If you’re like me, you end a scrapping session with tons of little bits and pieces spread all over the place.

Cards are an easy way to make something with all that stuff!  I’ve got a simple one and a slightly more complicated one to share today!

STEP ONE: Fold a strip of cardstock in half to create your card.

STEP TWO: Create a mini collage at the top and bottom edge of the card.

The pink brackety shape is a mask I used to create the journaling card on this layout:

I simply cut the mask in half (well, more like 2/3 and 1/3) to use as the base of my mini collages.

I had one stick pen left over, so I figured I’d just use it up.  I pierced only the mask layer (not the card base) with it.  I decided to use the large rhinestone in order to balance out the centered butterfly at the top of the card.

STEP THREE: Paint the sentiment across the center of the card.

I used watercolors.  You could certainly use up leftover alphas (think about a cool ransom style sentiment!) if you’d rather.

STEP FOUR: Add a border around the card to finish it off.

I often find that when something looks or feels unfinished, a border helps to unify it.  I pulled in the red of the stick pin and continued the “hand painted” look with a border of watercolor paint dashes.  Notice that I went over the top of the mini collages.  This helps to ground them.

And here’s the finished card:

And now for a slightly more complicated card….

STEP ONE: Fold a scrap of cardstock in half to create your card base.

The piece of paper I started with was 10″ long by 7″ tall.

STEP TWO: Use a dry brush to add some color to the front of the card.

STEP THREE: Lay down a collection of paper scraps in a basic rectangle formation.

You’ve already done the hard work of coordinating all the papers (or buying a kit where that’s done for you), so you know all the little scrips and scraps will go together.  Notice that I haven’t adhered any of the scraps yet.  I’ve laid them down to be “auditioned.”  And notice too that I cut around the triangles on the scrap on the right edge for a more lively look.  You could also use a border punch.

STEP FOUR: Build up mini collages.

Think of each scrap as an individual canvas for decoration.  I added paper scraps, rhinestones, flowers, sticker scraps, etc.

The flag coming out of the house was a piece of a border sticker that I cut off when I made this layout:

You can see that the house and the bird were also extra bits I cut for the layout above, but didn’t end up using.  Nothing goes to waste!

I also added tiny details like this popped up triangle:

STEP FIVE: Adhere everything.  But think outside the box.  Here I stapled the bits and pieces together:

Note on the finished card below that I stapled them together and then adhered the entire thing to the front of the card.

This way the staples don’t show on the inside of the card.  You could stitch parts down or use brads or something else creative!  Here’s what it looks like with everything adhered:

STEP SIX: Add the sentiment.  I drew my sentiment on the leftover selvedge edge from a piece of patterned paper.

I cut it out and erased the pencil lines.

All that is left is to adhere the sentiment to the card and voila!  My card is done:

I hope you feel inspired to use up the scrips and scraps on your table to create some cute collaged cards!

xo, Julie

eta : congrats beth perry!! send me your address and i’ll get the handmaiden kit out asap. :)

Beth Perry Says:
March 9th, 2010 at 11:13 am
I have always loved Leila’s work!

A month ago we sent our sweet friend Leila Bentahar {aka Lilibee Studio} our October 2009 main kit Handmaiden to play with and she is hosting a tutorial all week on her blog showing how she created the project above using the kit. Head on over to see her amazing work & style and make sure you check back at her site this week as we also sent her an additional Handmaiden kit to giveaway to her international readers.

And, for you American girls we are also giving away a Handmaiden October kit today. Just comment by tonight at 9pm pacific and we’ll draw a name to win the October main kit. Please note todays giveaway is for US deliveries only, for our International friends please check back at Leila’s site for your opportunity to win.

Happy Tuesday!

For my very first post {woohoo} I have put together a super basic tutorial for those of you who would like to give digital scrapbooking a go. For those of you who already have a grasp of the basics, you may want to scroll down to a little inspiration towards the end.

Create the base of your layout in Photoshop by opening a new document of 3600 x 3600px with the resolution at 300.

Locate paper 9 from the Honey Church kit and open this in Photoshop. With your move tool selected, hold down the shift key and drag the paper over to your new document.

TIP: By holding down the shift button whilst dragging any paper or element to another document, places the layer in the center.

Open your second paper which will be paper 7 from the same kit and resize the paper to 3480 x 3480px by right clicking on the top of the document and selecting image size. With your move tool still selected, hold down the shift key and drag the paper over to your new document.

Now open the Honey Church overlay from the kit and resize it to 3485 x 3485px as we did in the previous step. Holding down the shift key again, drag the overlay over to your new document. Now let’s zoom into your document at 100% so we can get a closer look.

As you can see in the above screen shot, the overlay needs to be moved over to the right to line up with the second paper. Use your arrow keys on your keyboard to nudge your overlay to the right of your document to align the overlay with the edge of the top paper.

Let’s add some dimension to the second paper by giving it a drop shadow. Go to your layers palette and double click on layer 3 to bring up the layer style dialog box. As you can see below in the screen shot, I have given you the sizes and color I have used for my drop shadow for the purpose of this tutorial but feel free to play with the settings to achieve a drop shadow to your liking.

This concludes the beginner tutorial on creating a basic digital background. Feel free to add some photos or more digital embellishments from the Honey Church kit to finsh a complete digital layout.

I am going to take this a step further by using more Kenner Road digital goodies such as the flash frames and the bingo cards to customize a frame for my photo to print out and turn this digital background into a hybrid layout. I simply printed out the digital background on a large format printer as well as my layered frame and other pieces I created in Photoshop. I added some Kenner Road paper kit products from Madeleine (February main kit) and Milk & Honey (February embellishment kit) to finish off my layout.

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Ready to see some more digital eye candy using Kenner Road goodies? Click on the hearts to take a closer look!

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Do you need one more reason why you should give digital scrapping a go? One of the best parts about digital scrapbooking is that if you make a mistake in Photoshop, all you have to do is hit the step backward (Alt+Ctrl+Z) button and the mistake is no more!  Don’t be afraid to play around with your goodies, you may surprise yourself with what you come up with. To show you how versatile the Kenner Road digital goodies can be, I want to share with you my blog banner I created for my blog make over. I simply extracted bits and pieces from all of the products and mixed them together in loads of layers. Seriously, you can’t go wrong!

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Click on the heart under my blog banner above to have a closer look at how I decorated my blog with all this divine digital vintage goodness. I hope I have tempted you to give digital scrapping a try, it really is so much fun {and without the mess} Don’t forget, if you have any questions or you want to share what you have created, please leave a comment and link us up we would love to see!

Have a creative day and try something new!

Diana

xo

I realized something as I was sending out a few
Christmas cards over the holidays.
I need a better system for keeping up with addresses.
My tear-off-the-return-address-labels-and-store-them-in-an-envelope method
is not very efficient.

And the store-the-addresses-in-your-cell-phone method
is just too high-tech for me.
So I decided to make my own address book!
And I will show you how I did it (and it is so easy!) using the main December kit with a couple of pieces from December’s embellishment kit…

****
SORRY IT IS NOT HERE ANYMORE
IT IS BEING PUBLISHED
****

Supplies needed:
Main kit – Seven Gables
My Minds Eye – Life Stories journaling sheet
My Minds Eye – white peonies
My Minds Eye – antique flowers
My Mind’s Eye – Life Stories accessories sheet
Bazzill – Kraft
Bazzill – Glass Slipper Bling
7gypsies – Nest sticker sheet
American Crafts – Regards {in honey} Thickers alphabet
1960s antique gold seam binding {1 yard}
1960s walnut seam binding {1 yard}
1960s coconut seam binding {1 yard}

 Embellishment kit – Ramble
7gypsies – gypsy ephemera 

Misc. supplies:
Small red rub-ons (Jenni Bowlin Old School Tiny Alpha Rub-ons are used in example)
Red ribbon
2 binder rings
Crop-a-dile or good hole punch
Corner rounder
½ inch circle punch
Stapler

 Use 7gyspies Ephemera as the front and back covers of your book. The “Parcel Post” & ”American Almanac” cards are used here. Please note: both Ephemera cards measure 4 inches wide. The “Parcel Post” card is 5 inches tall and the “American Almanac” card is 6 inches tall.

1. For the pages of the book, I used a combination of the Kraft & Glass Slipper bling cardstocks and My Mind’s Eye patterned papers. All of the pages are cut so that they are slightly less than 4 inches wide. Then the first half of the pages are 4.5 inches tall and the second half of the pages are 5.25 inches tall. This allows the pages of the book to be a little staggered and it is easier to see the tabs.
2. Use a corner rounder to round the bottom corners of each page.
3. To make the tabs, punch circles and then adhere or staple them to the bottom of the pages. Use alphabet rub-ons on the circle punches to create the sections of your book. There are a total of 16 pages here and the sections are divided like this: A, B, C-D, E-F, G-H, I-J-K, L, M-N, O-P, Q-R, S, T, U-V, W-X, Y-Z, and a blank page.
4. Use a hole punch or Crop-a-dile to punch 2 holes in the top of the book. Use binder rings to keep it all together.

   

5. Embellish one of the binder rings with ribbon & vintage seam binding. Also hang a tag (from the MME Life Stories accessories sheet) from the binder ring & use the Thickers to add one of your initials.

   

6. Lastly, embellish the bottom of the cover with an asterick from the Thickers and a sticker from the 7gypsies  Nest sticker sheet.
    See, easy peasy!
   Now go make one for yourself!
   :)
   gretchen

This year one of my resolutions is to send snail mail. It’s a lost art. I’m sure it will make someone’s day and just thinking on that makes me happy and excited to post these soon!  I encourage you to do the very same thing. I used papers in Kenner Road’s December Main kit to line my envelopes and the postcard paper to write my love notes on. I designed the mailing labels and hope you enjoy this simple and small gift from me to you.  Now you can send your family & friends a little something special too. Happy notes to you xo.

-Debee

Materials & Tools Needed:

Kenner Road Kits Scrap Paper, Bone folder, Paper cutter, Ruler, Glue stick, Envelopes, Sticker Sheets, Printer.

Original Envelope Liner Tutorial by : Martha Stewart Weddings

Step One: Line your Envelope

1. To make an envelope liner, measure the width of your envelope, and subtract 1/4 inch. For the length, fold back the flap of the envelope, and measure from the bottom of envelope to tip of flap, just under the gummed strip. Using a paper cutter, cut a sheet of paper to these dimensions.

2. Slip the paper into the envelope, and fold the corners down just below the glue line, using a bone folder to create sharp creases. Remove the paper from the envelope, and cut off the corners along the folds.

3. Insert liner sheet into envelope, and fold down flap. Lift up the envelope flap, keeping the liner folded. Slip a piece of scrap paper under the liner flap to protect envelope from glue. Run the glue stick over the edges of the back of the liner.

4. Slip out scrap paper. Close down the outer flap over liner, and rub with fingertip to adhere glue to flap.

Now download the Mailing Labels PDF:  { Belladrummer Mailing Labels }

Either print them on a sticker sheet or standard printing paper. Cut out labels and affix to your envelopes.