My Office Hour layouts

Studio Calico's Office Hours kits go on sale today, and they are gorgeous. If you're craving spring like I am, these kits are full of fresh, bright colours & beautiful embellishments. I am mad at myself for not getting more done, but I have a few layouts on the go and will share them here this month once they're finished. I have more ideas than time, and that is completely frustrating sometimes. ;)

Here's 2 pages I made with the main kit:

and my two layouts done with the add-ons:

I have a real soft spot for this page. I've hoarded this photo of myself for years, waiting for inspiration to strike. When I saw those MME stickers in the kit, that were a perfect colour match to my cute sailor outfit in the photo  I knew it was perfect timing. ;)   This one uses Coffee Break & To Do, and I really love how it turned out.

My son went on a big trip a few summers ago, and I knew when I saw the RAD die cut title that I was going to use this pic of him ( he's in the background in the photo) during his week at Scout Camp in Ontario, which was actually called ADVENTURE camp. I wanted to make this one colourful and fun to play up the youthfulness in the photo and I was inspired by SC member Ginny to get out my typewriter to journal. I have an old one that was given to me by a friend- the roller diesn't really work properly, and I have to turn it by had when I type, so this came out messy and spaced incorrectly. Also, major typos when I type! I decided I loved the look of the messy journaling, ( and was too lazy to retype, LOL) so I left it as is, and strangely enough, it doesn't bother me in the least! ( am I having a breakthrough?!)  I used bits from 2 add-ons here: Coffee break, & Rolodex. As I mentioned, I have much more I want to do with these kits and I need to carve out some time on the weekend to use up the leftovers.

If you're a subscriber, the BEST perk is being able to bundle your orders until tomorrow night ( end of the month). There are lots of pretty things in the shop to tempt!!

Happy Shopping. ;)

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A wee sneak, and Lisa's awesome colour theory class

I used to make layouts with a lot of colour , the brighter, the better. I was a big fan of matching different neon-ish shades of cardstock with little strips of patterned paper, like this:

 Then something switched in my brain and I started making pages with less colour, more white, and less STUFF. I think it was the result of DT overload, (even though these are technically "minimal", simple pages, they're much busier than the pages I tend to do now) and I needed to just make really simple layouts after my years of being on design teams and having to use said stuff. I still really love these pages, don't get me wrong. I've just gotten away from that look, and am now comfortably used to my white cardstock. If I had to pick only one product to scrapbook with for the rest of eternity, it would be white cardstock, hands down. So when I opened up this month's Studio Calico scrapbook kit, Office Hours, (available February 27th) and saw the luscious bright pink cardstock ( one that I already had several sheets of in my stash, go figure) I knew I had to use it on my layouts, if only in tinier quantities. Here's a sneak of a page I did for March's gallery, and I felt like I'd gone back to my roots. :) Had lots of fun with this page.

Anyways, this brings me to the Colour Studio class, coming up on March 1st at SC. If you're on the fence about using colour in your layouts, unsure of your colour choices when you scrapbook, or just want to jazz up your pages with a bit of pop, then this class should do it for you. Here's the details:

BY ENROLLING IN THIS CLASS YOU'LL RECEIVE :

• 4 videos from Lisa sharing color & design ideas
• 8 secrets for unlocking the color wheel and tips for using color effectively on your projects
• 56 perfect color schemes
• technique tutorials for adding color to your pages with ink, mist, watercolors, patterned paper and embellishments.
• PDF lessons posted each Tuesday & Thursday in March
• 40 all new projects, including layouts, Project Life® spreads and cards
• bonus color schemes in every PDF

WHAT YOU'LL NEED :

• Your favorite Studio Calico kits or products from your stash
• Ink,  Mister Huey's Color Mists and watercolors in your favorite hues
• Patterned paper, alphabets and embellishments in a rainbow of colors.
• Neutral papers in various styles that you can add color to - we recommend SC Grid paper, vellum and watercolour paper

 BONUS DIGITAL FILES:

• Printable journal cards, accents and labels from Hello Forever
• Cut Files from Hello Forever
• Color Studio planning sheet from Hello Forever
• Ink planning sheet from Hello Forever

This class is sure to kickstart your creativity, and colour = happy, which I think is very timely at this point in a VERY long, cold, and gray winter. I know I'm craving it bigtime. 

Hope to see you in class!

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Random. org stamp winner...

And taking into account the double posts. ;)  Becs, you are the winner of the 2 stamps. Please email me your address, (melaniedotlouetteatgmaildotcom) and I will pop these into the mail for you this week.
Thanks for all the great comments!

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A teeny give-away

I'm still sorting through my supplies, and it's been very rewarding and freeing to get rid of the things I've been holding on to for so long. A really, really great feeling. I'm going to try and keep it up on a monthly basis, and give away stuff I know I won't use from my kits. So, in the spirit of passing it on, one lucky person will receive these 2 Studio Calico stamps from this month's Sugar Rush kits, included the Gum Drop & Jelly Beans add ons.

 Both of these kits are now sold out, so if you missed out on them and wanted the stamp, then here's your chance! Just leave me a comment here telling me what kind of stamps you'd like to see in future kits- I think that would be a fun read. :) I'll draw a winner on Sunday evening.

Happy weekend!

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Another quick PSA about 'Life Scripted

 The deadline to sign up for Kal Barteski's class over at Studio Calico is tonight at midnight folks, time is almost up! This is a class that I think is going to be BIG. I've been seeing script titles turning up all over Pinterest, on scrapbook pages, and in print ads. It's hot, it's hip, and you'll be learning from the best. Have I mentioned the guest teachers? Awesome.  Don't be kicking yourself tomorrow, go enroll, now!

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This is it...

Tomorrow morning I've got my friend and master organizer Sandy coming over to help me  purge at least 5 years worth of scrapbooking product. I am a little sad that my excessive American Crafts collection is about to bite the dust, but since it's just sitting there collecting said dust, it's time for it to go. I have a somewhat( ok, a big) emotional attachment to all of their product seeing as I was on that team for so long, and I truly loved everything I kept- letting go of it is going to be really hard. I've already given SO much away, but I just don't have room to keep it. I'm ready to have a clean, organized space, and that means really being ruthless and truthful about why I'm keeping stuff I will probably never use. It's hard though!!!

Wish me luck-I"ll post a few pics of the process next week. There may be one of me frantically holding onto all that beautiful AC paper while Sandy tries to pry it from my hands. ;p

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Sugar Rush reveal!

 February's Sugar Rush kits are completely lovely- so pretty and girly.  Even though I was at first a little bit scared off by the pink, I figured out how to make them work for me, and I"m super happy with the layouts I did this month. As always, I push and push and push paper around until I have something I like. My slow scrapbooking process is one I've come to terms with, but not really conducive to having a deadline and a full time job! Add to that a hubby who left for a week in Mexico in business, (we will not discuss it!)  and I was a little behind the 8 ball in terms of time. ( ***Note*** The links won't work until midnight tonight unless you're a subscriber!)

Here are my 2 main only layouts:

This beautiful baby boy is my friend Erin's 4th baby, and her 4th BOY, hence the title of my page. ;) I had the immense honour of seeing this little guy being born, since Erin had asked me to photograph the birth, and I went back to her house 6 weeks later to take the photo above, among others. I knew I wanted to use the hearts as a focal point on the photo, and I chose 4 of them to signify her 4 children. I was originally going to print out my text directly on the patterned paper, but decided to soften it up, and printed it out on vellum instead. Love the effect. The poem is one by ee cummings, and  is one of my favourites. I think it's so beautiful and moving, which is how I feel when I look at this photo- the vulnerability of this little guy snuggled on his Mama's shoulder. So precious. 

I really wanted to sew those hearts down, and the vellum as well, so once my machine is going, I will do so, and repost an updated shot. 

This layout uses an older but beloved photo of my son that I've scrapped before, but I was never completely happy with that layout. I decided to print it out big, and love how it looks grainy and gritty.( bad camera settings!) and the contrast of the b&w pic with the colour. I love his face in this photo, how he is holding that pug ornament with such care, and the story behind it. It was the start of his love affair with pugs, and he still keeps 'Paul' on a shelf beside his bed to this day. :) For the background, I used this cut file by Geralyn, and somehow managed to size it so that the only small circle punch I own fit perfectly into the grid. Total fluke, but I was pretty thrilled! I typed out the journaling on my typewriter on plain printer paper, punched them out, and just popped them in with a dab of glue. Super simple.

The 'Bobby-ism" layout uses a combo of the 3 add-on kits, Gumdrop, Jellybeans,  & Rock Candy. I've started throwing everything all together once I'm done with the main only pages, and I like the free rein of just grabbing stuff. The paper, the stars, and the wood grain were all more masculine feeling ( yay!), and I made this page in under 30 minutes, just adding the words in the speech bubbles and stamping with the main kit stamp.

This is my lovely Mama as a teenager. I have held onto this photo for a long time, waiting to scrap it, and when I saw the gold dipped leaves in the Gum Drop add on, I knew right away it was perfect. I've been dying to try incorporating script onto my layouts, so I typed out the verse on Neenah ( no texture) and used gouache to paint my title. I practiced a few times on printer paper, and then just went for it. Sort of scary,  but I love how it turned out. And an FYI about the gouache versus acrylic: I've tried both, and am not really a fan of the acrylic. It didn't give the opaque, bold black I wanted,  and I was super happy to get that with the gouache. I'm also going to try India Ink and see how that works.

This last page is hybrid, and ultra simple, trying my hand with some of the digital stamps in the shop. 

I wanted to keep the focus on the photo and let it take center stage. I printed out the layout, and decided to back it with some cardstock for a bit of bulk, and a wee strip of the arrow paper from the Jelly Bean add on.

That's it for this month's kits- thanks for visiting!

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