Stash Busting 2018: Layout 1

The Stash Busting Challenge has proven to be a major motivator and it took me no time at all to make my first layout with the kit. It seems that a kit full of my favorite colors and glittery Thickers is all I need to get going!

Helping me get started in a design direction was a fun challenge over at the Paper Issues Friend Group on Facebook called "What's Going Down?"  The prompt for this challenge was to focus all our attention on the bottom of the page. Easy right?? Well, yes.....and no. LOL. I'm no stranger to designing on the bottom, but leaving the rest of the white space blank was too tough and I just had to have those sequin stars float up!

With this being the inaugural layout for the challenge, I wanted to include as much as I could from the kit. I used four patterned papers, two specialty papers, diecuts, stickers, a bow clip, and star confetti. I even fussy cut a flower out from a paper! What?!  

The best thing about putting this layout together though, was that I was playing with product that had been hibernating away in Iris boxes. I'm always excited about the latest and greatest, but working with this older product didn't feel any different than when I create with brand new supplies. Now that's something to think about...…

Michelle

Stash-Busting Challenge 2018

This past year has been pretty hard on my creativity. With the addition of several new volunteering roles/responsibilities, my free time/energy took a dive. Like a nose dive. Yikes. Now a year has past and hopefully I have learned a few lessons about volunteering and setting boundaries.

One of the things I missed this past year was participating in this wonderful crafting community. I still did my design team work and checked in on IG, but that just wasn't enough. I recognized a long time ago that this community is good for me and I need to get back to being an active part of it.

So today, my first day blogging since 2017, I want to share a super fun challenge that has me really excited! The challenge is Jill Sprott's "Stash-Busting Challenge 2018!"  The basic run down of the challenge is that you create a kit based off of a list of contents and create at least 3 projects with it. The challenge runs from June through July and we are encouraged to share our kits, projects, and enthusiasm wherever we can. Like Jill, I am going to be sharing my energy for this project here at the blog and on IG (my username is @michellewedertz.)

Now that I've got the basics out of the way, here's the kit that I pulled together:

This kit is full of my faves: the colors, manufactures, textures...I love it! It felt so nice to pull out my Iris boxes from under my bed and sift through all of the product. I am pretty regular about purging my stash, so what I still have I absolutely love for one reason or another and I felt like I was in crafty heaven looking through it all.

 Here's the list of contents:

1. Eight pieces of patterned paper scraps, four specialty paper/"other" paper scraps, and two complete/unused sheets of patterned paper.  I went with a mix of Crate Paper, Pink Fresh Studio, and Dear Lizzy for my papers. My specialty papers are from Echo Park, Crate Paper, and Studio Calico and include vellum and gold/silver foil.
2. No more than one yard of ribbon/trim. I pulled out a white pompom trim from a past Felicity Jane Kit. It is not pictured because I forgot to pull it back from the side when I was setting up my photo. 
3. One sticker sheet or set, with a catch: at least on sticker must be missing from the sheet. I went with a chipboard Thicker set from Dear Lizzy that I have been slowly using.
4. A pre-2016 alphabet set. This is where I had to fudge a bit, because I could not find a set any older than 2016. When I said I destash regularly, I meant it--the hoarding gene is not that strong in this one! I ended up picking out my favorite Thicker set for this one--a gold sparkly Thicker set-from 2016.
5. One opened package of scrappy product. I chose a package of ephemera from Pink Fresh Studio that I had hanging around. One of the reasons that I still have it is that it has quite a few labels that I like to use for journaling and thought it would be a good option to have.
6. One unopened package of scrappy product. I chose another package of ephemera for this one. I like to have lots of ephemera to choose from and felt like this Dear Lizzy set would be a good match for my papers.
7. One roll of tape or pad of sticky notes. I went with a washi with gold foiled hearts. In all honesty, most of my washi tape is used to tape down my stitching on the backside of my projects or used by my daughters to tape their artwork to their walls, so it will be interesting to see if I actually use it for scrapping.
8. One item or package from a company that no longer makes scrappy products. Again, I had no such thing, so I improvised with an opened package of bowtie clips/sequins from an older Crate Paper collection called "Cute Girl."
9. Up to ten journaling and/or PL cards/tags. Since I had them in my Iris boxes, I pulled out left over journaling cards that were also from Crate's "Cute Girl" collection. I adored this line from Crate and I will be really happy to put them to use. I also plan on pulling PL cards from my card box as I work through projects.
10. Three "wild card" items. Include anything you've been wanting to use. I chose a set of chipboard embellishments from Pink Fresh Studio, a sheet of stickers from one of Maggie Holmes' lines, and a new set of sparkly blue Thickers that are not in the picture because I forgot to grab them for the photo.
11. A nearby item. This was easy. I picked a small container of heart shaped paper clips that I love from a Felicity Jane Kit. They are gold and tiny and cute and I already had them sitting out waiting to be used.

And that's a wrap! My kit is ready to go! Woohoo! Thank you Jill--this was pretty darn fun! 

If you plan on or are already playing along with Jill's Stash-Busting Challenge, I would love to see what you have going! If you are on IG, use the tag #stashbustingchallenge2018 and I will find you! Lol! If you are more of a blogger, drop a link to your post(s) in the comments and I will stop by and see what you have. 

Happy scrapping!

Michelle

Elle's Studio: April

Time is absolutely flying by and I cannot believe that I am here to post the reveal for Elle's Studio new APRIL Kit! Wow.  So, yes here it is:

Ahhh, the colors are just so bright and springy and perfect as we move firmly into spring and begin to spend more time outdoors. And once again, this month's extras are just as awesome:

Each month when I open up my box of goodies I never know where I want to start because it is all just so great. Not this time though. My heart zeroed right on the fun floral 6x4 card included in the April Kit and made a layout with it right away!

Springtime at my house is all about the daffodils, tulips (mine are red like the ones on the card!), and bugs, so it was no surprise I turned to a fun story about my snail sitting duties :).

For my second project I created a complimenting pocket page to document even more photos taken on that same day:

This month I also pulled a few pieces from the new Live Laugh Love collection such as the fun washi strips and wood veneer.

To see even more examples of this month's kit in action, make sure and hop on over to the Elle's Studio Blog!

Michelle

Elles Studio: March

Hi all and welcome to today's reveal of the newest kit at Elle's Studio! This month the kits evoke the bright freshness of springtime with a color palate of beautiful greens--the color that I am craving the most this time of year!  First, here's a look at this month's exclusive kit and coordinating goodies:

Here is what I made with the lovely kit:

I am a big fan of a bright green and I wanted to really feature that color in this layout documenting a sweet photo of my youngest at the park. To offer a little bit of contrast, I pulled out one of the new vellum circles in yellow, along with a few of the acrylic stars that are offered this month.

In order to show the versatility of the kit, I next wanted to create a project that wasn't overly green. One of the reasons I have been a big of Elle's Studio products, is that I am able adapt the products to fit what I am documenting at the moment.

For this layout I really liked the blue "good times" card included in the kit because it really played well off of the colors in the photos. To compliment this I pulled out the 6x6 'Tis the Season paper pack to find that great black and white patterned paper as well as the journaling cards from the Sunny Day's collection.  Together with the tags, stickers, puffy alphas, and stars from this month batch of releases I came up with a nice monochromatic layout that I was pretty happy with!

Now March is extra special at Elle's Studio because it is their birthday month and to celebrate Elle's Studio's 10th birthday there is a brand new Birthday Mini-Collection that is also available!

This kit is even better in real life and I am already in hoarding mode for most of it!!  I have even already use the birthday stamp on a project that I shared a few days ago here on the blog! Now head on over to Elle's Studio to check out how the rest of the team used this month's kit :).

Michelle

Seven

Hello and happy Tuesday! Do any of you all have a favorite project or layout that you like to do?  Well I do! My favorite layouts to do are the opening pages to a new album. Let me explain: I keep several albums-a "main" family album, albums for each of my kiddos, and a personal album. The family album and my album all begin with the new year and the kids' albums are organized by year. So each year I have five opportunities to create opening pages and I really look forward to making them.

There is something about a brand new fresh start that just makes me happy. I also like that the opening pages set the tone for the new year as well as serve as sort of a celebration for that particular person. I also use these beginnings to re-evaluate how I am going to document that year. For example, with my oldest daughter I have decided to go ahead a dedicate a certain amount of album space per each month. Since her birth I have filled two albums a year for her and to be quite frank, the amount of albums (so far 12!) is starting to concern me a bit and I thought that it might be worth the effort to try to limit myself to one album for her seventh year. I'm not planning on cutting down on the number of stories that I document, instead I am going to increase my use of pocket pages and limit the traditional style layouts. This way I can get more in in less space. Hopefully.

My opening pages almost always contain a combination of a pocket page and a layout. The pocket page is smaller that the 9x12 layout because I like being able to open the album and see "layers" of layouts and that is what I did with here with Maleia's newest album.

I went with a pastel color scheme to compliment the single photo on the page. As is usual for my pocket pages, I kept the embellishing simple. My last addition to this page was an Avery tab at the bottom.

One of the changes to my plan for her album this year, is to include more typewritten journaling. My goal with this is to get more words into the album. I will often hand write my journaling on a traditional layout, but I am never quite satisfied with my handwriting on journaling cards or labels which translates into less writing in the albums. I think this is because my handwriting isn't quite "clean" enough and doesn't match the simple and neat aesthetic I like my pocket pages to have. The typewriter solves this issue for me.

My traditional 9x12 layout was so much fun to put together and I am really happy with how it turned out. I combined a recent kit from Studio Calico with some of Maggie Holmes' latest collection and came up with a layout that I am quite proud of:

I went for my favorite type of layout: layered with scattered embellishments. I also made sure and used a lot of gold.

Now this might be an entirely weird thing to admit, but up until very recently I could not combine hearts and stars on a page. I don't know where I got it in my head that I could not mix the two, but I think I am finally moving past this little hang up!

Thanks so much for letting me share these pages and my thoughts with you!

Michelle

Elle's Studio: February

Hi all!  February is always a fast and furious month for this mama and I am still a little surprised that today is already the 10th! Yikes.  It's all good though, because I am have been super excited to share this month's new exclusive February Kit from Elle's Studio!

Honestly, there are so many amazing things available this month and it was so incredibly hard to pick and choose what I would use on my two projects. The colors were also a welcome surprise-orange AND purple?? Yes!

Before I share my projects, I just want to say that I rarely ever use a kit to document that particular month, with the exception being Christmas product. For example, last month the kit definitely had a Valentine's/Love vibe, but I used the kit to document a spring trip to the beach. What?! This is what makes the kits so incredibly great--I can make them work for whatever I want to document at the time like I did this month with a set of pictures from both the first day of preschool and a July trip to my parents:

If I had to pick one single embellishment to have from this month's exclusive add-on item, I would go with the acrylic hearts/circles--the colors are just so pretty and my urge to hoard them forever is strong!

My next project is a pocket page for my littlest's album and it documents some pool time from this past summer:

 This page was pretty fun to put together and I love that I was able to fit so many photos in it. The 4x6 card was a great landing for a series of pictures that I took of Allora jumping into the pool and the sticker sheets made it easy to embellish.

So what catches your eye this month? Or are you like me and want it all??  Lol! To see more projects with all the goodies in action make sure and stop by the Elle's Studio blog this morning.

Michelle

The Little Things

I seem to go through a lull when it comes to creating projects for my personal album during the late spring and summer and it sure felt great to finally get the urge to make something purely about myself and the things that I like.

I took this photo on the way into the theater to see Fantastic Beasts (which I loved!) and really liked the reds and yellows that I was able to bring out with a filter from the Color Story app. I went ahead and used a recent kit from Studio Calico and combined it with a package of Thickers that I had on my desk. The kit featured a wintery theme, but I felt like since it was almost technically winter, I could get away with documenting a fall moment.

Where I live, fall starts a little later, but I was still surprised to have found the sidewalk covered with leaves in mid-December. It was autumn's last hurrah in my neck of the woods and I was pretty happy to have found such a pretty scene :).

Michelle