The Rock Cafe with Bo Bunny

Hello everyone - Kim with you here today.

I am TOTALLY into papers that have musical notes or old newspaper clippings printed onto them - why, I really don't know but I just cannot pass them by and have to have them.
Imagine my delight when I was presented this month with a selection of Bo Bunny's Et Cetera line - a paper line after my own heart *swoon*


For the following layout I went to town with an array of circle punches and made good use of the Symphony paper. After distressing the edges with some Chalk Inks from Clearsnap, I stared to randomly place the circles on my background and also raised some of them with the aid of adhesive foam dots.

Cutting various bits and bobs from the Et Cetera Cut outs paper and adding a little bit of punchinella and American Crafts chipboard thickers and my layout was completed.

Now I need to get me some more musical note papers :)

November with Simple Stories

Good day fellow crafters.

Kim here with you again showcasing how fabulous and effortless you can create a quick page with the papers of Simple Stories' Life Documented line.

To create my layout I made use of the following papers:

• 100% Real Life
• For The Record
• Journaling Card Elements #2

In order to get a little dimension onto my layout I adhered a few circle punchies with some adhesive foam pads to the background and also added flowers on top of a journaling strip with adhesive dots.

Xmas Tipple with Simple Stories

Hello there everyone!

I (Kim) would like to share a page with you which I created with the help of the fantastic Simple Stories papers. This manufacturer has been around for some time now and their designs are made in such a way that your pages are put together in a doddle.

This page came together within the matter if 15 minutes and I think the most time I spent on one single thing was to cut the banner from the papers. With the aid  two different sized circle punches, I removed the "date" circle from its outer lines and adhered them separate from each other to the background for added dimension.

Before I started adding the cut outs from the Life Documented, Life is Good and Journaling Card Elements #2 to the cardstock, I added some stamping to the background with one of my favourite Kaisercraft stamps.

To finish the layout off, I doodled a frame around my main cluster of papers and added some flowers and pearls.

Bo Bunny meets Simple Stories

hi..., Kim here with you today to share how easy it can be to mix and match papers from different manufacturers.

This month I have been playing with Bo Bunny's Et Cetera and Simple Stories' Life Documented lines and they are just so perfectly combinable with each other, it's almost spooky!

I started off with an 8.5 x 11 sheet of white cardstock and gave it an aged look by spritzing some "home-made" walnut spray onto it. If you have an empty spray bottle and one of the Distress Ink Reinkers from Ranger Industries, just add some water and a few drops of the reinker to your empty bottle and you have a perfect walnut spray.

I then cut a few pieces of paper from Bo Bunny's Et Cetera Cut Outs and Symphony, as well as Simple Stories' Life Documented and layered this randomly onto the cardstock.
The final touch was a piece of trim onto which I added a sentiment using adhesive foam pads.

And there you have it - a mixed manufacturer layout

October Sketch with Kim and Wendy

Good morning all!

I hope you enjoyed last months sketch as much as we did and we are excited to bring you another one this month.

Sketches are such fun to work with as it really is up to the individual on how they look for inspiration from the blueprint. I generally start out with the intention of doing an exact replica of a sketch but in then end my projects tend to take on a life of their own :)

Without further ado, let's have a look at the October Sketch for you:

And here is my (Kim) example:

Products used:
Papers - Authentique: Original, Foundations Bi-Fold
Stickers - American Crafts: Lullaby, Dymo tape
Embossing Powder - Stampendous
Die Cuts - Spellbinders: Creative Tabs by Donna Salazar Designs

And here is Wendy's take on the sketch,for this page she used the papers from the Christmas collection called Peppermint from Crate Paper.

Got Nuts? - with KI Memories

Good morning and welcome to another post, featuring the wonderful papers from the Love, Elsie product line - which came out at the beginning of 2007.

Today's layout features a combination of old and new, showing that it can be so much fun to breathe some new life into some older papers.

Let's start with the new, as I sprayed a generous helping of various Cosmic Shimmer mists onto a piece of white cardstock, and also onto the flip side of the Forrest Ranger paper. On the screen it looks kind of cream but in reality it is BRIGHT yellow and would have taken the focus away from the photographs.

After the mists dried, I started layering my papers, added the pictures and highlighted one of them with a metal tag frame.

A few fussy cuts from the paper and a random arrangements of pearls, bling, brads and buttons and the layout was finished.

** click on image to enlarge **

So, what do you think? Do these papers really look THAT old? I think they are still as awesome and fun to work with as they were in 2007.

If you have some papers left in you stash from that year, show us what you do with them - we'd love to see!

Products used:

Bazzill Cardstock in white

Love, Elsie - Forrest Ranger

Love Elsie - Claire Gossip

Love, Elsie - Claire Diary

Chipboard buttons - Roxxie

Alphabet Stickers - Claire

Ticket - Jenni Bowlin

Cosmic Shimmer 

Golden Oldies with KI Memories

Today I would like to take you back a few years in time - four, to be exact.

What do you remember of the year 2007?

In sports: Lewis Hamilton made his Formula 1 debut

In music: Rhianna took the Number 1 spot in the UK charts for a total of 10 weeks with her hit Umbrella

In foods: a pint of milk was available for 42p, a loaf of fresh bread for £1.04, a pint of beer for £2.25

And in the crafting world the fun and funky paper collection from KI Memories -  Love, Elsie - had everyone squealing with delight. In 2011 we all get excited about Echo Park and Bella Blvd but it really was Designer Elsie Larson (formerly Elsie Flannigan) who got us all hooked on cute and whimsy.

This month I want all of you to go a rummage through your old stash - dust off those papers from years gone by and see for yourself that they are not really that outdated. The Love, Elsie collection is as fresh looking as it was four years back.

For my layout I mixed and matched papers from the Claire, and Jack & Abby collection and added quite a few of Elsie's adorable chipboard buttons and stickers.

** click on image to enlarge **

What I really loved about the packaging for the chipboard buttons, is the fact that you get a 3.5" x 4.5" piece of cardstock with a lovely grid pattern, which you can re-use - as I did here:

So, are you gonna join me this month in using up your old supplies?

I always find it a good enough reason to go shopping for some new stuff afterwards :)

Products used:

Jack & Abby - Words

Claire - Diary

Claire - Gossip

Chipboard Buttons - Roxxie

Alphabet Stickers - Claire

Mini Alphabet Stickers - Making Memories Tina Alpha

Ticket - Jenni Bowlin

Tag along - with Jillybean Soup

Hello everyone, it is Kim here with you again.

Today I would like to share a quick post on how to create some easy embellishments from your scrap left overs.

** click on each of the images within the post to enlarge their view **

The above three tags were all done using scraps and stickers from the Watermelon Gazpacho line of Jillybean Soup. They can easily be used to adorn layouts, minibooks or cards - just make sure you chose your sentiment stickers accordingly.

Here are now the tags individually for you to view.

Enjoy!

Additional products used:

• Cardstock: Bazzill
• Plastic Flower: American Crafts Greenhouse
• Pens: Uniball Signo, Zig Millenium
• Other: Pins

The London Look - Jillybean Soup

Hello everyone, it is Kim here with you today sharing my recent Jillybean Soup creation.

Whenever I work with a paper collection that at first glance "dictates" as to what kind of projects you should use it for, I tend to rebel against it.

Take the Watermelon Gazpacho Line from Jillybean Soup for example, with its watermelon and swimsuit designs. It pretty much screams "summer", "juicy", "hot" and "fun" and you wouldn't really use it for anything else but Summer/Beach layouts, right?

Wrong.

There is SO much potential in such papers, just think out of the box and embrace the flip-side, which is more often than not of a less prominent design.

Watermelon

Sprig of Mint

Ice Cubes

I decided that the pictures I took of one of the guards at Rosenborg Castle would be complimented perfect by the above papers, wouldn't you agree?

** click on image to enlarge **

And while I was in my "rebel-phase" I thought might as well go really mad and do what it generally seen as a "no-no" these days - to cut the object of the picture out of the photograph...yeah, I know: shocking!

But I LOVE using photographs as embellishments and this way my layout does not look dwarfed by including two photographs.

I simple raised the cut photograph with the help of some Stix2 Adhesive Foam Pads and stuck it on top of the other picture.

Another fun tip to make parts of your title stand out a little bit more from the background is to add some highlights to individual letter with the help of a White Signo Pen.

I hope my post has somehow inspired you to embrace your inner scrapbook rebel and to look for the alternative use of some themed papers.

Additional products used:

• Cardstock: Bazzill
• Stickers: Jillybean Soup, Jenni Bowlin
• Pearls:Other: Doilies, Pearls

Summer Lovin' - with Jillybean Soup

Hello everyone and welcome to another blog post with me, Kim.

Do you sometimes look at some of you new crafting purchases and just sigh because you cannot seem to find the necessary inspiration? It can be frustrating if you are stuck and are just hoping for anything that may trigger your creative process.

Well here is how I usually snap out of it:

Take the papers that you have decided to work with and just lay them out in front of you.

Watermelon

Sprig of Mint

Ice Cubes

More often than not you will find a recurring dominant colour scheme within your papers, in the case of the Watermelon Gazpacho line from Jillybean Soup the blues and greens stuck out to me the most, so I decided to go with blue as my main colour and add a touch of green. To help kickstart my creative juices I went to search for images on the net, via Pinterest and found these two beauties

Browsing for the colour combination "blue and green" and looking at the pictures - which my search returned - got me straight into creative mode and this is the result.

**click on image to enlarge **

Once I started there was no stopping me and I was pleased with myself that I managed to even come up with a little embellishment money saver along the way! See those flowers on the right bottom corner, the ones with the twine and buttons?

You could spend a pretty penny and buy them ready made (which incidentally may leave you with a pack of flowers in a colour you don't really want to use again), or you can grab some of your older stash such as American Crafts Greenhouse Lucy Flowers

and some WRMemory Keepers Bakers Twine in coordinating colours

and just wrap this across the flowers (which are actually scored along each petal, so it makes it super easy to fasten the twine).

Finish it off with a button on top and you have a very unique embellishment.

The other rosette flower on the left bottom corner was created from the cut off-strip of paper which I usually have left over from trimming the 12 x 12 papers to my favoured size of 8.5 x 11.

I love those rosettes, as they are really easy to make. Recently I have created a step-by-step tutorial on my personal blog on how to create the rosettes. Hop on over and have a look if you don't know yet on how to make your own rosette flowers.

Additional products used

• Stickers: Jillyeban Soup - Watermelon Gazpacho Cardstock Stickers
• Mist: Cosmic Shimmer in Twilight Black
• Stamp: Kaisercraft Grid