The Cut Shoppe: Fabulous

Hello! Today I am very happy to be sharing a new layout I made using the recently released This & That cut file from The Cut Shoppe.

When I first saw this set of cut files, it instantly became one of my favorites. I am a big fan of fun titles and these are just perfect! So perfect, in fact, that I had a hard time choosing! When I was finally able settle on a choice, I knew I wanted to create a sort-of tone-on-tone effect with it. Here is what I came up with:

I had initially decided to layer the "fabulous" right on top of the white cardstock background to give a true tone-on-tone look to my title, but as I was playing around with my design, I found that I rather liked how it looked layered on top of the colorful papers.

As I do almost 100% of the time, I anchored the "fabulous" by running it through the sewing machine using white thread.

This layout has certainly become one of my new favorite layouts. All the beautiful colors combined with lots of white really makes both the title and patterned papers shine. Wishing you a fabulous day!

Michelle

Hip Kit Club: Buddies

For my son's fourteenth year, I decided to switch his album up and go with a 6x8 Handbook. The last few years I had been struggling a little bit with having enough photos of him to fill a bigger album. I am always camera ready, however due to his relunctance to let me take photos and the fact that he is rarely home, my camera roll has been a little light on photos of my favorite guy. The smaller sized album seemed like an easy solution and now that I am halfway through the year I am confident I made the right decision. Today I want to share how I created a two page spread using a combination of the Hip Kit Club June Kits for his Handbook.

   

I use a combination of pocket style and traditional layouts for documenting his teenage adventures and when I am doing this I like both pages, even if I am telling two different stories as I am here, to be cohesive in color and products. This means that I will often pull out a kit and work on two pages at a time. For these layouts I used pieces from the June Main, Embellishment, and PL Kits.  Here is a look at each individual page:

 

 

One of my favorite parts about working with pocket pages, is that I get to customize the 3x4 cards with embellishments. Below you can see that on the left card, I simply  layered two of the Poolside diet cuts from the Main Kit and added some machine stitching. On the right, after cutting down a 4x6 card from the PL Kit, I adhered a wood veneer that I had sprayed with gold mist.

 

Thanks for stopping by today and letting me share a few thoughts on how I went about changing up my memory keeping to better work for me and my camera shy teenager.

Michelle

Citrus Twist Kits: Life is Good

Today starts a brand new week and I want to start it off by sharing my last June project using the Citrus Twist June "Sweet Thing" Main and "Whole Lotta Love" Embellishment Kits! Both of these kits featured the beautiful colors and patterns from Pink Paislee's Citrus Bliss collection and Crate's Poolside which are probably my fave paper collections from this year. For this layout, Life is Good, I wanted to feature the minty greens and pink in the kit because they really complimented my photo. Here is what I came up with:

My paper, photo, and layering pieces are always the first to go down on my layout, embellishing is usually the last step before I run my project through my sewing machine. When I reached this step for this layout, I found myself playing with the yellow piece of flair and thought that it picked up on the yellow in the ice cream patterned paper. Prior to this, I had been pretty set on playing up the pinks and mints and was quite pleasantly surprised by how the addition of yellow brightened up my layout.

From the get go when I saw the Citrus Bliss collection this past winter, I was excited about the addition of the flamingos and I just loved getting to use these pink flamingo banners!

 





The colors featured in the collections from this past spring have really had my heart and I am not quite sure I am ready to move on to the summer color pallets! Ha ha. I say that now, but surely with the arrival of the next wave of kits and collections, I am sure I will change my mind ;).

 

Michelle

Hip Kit Club: Good Times

One of my favorite layout designs is a grid or block style page. I just love to cut my papers into squares and rectangles and then arrange them on a page-it's almost like putting a puzzle together. And the best part is that no matter how many times I return to this basic design, the resulting layouts are always so different from each other. Take for example, this next layout I made using the Hip Kit Club June Kits:

   

When I first pulled out my kit to make this layout, I was initially drawn to the square cards from the package of Fancy Pants Die Cuts in the June PL Kit. I combined one of the cards with a square cut from a piece of patterned paper and a frame. To complete my block design, I added in the title, journaling, and filled in the frame with a die cut.

 

 In other exciting Hip Kit Club news, the Hip Kit Club is running a new subscriber special!

With a new subscription to the Hip Kit Club, you will receive a free Paper Add-On Kit. All you have to do is use the promo code michelle at checkout. Yay!

Wishing you a great day!

Michelle

The Cut Shoppe: Happy Times

Hello! Today I want to share a fun layout I created using the Heart Burst background cut file from The Cut Shoppe!

What caught my eye with this cut file, was the potential it had to be used as a layering element. The heart shape in the middle almost begged me to add something to it and that is exactly what I did after first resizing the heart burst to better fit what I had in mind.

By layering a gold, glittery heart on top of the heart burst and then adhering it with pop dots, I was able to create some eye catching dimension. Thanks to its placement, when I look at the layout the heart burst immediately draws my attention straight to the photo and title-which is exactly where it should be ;).

Wishing you a great day!

Michelle

Hip Kit Club: Freebie Friday

Yes, yes, I know it's the day after Friday, but I wanted to alert you all to something pretty cool. Ashley Horton, owner of  The Cut Shoppe, has designed an exclusive and free Cut File for the Hip Kit Club to share with all of you.  Here's what the Silhouette cut file looks like:

You can join us for this week's Weekend Challenge over in the Hip Kit Club Facebook Forum by incorporating this Cut File into a project. If you aren't already a member of the group, just CLICK HERE to join.  Both our group and our weekly challenges are open to everyone. Play along this week for your chance to win a $10 gift certificate to the Hip Kit Club online store. You can't win if you don't play, so be sure to head on over to our Forum for complete details!

Free cut file and a chance to win $10 is pretty awesome I would say!

Wishing you a great weekend!

Michelle

Citrus Twist: Just Plain Wonderful

Happy Friday! Today I am back with a new project using the Citrus Twist June Kits!

My husband and I took our little girls to the Santa Barbara Zoo at the end of the April and I have been really having a whole lot of fun getting the pictures and memories into everyone's albums. The June "Sweet Thing" Main kit has really been perfect for scrapbooking all of my pictures. The color palette just works so well with the pictures in my photos. You can see that here in this layout:

 

I think the addition of the orange is really what made these papers work with my zoo photos, especially with the giraffes and flamingos.

Isn't that citrus wood veneer just the cutest?? I am continually pleasantly surprised by the wood veneer shapes that Citrus Twist includes in their kits. They are always so unique and amazingly intricate--how is it even possible to cut something like this without the wood breaking? 

Wishing you a great day!

Michelle

Hip Kit Club: Oh, Hello

Hello! Today I want to share a new layout made using the beautiful June Kit and Add-Ons from the Hip Kit Club. When I first dive into a kit, I want to play with everything and I gave myself permission to do just that with this next layout, Oh, Hello.

      

The addition of the dark, navy blue to the softer color palette is just so pretty and it really brings the focus right to the "heart" of the layout-the words, the photo, and the title.

 

I had found that the kraft tags and the warm yellow really complimented the colors in my outdoor photo, so I made sure to include them as I was putting my layout together.

 

  

The silver Thickers, if I had to choose just one, from the Embellishment Kit are probably my favorite single item. They are not too shiny and they really provide a nice contrast to the other colors in the kit-I can definitely see myself reaching for them again and again!

Wishing you a great day!

Michelle

Elle's Studio: June Reveal

Lots and lots of fun stuff going on today at Elle's Studio, so I am going to just jump right in starting with the reveal of the exclusive June Kit!

June Limited Edition Stamp, Printables, and Cut Files:

June's Kit is Elle's Studio's largest kit yet and includes five vellum pieces! Yay ! And if you can't tell by looking at my first project, I am absolutely in love with the little honey bee that appears in the kit :).

For my second project, I pulled out Elle's Studio's new Let's Eat collection (Which is available in the shop!) and documented one of my family's favorite places to eat.

Now earlier I said "lots" of good thing were going on today, so in addition to the release of the June Kit, Elle's Studio has two super fun promotions kicking off today!

Elle's Studio is starting off summer with a FREE SHIPPING special! All orders, USA and INTERNATIONAL, that $30+ ship for free with the coupon code SUMMERLOVE--this is one awesome deal that you don't want to miss1 It's a great time to stock up on the brand new collection Let's Eat, Cienna, and more! *Offer ends June 15th, 2015 and is for first class worldwide shipping. Offer NOT valid on wholesale orders.

And to make things even sweeter, check this out:

New items have been added to the retiring section and they are all on sale too, along with a couple of bundle specials that will have you ready to scrapbook all summer long!  Elle's Studio is clearing some room for all the new items coming in the next couple of weeks and months!

Wow! Fun times are happening over at Elle's Studio right now! 

Michelle

The Cut Shoppe & Stuck?! Sketches

This past Friday, The Cut Shoppe teamed up with Stuck?! Sketches to take on their June 1st Sketch Challenge and today I want to share with you my take on this fun collaberation! First, here's the sketch:

This sketch was right up my ally with the stitching and layers, but what really caught my eye were the flowers because they gave me an opportunity to use the pretty Blooming Bouquet cut file.

Here's what I did by combining both the Stuck?! Sketch and cut file from The Cut Shoppe:

Now it's your turn! The Cut Shoppe is offering a $15 gift certificate to one lucky winner who links up their project using the June Sketch to the Stuck?! Blog. To see more details on how to enter the challenge as well as to take a look at what the rest of The Cut Shoppe Design Team did, head on over here!

Michelle

Citrus Twist Kits: This

Hello! Today I want to share the first project I made with the Citrus Twist June Kits!

When I set out to make a new layout, I always start with my photo and patterned paper. As I pick and choose my papers, my photo is always in my field of vision, guiding me on my color choices. For this photo, I really wanted to pick up on the yellow in my daughter's jacket as well as the pink and turquoise beads she is wearing. You can see here that I settled on four papers, the cut apart journaling card paper, and white cardstock which all came from both the June "Sweet Thing" Main kit and the Patterned Paper Play Add-ons. 

Whenever I am working with a bigger element, such as these large letters from the June "Whole Lot of Love" Embellishment kit, I like to work them into the design very early on. At this point I hadn't adhered anything down, but I wanted to start playing around with the position of my title. Usually my title placement comes way later, but since it was going to require so much space, I needed to get the title into the design early on. To do this, I cut the individual letters out while they were still on the plastic that way I could easily move them around.

After completing the layout, I immediately moved on to the accompanying pocket style page. I cut apart the journaling card sheet from the Main Kit, grabbed my photos, all edited with the Collect App, and a few small embellishments.  

Here are the finished projects:

As I mentioned before, I used a variety of products from several of June's Kits, but I also added a white tag from own stash and a copper banner clip that I had leftover from May's kits.

If you hadn't already noticed, I do like to keep my pocket pages simple and pretty flat, but this doesn't mean that I don't embellish my cards. Here I made them my own by adding mist droplets and stitching.

Wishing you a great week!

Michelle

Hip Kit Club: Today

As I was brainstorming ideas for this layout, I realized I hadn't used the awesome circle paper from the Hip Kit Club May Main Kit. Often times I find myself reaching for a certain paper over and over again. When I find something that I love, I want to keep going with it. And, because I don't often use big chunks of paper, I can really stretch and prolong the life of a single sheet of paper. However, I wasn't going to do the kit justice by going with what I had used before, so I pulled out the circle paper and went with it, despite the fact that the lovely stripe/large chevron Dear Lizzy paper was calling my name ;).

   

When the new scrapbooking lines debuted at CHA in January, Pink Paislee's Citrus Bliss was in my top three. I loved the bright fresh colors and the fun icons-lemons, pineappples, flamingoes...and now, thanks to the inclusion of the line in May's Kits, I am even more impressed with the collection.  The colors are really quite beautiful.

   

   

 Happy Wednesday!

Michelle

Citrus Twist: June Sneaks

Wow! June 1st already??? Are we sure it really isn't still March?? Ha ha.

Well, since it is indeed the first of June, I want to share some sneaky peeks of the new kits from Citrus Twist. I worked with the June Main and Embellishment Kits, along with both of the patterned paper add-ons.

My heart sure did a big flip flop when I saw the gorgeous colors in the June Kits and the combination of manufactors-Pink Paislee, Studio Calico, Amy Tangerine, and Chickaniddy-is a match made in papercrafting heaven! Wow, I am thinking I might love paper products a little too much ;).

Michelle