Armchair Travels with Karen Foster Design and Stamping Stations

When I was a senior in high school, I competed in a program called We The People. You know mathletes? We were like that, but for civics. I know, I know. You must be thinking something like "Heather! You must have been so popular! And pretty! And homecoming queen!" I wasn't...but I was smart, and my mom told me that was more important.

Right? Right. Moving on.

We kicked major booty at the regional and state competitions, and qualified for Nationals. We went to Washington, D.C. and New York City, and it was awesome. All the pictures and memorabilia have been sitting in bags in my craft drawer waiting for something to happen to them. And then something did! That something was the Karen Foster Design Destination New York Stickers. I love simple layouts using cardstock with a few embellishments, and the stickers provided the pizazz to make my plain cardstock layouts stand out. I also used cardboard, paint, the Subway Thickers (how apt!) and photos of my friends and me our senior year. It took me on an armchair vacation...which is probably the extent of my travels this year (anyone else out there like that?).Reliving one vacation made me want to do it again. So, having lived in Washington nearly all of my life, my family has quite a stash of photos of us all around the state. I got to finally put some of the pictures to good use (thanks, Mom and Dad's photo drawer). The paper and stickers are both from Stamping Stations. I like that the paper and the stickers are a little different that usually destination/vacation product you see a lot. Since we live in a state that has so much natural beauty, the copper scalloped border stickers (found in the ribbon section at PP), and some twine added to the over-all "Washington-ness."

I found a picture of my dad and me when I was about 7 or 8, and made him a little personalized father's day card. Take that, Hallmark! I also made two cards with the rest of the Washington paper: a "welcome home" card and a "missing you" card. I hope you get the chance to stop in and pick up a little something-something to scrap photos of your latest vacation.

Is anyone going someplace great this summer? Leave a comment letting us know so we who stay in Pullman can live vicariously through you. :-)

Celebrate with new Creative Imaginations Paper and other goodies!

This year, we had 2 "big" birthdays in our family. My son happily turned 13 in February, and I gloomily turned 40 last September. The new Birthday papers from Creative Imaginiations were just what I needed to perk up my attitude and make me want to scrapbook the very few photos from my birthday. How can you not "get happy" with these spiral polka-dots?

I added to the mix Creative Cafe flowers in both felt and chip board, more Creative Cafe with a tag and word stickers, and lots of strategically placed lime green stickles!

Again, I used the "scraps" after making the layouts, but my favorite new embellishment is this adorable "pom-pom" ribbon from the store....they have it in many colors!

I really wanted the circles to convey a major sentiment on this layout by using both the paper and the chip board and emphasizing this design element. I was having a "Circle of Life" moment as I did these two pages (read...tear and sniffle here).

The Technique Tuesday (Fundamentals) chip board is amazing to work with (trust me, you'll love it). Big brads, colored in holes, holes with stickles all help bring out the "circle of life" vibe as well. I also tried to strategically use the paper to emphasize that Spencer turned 13 with paper-covered chipboard arrows and the journaling.

Enjoy...both the birthdays of those you love...and this new paper line!
Anita

Revisiting Imaginisce and My Minds Eye Bella Bella

As promised... I want to show you MORE!

Here's another layout using some of the Imaginisce papers and featuring some new cutouts from the Life's A Beach Cricut cartridge! There are so many fun options with that cartridge, be sure to check it out here.

I also created a few cards with these papers and the Cricut.

Lastly, here's yet another layout from the My Minds Eye Bella Bella papers that features another photo from days long past featuring my sisters and I. Do you have an old photo of someone special you'd like to feature on a page?

Don't forget to comment on the post right before this to enter to win a CONTEST! A DT Member Kit is a GREAT prize to win!

Blog Candy! Are you up for some??

What technique would YOU like to see our Design Team members feature in a future blog post?

Leave a comment with your technique and we will choose a random name from all the comments. You will win a Custom Kit designed by one of our DT members. Please be sure to leave an email in the comment so we can contact you if you win. We will pick a comment 5/1/09.

FUN new products....

I'm back!!!

Kinda....

I have been missing in action in the scrapbooking "arena" since mid-January when I was ATTACKED by a pinched nerve in my neck!! I had the "make you want to cry" kind of pain, NO fun!!! But, some terrific doctors made me all better, so I am easing back into my favorite thing to do...scrapbook! :0)

Bo Bunny "U Bug Me!" line

Creative Imaginations Baby Boy line

Creative Imaginations: Baby Bella

Gosh, this is exciting: my first design team post! And since we are friends (we are all friends here, right?), it's true confession time.

I have never used chipboard.

I know, right? How odd. That embarrassment and sore spot on my scrapbooking has been remedied. I put together some pages and two cards using Creative Imagination's Baby Bella line. In my stack of photos left to be scrapped, I had one of my mom and Birdy when she was just tiny...something like 2 weeks old. It fit really well with the paper. I found some great peach lace ribbon at PP that matched the paper and used it to mat the photo, which turned out to be one of my favorite elements from this set:

This other layout is from a photo session we had with some of the other babies in the family. I popped out some of the cute animals to give the page a little more dimension:

My other confession is that I love the Fiskars Threading Water punch, and I got another chance to use it on one of the cards: I did wish that this paper came out a little earlier, because it would have made some great birth announcements. I also realized that I am a smidgen more behind in her baby album that I would like...as in, nearly a year with some photos.

How are you all doing with your kids' baby books? Also, when did you stop the baby book? Having never done this baby book thing, I'm curious.

Imaginisce: A Shore Thing

Scrapping summer sun photos in April is SOOOOOO much fun!

If you'd like to join me in beachy sunshine, pick up Imaginisce's "A Shore Thing" paper line. My favorite thing about the line is the little bit of glitter they "splash" throughout the papers' designs.


No super fancy techniques on this one... I just mimicked a couple of the elements you find in the paper. I made a flower and ice cream bar that match the graphics and added a little Stickles glitter glue to them too. My title is on transparency w/ white paint on the back side to make the text pop.

Come back soon because I'll feature another layout with this paper line as well as a few cards. They'll show off some elements made with the new "Life's a Beach" Cricut cartridge. Later this week!

Great memories. Who else is looking forward to making new memories in the sun this year?

DT Challenge Turquoise

I am totally excited to contribute to this blog for the first time on my own. Yea!!! I 'm a big girl! I was excited to take on the challenge. Obviously I chose turquoise. I was tempted to get totally carried away and add to much. I tried doing lots of layering without over doing it and making it too busy. It was truckloads of fun!

DT Challenge: Teal

Teal is seriously one of my favorite colors. It can often be seen in my house alongside lime or olive greens and purple. So, after noticing that C's shirt in the photo was teal + most of my favorite stash items were ALSO teal it was an easy choice. I tried adding a little spray paint love but it just sorta blended in. oh well! This was a fun challenge!

DT Challenge: Pick a Color & Stick With It!

Brown.

It has made a comeback. And it's popular again.

But not so long ago (in the 80s and 90s) it was SOOOO uncool. I'd not have been caught dead wearing/using/admiring it. It was only good for representing dirt.

Well, in this case, that's okay too:
Cause I featured DIRT. Well, my kids playing in dirt. There's a lot of it around these days.

And yes, I went digital. I haven't played in PSE (Photoshop Elements) for awhile, so I took Anita's challenge into the digiworld. It was fun to do.

I used a variety of digital elements from various sites (mainly freebies available in the past) by designers like Jesse Edwards at Designer Digitals, and Angie Briggs and Erica Hite at ScrapGirls.com.

I loved doing a monochrome layout with many shades of brown because it really made the photos POP since they are the only things that aren't all brown.

Now, back to the paper scrapping world...

DT Challenge: Pick a color and stick with it

Yellow. It's a great color, and thoroughly underrepresented in the color spectrum (or at least in my stash of paper). However, I've been trying to remedy that, and picked up this paper in an effort to beef up my stock of paper.

This is a layout I did a few months ago of a photo that was taken a...um...about a year ago. The shirt Eva is wearing is one of my favorites, and the embossed yellow Bazzill worked really well to highlight her clothes. The Bazzill made the page feel a lot more finished than plain paper, and the light yellow 7gypsies tag completed it. Thanks for the great challenge, Anita!

Design Team Challenge - Pick a Color and Stick with It!

Are you ready for a challenge?

Pick 1 color...or a neutral...and go for it! A focus on the photos, journaling, and textures is a fun experiment ...I hope you enjoy it too!

The creative process that brought me to the one color (actually white isn't a color, but you know what I mean!) was interesting and this layout is certainly not what I thought I'd be doing when I sat down to scrapbook yesterday. For this layout I used Bazzill embossed paper, a beautiful pearlized vellum, pearl brads w/ white flowers, and my favorite, Doodlebug "loopy-lou" sticker letters (that I then glittered).

My other idea will become a challenge at a later date, but for now...let's see what you can do!

Anita

New Design Team Members!

We are really excited to announce our Design Team for the next 6 months! We have 4 returning members and 2 NEW members!

Angela Lassen
Anita Cory
Deb Felstded
Heather Brackett
Judy Pilcher
London Tierney

We want to give a BIG THANK YOU to Malinda Rose & Nikki Peterson for being on the team this last term. You gals are so creative, generous and inspirational!

New Sassafrass Layouts by Deb!

Deb played with paint, ribbon, fabric & felt on these FUN layouts using the New Sassafrass lines we got in.