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!

unless you’ve been living under a rock, i am sure you are aware of the abundance of alice in wonderland inspiration everywhere…

in fashion:

can’t you just picture those gorgeous little scallops on a scrapbook page?!

designed by sue wong for walt disney signature

see more pictures here

———————————-

in jewelry & hair accessories:

acid alice collection by tarina tarantino

the colors. the gorgeous images. the sparkles. LOVE!!!

———————————————–

a magical wonderland birthday party:

photographed by jessica claire

and also an “un-birthday” also photographed by jessica claire

rainbow balloons!!!

rainbow balloons!!!

isn’t it just marvelous??! hmmmm…. i have a little girl that is turning 8 this june..

i wonder if she would let her mommy go overboard with an alice in wonderland tea party?!

oh, just the thought makes me giddy ;)

——————————————-

the other day, i was looking through my vintage book collection & found this:

some vintage alice illustrations from an excerpt in an old fairy tale book!!

you bet your bottom dollar that those are going to get colored & used in some sort of project :)

hmmmm……

maybe like this:

everything shown to make this little potion bottle (except glass bottle) are found in the skylark feb. main kit & also the cute feb. add-on kit.

and while we are experiencing a warmer then usual climate…and the snow is melting fast…we still have lots of snow!! but with the warmer temps we are cheerful that spring may arrive soon…but alberta weather is known for changing it’s mind and keeping us in winter until may :( so i have been inspired by all the loveliness i have seen online to create an early spring indoors too :)

wanna see what i created to bring a touch of spring into my daughter’s bedroom??

i am hooked on paper garlands :) and with the bright and fresh colours of the february kenner road kit…it was perfect for creating this butterfly garland.

i have seen these garlands everywhere…they are HOT!!! circles, scalloped circles, flowers, hearts….paper, fabric, felt…endless…and beautiful!! and so easy to make.

i used my martha stewart butterfly punch…wanted to see if the tiny butterflies would work…they did :)

the how to…

select your pattern papers, decide on your punch, punch out a zillion of your shape, then stitch them together.

i recommend going slow…this will allow the sewing machine to stitch in between your paper punches without jamming up and making a mess.

i found a great tutorial here

happy garland making :)

~jessi

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.

{♥}

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

{♥}

{♥}

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!

{♥}

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

Hi everyone! Today I want to share a little project I made that was inspired by a beautiful spring product.  This cute spring bathing suit from Anthro . Now I know what you’re thinking! Bathing suit?! Yikes! It’s probably snowing or raining outside in your neighborhood right now and none of us is thinking about wearing a cute bathing suit any time soon. But this isn’t any reason not to indulge in a little inspiration. ;)

When I first saw this colorful piece I immediately was inspired by the bright colorful flowers. They make me think of a vacation in Hawaii or Fiji  :)  Ahh… daydreaming. But I quickly snapped to it and made a pretty flower out of felt that is inspired by the flowers in this piece.

Here is a close up of my handmade flower in my project:

Just playing with the bright colors made me forget the grey clouds outside. I LOVED it!

Now I used left over items in the Skylark kit:

- 7 Gypsies Paper ( I gessoed a 9×9 piece to lighten the pattern)

- K&Co – handmade ephemera pack ( 2 tickets, 1 name plate held together by the cute mini wooden clip also included in the pack)

- May Arts - striped 1″ ribbon {1 yard} ( this is the same ribbon I wrapped my wedding bouquet so using it with a snapshot of my Mr. Handsome and me on our wedding day was perfect *xoxo*)

- K&Co - handmade adhesive gems ( I used 2 golden brown small gems for the title name plate )

And extra items from my studio:

- Handmade felt flower with crepe paper & felt leaves.

- White doily

- Shadow box ( 9×9 from IKEA )

This project is one I am taking on each month. I have this sitting in my little table in my living room and this is pretty much the room Mr. Handsome and I hang out a lot in watching TV :) I always have to change things around to keep things fresh and fun so this is the perfect solution and now there is a little spring in our home!

So maybe it all started with a cute bathing suit… but I ended up with a colorful bright spot in my home and a page that pushes the gloom far away. Take a little inspiration and lets see where it takes you!

-debee

And if you’re new to the whole digi/hybrid thing,  please know, that every time I (or Diana or any of the team) post a digital or hybrid project, we will give you some tips and techniques on how we created it. Kinda demystify the whole digital + hybrid thing. So here goes!

When I saw Kerry Lynn’s digital letterhead  (grab it here), I knew I wanted to do something with it.  A little hybrid something. To me, hybrid is just another way of paper-scrapping. You just happen to be printing out some of your embellishments. This is a good thing, trust me. Because it gives you some control. You can customize to what you need for your page.

Make Something Everyday (hybrid layout using the Honeychurch digi letterhead)

For this layout, first I printed the beautiful letterhead on cardstock. Even though the letterhead is sized 8.5″ x 11″, I printed it on 12″ x 12″ vanilla textured cardstock. I love how the stitching already added a border to my page with a bit of white space on either side. I also love the look of stitching on a page. Unfortunately I don’t know how to sew, so digi stitching is a great alternative! (Note: I have a wide-format printer, but you could recreate the look by printing the letterhead on letter-sized cardstock and then mounting on 12×12 cardstock.)

This brings me to Tip #1: When creating a hybrid project, try to build upon the printed digital elements. Not only will this help you with designing your page, it will make the project look less flat and more dimensional.

I added tiny alphas to the existing title "note" - This builds on the digi elements.

In this example, I followed the lines of the stitched border and added physical embellishments: a couple of chipboard accents, some borders (cut-down to size), a stamped piece of cardstock using the “make” stamp included in Garden Party Add-on Kit. I also printed out a few digital elements: a postcard (I added some text in Photoshop beforehand) and ruler from the Honeychurch digital kit and a bingo card from and Odds and Ends: Bingo Cards. (If you need help printing elements, check out Dina’s tutorial here.)

And this brings me to Tip #2: After you print out your digital elements, treat them as you would any other paper element. Distress them, crumple them up, ink them, stamp on them, rough up the edges. Once you’re through, you won’t know what’s digital and what’s “real”. You can also use pop dots to make them…well…pop off the page.

The bingo card, ruler (a little perch for the bird) and postcard are all printed digital elements.

Because my page is about making something everyday, I included two miniature printouts of my recent digital layouts. (In fact, both of these layouts use Kenner Road digi kits! For a closer look, click here and here. ) This is a fun way to get your digital layouts off the computer and into one of your scrapbook pages! Of course, if don’t have digi pages, you could include photos of past layouts.

I printed two of my digital pages in 4" x 4" size to add to my page.

Again, I layered physical embellishments on top (and below)  my printed elements (my mini layouts).  A red photo corner, button, and ribbon add dimension so the printed elements don’t lie flat on the page. I also used a pop dot underneath one of the layouts and curled the edges so they would kinda jump off the page.

I hope this gave you a little inspiration to give hybrid a try. If you make something, please link me up. I would love to see your beautiful creations!

Here’s a layout I finished up using some of KR digi goodies (Honeychurch & School Box alphas)…

One trick that I love in the digital world is layering and layering and layering.  Not that in the paper world it’s hard to layer, but in the digi world, most of my layering is done as an afterthought to add a few extra touches of detail.  For instance, once I had the bulk of this layout done, I thought, why not have a few little touches peeking out like the buttons at the top left corner of the page…  Instead of having to unstick things to layer underneath once things are all set, all I had to do was simply add the element underneath, wherever I wanted it and then add a touch of shadow.  A few other late breaking additions were the “W” card sticking out of the frame and the paint behind the photo frame.  Try it out!

Supplies:

• 7gypsies Book Covers
• Ribbon
• Scrips and Scraps
• Sewing Machine
• Thread
• Gel Medium (or other strong adhesive)
• Fabri-Tac
• Cardstock
• Bone Folder
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Corner Punch
• Binder Clips
• Scissors

STEP ONE: Create the Cover Base

The book covers from 7gypsies are 5.5×7 inches, so that’s why my cover is the size it is.  I cut a piece of cardstock to 7×12 inches and then scored it to create a 1 inch wide spine.  You can see the score marks a little more easily in this photo:

If you don’t know how to score, here are some instructions I found online.  I use a bone folder or my Scor-It to make my scores.

You’ll also need to round the corners of your cover (because the 7gypsies book covers are rounded and we want this base to fit the covers perfectly).

I used a corner punch I bought at Staples a million years ago.  Here’s the result:

Put together a stack of “pages.”  They should be 11 inches long and 6.5 inches tall to fit in your book.  You can use plain paper, scraps, fabric, whatever you’d like.  My stack is 5 pages high.  As you can see, I used binder clips to hold it together and keep things from shifting around.  I also used a pencil and a ruler to draw a line straight down the center of the signature.  This is my stitching line.

Above, you can see several signatures all stitched down the middle.  I made 3 signatures, but only ended up using 2 of them.

STEP THREE: Fold the Signatures

Fold each signature along the stitched center line and use a bone folder to help ensure you have a strong crease.

STEP FOUR: Stitch the Signatures Into the Cover Base

Use a pencil and a ruler to mark the inside of your spine on the cover base.  Make marks every 1/4 inch.  Sew your two signatures at the 1/4 inch and 3/4 inch marks.  Here’s a photo of the signatures stitched into the cover base:

Again, I used binder clips to hold the signature to the cover base while I stitched.  You don’t want anything to shift while it’s going through the machine.

Decorate the front cover any way you’d like.  And don’t forget to include a ribbon to close up the whole thing.  The covers are made out of chipboard and you can sew right through them.  Just go slowly.

STEP SIX: Attach the Covers

I used gel medium to adhere the 7gypsies covers to the back and front of my cover base.  I used binder clips to hold everything together while it dried.

All that’s left now is to cover up that ugly spine!

Stitch two pieces of ribbon together length-wise to create an extra-wide ribbon:

Cut the ribbon to size, cover with Fabri-Tac and adhere it over the spine:

And that’s it!  Your book is done!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.  Let me know if you have any questions!

xo Julie

I made that layout after finding this next one in an old album.
I used the same basic design and theme for my newer layout.

 I might need to do one of these “love” layouts once a year.
They would be fun to look back on after a while!
_______________________________________
Here is another example.
This funky layout is one of my favorites from a couple of years back.

I used it as a jumpstart to create this next layout using the Skylark kit.

I hope this tip helps you out the next time you get stuck in a rut or need a little boost of creativity!
Have a great day!
:)

I am a big fan of the handwritten letter, although to be honest i have been a bit horrible at sending thank you notes lately. So, last night i made a digi leatterhead with the new HoneyChurch kit {so i can send a few out this week} and decided I love it so much i’d share. simply click the image below and you can download an 8.5×11 version for yourself. use it for letters. notes. or you can even scrap a page or two.

please note this is a pdf file so you will need adobe in order to download and view.

happy wednesday!
xo