Designer Showcase: No People Pages

Scrapbooking people is always fun, but have you tried to create a page without any people? It is important to capture those memories that may not have people in... so get ready for some fabulous contributor inspiration on no people pages! :)

Dolores created a bunch of no people pages. As you can see each layout captures something special to her from her dog's paws to landscape photos!  Take a peak as these beautiful pages!

Next up is Sara who created this amazing page! She captured this memory just perfectly and journaled a lot about her feeling! Take a peek at Sara's layout ...

Cathy created a few no people pages as well!  Each layout captures a Christmas photo with lots of memory behind it! I love that she scrapped so many things like ornaments, the tree and the decorated house! Take a look at her pages.

Hope you are inspired to create your own non-people page! Have a great day!

Enhancing your Embellishments with Chalk!

I have been experimenting with chalk lately and I am finding that this medium has some wonderful qualities that are really a plus when working on scrapbook pages or cards.  Chalk is very easy to use, is simple to apply and requires no special tools to get fabulous looks.  Here is the chalk I used to enhance the embellishments on my layout.

The only tools I use to apply chalk are cotton balls and cotton swabs.  These pick up plenty of chalk very easy and are soft enough to make blending more than one color together a breeze.  Now let me show you my layout and explain how I used chalk to bring some color to parts of this page.

Here is my pup, Maggie, enjoying one of her many toys.  She has a few that are special to her and I think this pink ring is one of them.  On this layout I kept my color palette to shades of pink, green and white with touches of black.  When I began to put the elements together I thought the solid white flowers and white punched border at the bottom of the page needed something else to give the page more interest.  The chalk worked perfect to get the effect I wanted.  First I applied some chalk with a cotton ball to the punched border.  I used two colors, first applying a red tone, then going back over the same area with a pink.  This gave me the soft rich hue you see here.  The cotton ball application is excellent when you want to fade a chalk color into your background paper, in my case the white border strip.  Next I took my cotton swabs and used the same two chalk colors to add pink centers to my solid white flowers.  This worked fine on the large flower and my small hydrangeas.  The chalk stays in place well on cardstock and paper flowers, so I don't use any fixative once I have finished adding color.  The end result was much more interesting than what I started with.  Chalk also works great with stencils or masks and can make a beautiful background for your layout.  Hope you will give chalk a try and have some fun! 

Create Your Own Cupcake

Today I have a template for you to create your very own cupcake or muffin.  I have used the template for both and its looks great!  Here is a sample of a finished cupcake.

To give my cupcake some dimension I traced the cupcake bottom about 1/2 inch bigger all the around  so would it fit the top after I folded pleats in it to look like a cupcake paper.  For the top I cut strips of paper that matched the top and moistens them slightly with a wet cloth. Then crumpled them to and glued them on the top.

Here is the template.  Enjoy creating your own cupcake or muffin!

Reader's Card + MERRY CHRISTMAS

Hi everyone.. are you all ready for Christmas? I am super excited! Before the blog takes a short break until Monday, I wanted to share one last card, which is a reader's card! One more reminder:
Don't forget to apply for the featured artist spots on Fridays in Feb and March. Read all about it here.

Ok onto the gorgeous holiday card by Melanie J. She sent in this card when we posted the designer showcase: cards with no words. I love how festive this is and it doesn't need words, it is perfect the way it is :) :)

Don't forget to visit Melanie's blog here for more inspiration! Thanks for sending in your card!

We all wanted to wish you a very Merry Christmas from Ideas for Scrapbookers! Have a great weekend!

Designer Showcase: Monochromatic Pages

The monochromatic look can give a really interesting and beautiful appearance to your scrapbook pages. To get the monochromatic look, chose a basic color and stay at the same hue but different brightnesses. Sometimes it can be hard to not want to add contrasting colors ... if you like you can add a tiny bit of of another color. Check out these examples by the fabulous contributors (and two from me) to know what I am talking about!

Nancy created this amazing page using the reddish/pink tones in various brightness. As you can see she has used the colors from very light pink to red. It really gives this page a gorgeous look! Nancy also used a template/sketch created by Heather a week ago. You can see it here. Check out Nancy's page!

Lisa created three gorgeous monochromatic pages. The first page gives a beautiful wintery feel by using monochromatic whites! This really makes the photo pop while decorating the pages quite well!

Next, Lisa created a monochromatic page using a light blue all the way to down to white a bit of silver! Can you see how much the eyes of her daughter stand out? I love the accents and that "icy" blue feel to the page!

Lisa's last pages featured the gorgeous colors of brownish yellow. This turned out just perfect as a "dreamy" and whimsical page. The monochromatic colors really add a that perfect touch to achieve this look!

Here are a couple monochromatic pages by me. The first page features a color palette of very light pink to red for a neat anniversary page.

My second page features a white to gray color scheme in honor of the beautiful baby swan I saw at the park! As you can see the photos stand out quite well in the page and I stayed with bright green to give that fresh spring feel (rather than turning my page into black and white for a full monochromatic page).

I hope you have enjoyed these monochromatic pages :)

Two Christmas Trees Sketch and Template

I hope you are all enjoying this holiday season. I love so many things about Christmas, the carols, wonderful dramas, great food and the time we spend with friends and family. In the spirit of the season I have created a sketch and template to share with you today. The layout features a background of two Christmas Trees which are very simple triangles. Here's is a great way to use some of those gorgeous patterned papers that you may have picked up and saved for a special family page. Here is my layout titled "The Joy of Christmas".

My layout was completed using a digital kit called Tis the Season for Family by Kristin Cronin-Barrow. I love the rich reds and muted greens in this kit. Below is the sketch for our paper scrapbookers.

I have also put this in a Photoshop Elements file which can be downloaded. Please click the file name below to download the PSD file.

Two Christmas Trees Template

Hope you take some wonderful photos this Christmas. Warmest wishes!!



Looking For Featured Artists on Fridays!

Hi everyone, I am looking for Featured Artists for the last week of January, February and March 2011. Sharing featured artists is one of my most FAVORITE aspects of the blog!
Featured Artists share a bio and photo of themselves plus these post ideas:
-A tutorial with photos
-Project using templates (with a special tip and photos on how they created it)
-A project from start to finish (with a special tip and photos on how they created it)
-How to do a certain thing (like journaling or design elements)
-Shortcuts on how to create projects
-Anything else creative you can think of (I am open to anything :) )

You can see what previous featured artists have done here. Would you like to be a featured artist on the blog and share some of your creativity?
Send me an email at scrappingpam73@yahoo.com with the title of "featured artist" and we can schedule a date! Thanks so much!

NOTE: Previous featured artist may send me another email if they would like to be featured again!

A Snowy Comparison

I can't be the only one that's constantly searching for the best products to create snow on my layouts! I thought it would be neat to do a little comparison of the products that I use so everyone can see how well they work and how much coverage they provide. I created this little chart below using the products I currently have on hand.

From left to right I used: Martha Stewart's Coarse Marble Glitter, Martha Stewart's Fine Crystal Glitter, Stampendous "Cotton Ball White" Fun Flock, Stickles "Frosted Lace" Glitter Glue, Martha Stewart's Fine Marble Glitter, Martha Stewart's "Snow" Glitter, White Acrylic Paint, and Mudd Puddles Sand Paint in "Snow".

You can see that each product has a varying degree of coverage and shine. My favorite thing to do is to mix multiple different products to create a unique look. For example, on the layout below I turned the acrylic snowflakes over and used a light wash of blue alcohol ink on them. After the alcohol ink dried, I applied Stickles and let them dry. More of the background was showing through than I wanted so I finally went over them with white paint. It had the added bonus of sealing everything in and hiding where I applied my glue. I liked how they turned out so much that I did the same thing with the acrylic alphabet.

 In this next layout I used lots of white and blue papers to convey an icy cold feeling. When I decided to add more glitter to the project, I matched the grey in my photos and my papers with Platinum Stickles. It adds a ton of bling but it's not too much! (Just around the circles on the snowflakes.)

This layout is another example of mixing supplies. I was working on adding a snowy feel to the white backgrounds of the snowflakes because they felt too plain to me. First, I added the Stampendous "Fun Flock" product. It didn't show up as well as I had hoped so I ended up adding some of the Martha Stewart "Snow" glitter. I ended up loving the finished snowflakes. I also added "Frosted Lace" Stickles around the circles in the center of the snowflakes and around the outer edges of the die cut paper.

Also, don't forget that you can convey a snowy feeling without using anything but paper! You might not even NEED any other product. For example, on this layout the curving lines of the pink paper are similar to snow drifts, and the scalloped white edge along the bottom has the feel of a snow bank too.

Quick Holiday Page Plus Template/Sketch

As you may know from looking at my work in my gallery, I struggle to create "quick" pages. My usual page takes about two hours, Christmas pages can take me even longer. So, I challenged myself to create a quick holiday page in under thirty minutes. This was quite the challenge for me. I went with a family Christmas photo (you can see Daphne, our Great Dane, is terrified of the camera LOL).  I decided to let the embellishments do most of the action for the page. I love pages that have curves, circles, and waves. Why can't the embellishments do all of that? I created a simple background with one circle attached to a straight piece of paper and matted my photo to that. The rest are embellishments, which makes this page a quick page!! Here is the end result. Most of the embellishments are from Anna Griffin's Holiday Traditions and Calisto Christmas. The swirlie is from Prima.

Here is the sketch I created for the page.

In case you want the digital layered template, you can download it here (to learn how to use clipping masks to use this template, click here):

http://www.4shared.com/photo/4o6IlOf8/pc_christmas_page.html

Enjoy ;)

Tips for Great Journaling by Chelle!

I'm a firm believer that journaling, the stories that go with our photos, is a critical part of scrapbooking. I love to read the journaling on other's layouts. Over the years I've collected quite a few tips on making journaling more engaging to the reader. Today I'd like to share a few.

All summer long there was a funny looking box on my Grandpa’s front lawn. It was his night crawler trap. You see, Grandpa loved to fish, but fish don’t swim up to a hook and try to eat it…unless there is an interesting worm on the hook.
The same is true for your journaling. You will attract readers if the first thing they read is a hook: an interesting opening sentence or paragraph.

Go Fishing Tip #1: Start in the middle

My favorite example of this comes from a children’s story about a class fieldtrip to the farm. The child in the story reports on how her day went beginning with “The field trip was great until we had to leave early when the farmer got mad at us,” to which her Mom asks why? “Because the pigs were on the bus.” “Why were the pigs on the bus?” She continues explaining what happened, little by little (and backwards) unraveling the story until her Mom understands the whole thing.

I don’t recommend telling a story backwards (unless it’s really short) but the idea for an opening intriguing fact is a good one.

Suppose I want to tell the story of the day my daughter ran away from home. I could start the story with: “One day Natalie ran away from home.” I might as well start with "the butler did it" No one would read that book...they already know the ending. So I think I’ll start my story like this:

I burned the cookies. Badly. I was distracted...
I could have also started with “I thought my heart had stopped”

Go Fishing Tip #2: Start with something controversial or questionable.

Hiking is dangerous.

Blue is the best color.
Readers will want to continue to see WHY you made the statement. Here's one of my favorites by my friend Melanie

I am not what you would call a handy man.

You can read the rest of this story here

Go Fishing Tip #3: “Once Upon a Time”

We’ve been conditioned since childhood to wonder what comes after those our short words.
So the next time you are ready to add journaling to your layout, think for a moment of your opening sentence...and make it a hook!
I'd LOVE to see what stories you tell: chelles.creations1@gmail.com
--Chelle


(CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CHELLE)

Introducing Our Featured Artist for Dec, 17

Good morning and hope your day is off to a great start! I have a special digital art creator, scrapbook teacher, and fabulous scrapbooker that I am excited to feature today!  She owns the store Scrap Matters and has so many amazing digital kits that shares there! There is just about every theme and color palette available for your digital pages! Her blog is filled with lots of fun layouts using her fabulous digi kits! Please check out her blog here: http://chelles-creations.blogspot.com/ .  Let's get to know our artist ... and don't forget to check out her post on journaling ideas coming up in a few minutes!!

Hi!  I’m Chelle.  I live in a small rural community in Northern Utah with my husband and four of our kids still living at home…two are away at college.  No pets.  Six kids keep me plenty busy.  LOL!  I’ve been scrapping forever.  In my first scrapbooking class I was taught to mat my photos with construction paper and attach them with rubber cement.  LOL!  Over the years I’ve filled 45 albums!  Two years ago I discovered digital scrapbooking, and shortly thereafter opened my digital scrapbook designs store at ScrapMatters.com.  Besides designing, I teach a journaling class, Tell Me More starting again this Jan 10th.  I have a special coupon code for you:  Ideas4_5off  for $5 off the class registration fee.

Links:  blog:  http://chelles-creations.blogspot.com/
store:  http://shop.scrapmatters.com/chelles-creations/
class:  http://shop.scrapmatters.com/product.php?productid=7186&cat=0&page=1

Gift Card Giving

When giving gift cards, I always like to make them a little special by giving them in a new way.  This year I came up with a couple of ideas for holding the gift cards.

You may have seen a few of these paper trees around.  They are super easy to make.  I started with a foam cone shape from the local craft store.  I decided to mix it up a bit by cutting a slit in the bottom of the cone so that I could insert a gift card which I had placed in a binder clip.  The blinder clip provides a stand for my tree and allows for easy removal of the gift card.  I covered the cone with rectangular scraps of paper approximately 1 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch.  I curled the edges, and starting at the bottom worked my way to the top, layering each piece in a spiral fashion.  After adhering all the paper to the cone I added bits of bling flourishes I cut apart.  After the gift card is removed, you still have a fun, festive, holiday decor item.

The next gift I made was for those coffee shop gift cards we are all so fond of giving and receiving.  I hand cut the card from a template (see link below) and decorated.  The card can stand on its own and I thought it made a really cute theme gift.

And finally, a money holder.  It is the perfect size for bills, a chocolate bar, savings bond, etc.  I have attached a template for this one as well.

Hope you have fun.

Templates