You can use your tags the way you want. I like to use them as a new way to focuse on the photos.






Extra item I can't live without and that I used for this layout :

• Martha Stewart craft knife
• my favorite journaling pen
  

Enjoy!
Céline