Neat & Tangled Release Week

I’m so excited to be part of the design team for Neat & Tangled Stamps, featuring hand-drawn, heart-warming images and sentiments by Danielle Walls. The stamps are made from high-quality, clear photopolymer.

I had a lot of fun working with the Hey Cookie and Sweet Home stamp sets. I didn’t actually bake gingerbread as I prepared my cards, but I did buy gingerbread cookies to get into a holiday frame of mind!

For my first card, I envisioned a cup of hot cocoa and a peppermint stick with my color choices of cocoa brown, red and white. The white embossed images stand out crisply on the cardstock. I put a grommet through the top of the stamped house and added silver cord.

JMSweetHome2-blog

Supplies: Neat & Tangled Hey Cookie and Sweet Home stamp sets; Stampin’ Up cardstock; Versamark ink; Hero Arts white embossing powder; Making Memories grommet; silver cord

I enjoy paper piecing, and for my second card using the Sweet Home set, I created a scene primarily using Echo Park patterned papers. I love this house so much I want to move in!

JMSweetHome1-blog

Supplies: Neat & Tangled Sweet Home stamp set; Echo Park patterned paper; Stampin’ Up and Neenah cardstock; Versamark ink; Hero Arts white embossing powder; Hero Arts midtone ink; Distress ink; machine stitching

The Hey Cookie people are simply adorable. I stamped and embossed the pair onto cocoa cardstock and added them to a die cut tag. Those are Pepperidge Farm gingerbread people inside the box, wink.

JMHeyCookie-blog

Supplies: Neat & Tangled Hey Cookie stamp set; Echo Park patterned paper; MFT tag die; Stampin’ Up and Neenah cardstock; Versamark ink; Hero Arts white embossing powder; Hero Arts midtone ink; Doodlebug twine; Michaels treat box

Head over to the Neat & Tangled Blog to enter today’s giveaway – the winner will receive a Neat & Tangled stamp set of their choice. And be sure to visit there all week to see the rest of the releases, enter additional giveaways, as well as check out the inspiration from the design team and guest artists. This week’s featured stamp sets will be available for purchase at the Neat & Tangled store on Friday, August 10.

Simple Scrapper August Premium Membership Blog Hop

I particularly enjoyed scrapping with this month’s Simple Scrapper Premium Membership templates. I prefer to scrap seasonally, so I used photos and memories from previous summer vacations in my layouts. (We’re having a stay-vacation this year.)

For the single-photo template, I chose a photo from a 2003 vacation to Maui. We met up with photographer Rick Larsen in Kaanapali at sunset for a family photo shoot.

manis-aug12-single1-take2-blog

Supplies: Template from Simple Scrapper Premium Membership; Echo Park Paradise Beach; Everyday Storytelling: Summer by Kristin Cronin Barrow and Jenn Barrette (chevron paper); Katie Pertiet kraft; photo by Ric Larsen; Pacifico (title) and Futura (journaling)

With the two-photo template, I scrapped photos from a vacation to Martha’s Vineyard in 1999. To be honest, it’s hard for me to tell if these photos are from 1998 or 1999, but Paul happens to be wearing a hat in the photo that he received from my aunt in April 1999. Thank goodness for clothing clues!

mv-aug12-single2-blog

Supplies: Template from Simple Scrapper Premium Membership; Pink Paislee; Designs by Dani; Echo Park; Katie Pertiet; Fonts: Lobster (title), Traveling Typewriter (journaling)

For the multi-photo template, I scrapped our tour of the Eiffel Tower in 2007. The photo of the tower worked well in the tall photo spot.

manis-aug12-single3-blog

Supplies: Template from Simple Scrapper Premium Membership; Echo Park Note to Self; Patti Knox brads; Fonts: Gloucester MT (title) and Futura (journaling)

Check out the inspiration from the rest of the Simple Scrapper Design Team and be sure to enter this month’s giveaway for a one-month trial subscription to Simple Scrapper.

Julie Aldridge
Sue Althouse
Lisa Corbin-Polak
Ronnie Crowley
Jess Forster
Michele Holcomb
Margrethe Aas Johnsen
Aimee Maddern
Valerie Mangan
Amy Kingsford
Pam Lozano
Kat Tankersley

The Premium Membership at Simple Scrapper provides skills and shortcuts to help you simplify and find more meaning in your memory keeping.

Simple Scrapper August Challenge

This month the Simple Scrapper Challenge is to create a layout using a 3×3 grid, based on the sketch below. There’s a link at Simple Scrapper for a free digital template.

I scrapped photos from a 1998 vacation to Tortola primarily using the Echo Park Paradise Beach digital kit, along with elements from assorted Echo Park kits and a custom-blend of Katie Pertiet’s kraft papers. I haven’t done much scrapping using bits and bobs or a miscellany of items. It was fun to work on each square individually while at the same time take into consideration the whole picture.

manis-grid-aug-2012-blog

 

CAS-ual Fridays Challenge #63

This week the CAS-ual Friday challenge is to create a Clean And Simple project using the colors-lime, aqua & navy.

I almost always enjoy color challenges and had some time to take two different approaches with my submissions.

The first uses one of my favorite Paper Smooches sets – “Reflections.”

CASJuly272912

Supplies: Paper Smooches Reflections; Paper Smooches Simply Said; Memento + Archival inks

My second approach was a happy accident. I don’t own a nesting star die set; I own a Sizzix set that has four stars on one block. It took some finagling to position the banner strip in just the right place on the star die. I had planned to adhere the three banner strips to the card and have the negative space be empty. In other words, the stars would be the white of the cardstock underneath. But when I saw that the punched stars could be put back into the banner die strips, I decided I liked that idea better.

CASCongrats

Supplies: Echo Park papers; Paper Smooches Simply Said; MFT banner die; Sizzix star die; Memento ink

Stretch Your Stamps: Hero Arts Paper Cottage

I finally had a chance to make another card m the Stretch Your Stamps course, which finished up last week. This card was inspired by one of Kristina Werner’s. She used a different background stamp, a reverse stamp, giving a dramatic look.

I have only used this Hero Arts Basic Grey Paper Cottage collection background once before. It’s quite whimsical. For this card, I colored the stamped images with Copic markers. I had a hard time choosing which colors to use for which objects and felt frustrated with my lack of some softer Copics colors. I’m not a huge fan of purple, yet it seems I used that color the most! Well, the card is super simple to make, so another day I’ll color the image differently or try colored pencils.

Paper Cottage

Supplies: Echo Park papers; Paper Smooches Simply Said; MFT banner die; Sizzix star die; Memento ink