new year, new stash?

as you know, at shopping our stash, we're all about creatively using the stuff we already have; but that doesn't mean we don't enjoy getting our hands on new things, too; especially (but not limited to) during the holidays and the after-xmas sales! so this week we want to see any project, in any colors, with any theme... but... we want to see you use something that's either brand spankin' new, or new to you! easy peasy, right? yeah, we thought so!

you can see that i've made myself a planner/journal for 2015, but i want to re-emphasize that your project doesn't have to be new-year-themed in any way! i just happened to need a planner, having failed to find a pre-made one i loved as much as my cool kinokuniya student dayplanner from last year. so i used one of broderbund printshop's embedded calendar templates to fashion something similar to-- but a bit bigger than-- some i've made in other years.

being a lucky so-and-so with some really awesome crafty friends, i was spoiled for choice when it came to cool NEW stuff i wanted to incorporate: the birch bark pattern on the chipboard numerals is actually very realistic-looking, textured giftwrap i got off the sale rack at pier 1. i'll warn you right now that i'm slightly obsessed with this stuff, so you can expect to see it fairly often over the course of the coming year, lol. the gold leather-ish scalloppy trim came in a crafty gift box from the lovely june; it is both more sparkly and more dimensional in real life, and thus even cooler than the photo implies! the brown shipping tag and vintage library card came from the lovely amy tsuruta, as did my very favorite thing on here. see the little bit of red paper with the poppies on it? that was a wrapper from some chocolates that amy's boss brought back from a trip to russia! amy selflessly forced herself to eat some of said awesomely-bedecked sweets, just so she could send me the fab wrappers--now THAT is friendship, people!!! :)

i was inspired by the gorgeous combination of white and neutrals in the "winter wonder" theme at curtain call inspiration challenge; ok yeah... i added a tiny splash of red, too...

i used the new sketch at stuck on u to guide my layout; but it's admittedly quite a loose take:

i tried to add some swirly bits under and around the tag,  to make my project a bit more like leah's gorgeous sketch, but since my background is another of the torn-layers collages i sooooo love making, it's already quite busy; and additional embellies never really looked right. plus, i know from experience that the cover of a journal that will get used every single day needs to be pretty streamlined; any fussy sticky-out bits are destined to be caught or torn or wrinkled beyond recognition within the first month of laureny use.

each of the 52 or so pages inside the book has a week's worth of space for recording things i've done, and the back is either a coordinating print of crafty double-sided index stock, or some vintage paper i've fused with the modern calendar page using my xyron machine. below you can see a sheet music cover that's definitely got flaws... but to me that just adds to the cool-factor!

there are a few "not-so-vintage" pages, as well, i am a sucker for foreign text magazines, so whenever friends are traveling abroad and ask if they can bring me anything, i give them $10 and tell them to pick the most interesting thing on the rack at the airport before they come home. this has netted me everything from arabic newspapers to french fashion bibles to thai gardening to icelandic gossip magazines! i love the variety and the fact that everyone i know interprets the dictate, "most interesting" in a completely different way! :)

   
this is the biggest planner i've ever made, the cover is 8.5x11" with the pages trimmed to just slightly smaller.

the spiral binding was punched and set with my bind-it-all, and with quite a bit of help from lovely husband jeff. i used to say that he was my bindery assistant whenever i make books, but really i'm his assistant, since he's the one who remembers all the little adjustments for making the machine punch multiple identical sets of holes on multiple sets of pages, whilst still getting everything to all line up correctly at the end. on these occasions i'm basically just an extra set of hands, which perfectly suits my skill-level for engineering-intensive tasks, lol!

having waffled on for far too long already, it's about time i should send you over to see the gorgeous creations of my SOS design team sisters, then break out those new goodies and get your craft on, darlings! ♥

it's beginning to look a lot...

 ...like christmas panic, lol! ok, panic is too strong a word, but there's always a point in the proceedings when i realize that i can either do all the things i need to do OR talk about them, and that's where i am right now. i have lots more december daily pages to show, loads of decor pics, and photos from our last-minute overnight trip this weekend which included a long and photo-heavy stop at the magnificent longwood gardens. i'll be sharing all of those, in dribs and drabs over the weekend, when things calm down! meanwhile, here are some fun giftbags, sitting under our vintage-ornament-bedecked tree, which i love beyond reason:

i used the current sketch at stuck on u sketches for my basic layout, though admittedly i have been pretty loosey-goosey with the proportions of the various elements:

since i usually need to make a bunch of kid-style gift bags at christmas, i almost always go for a hybrid design. i make the basic collage in photoshop using digital elements, print it out, and embellish with real-life lumpy-bumpy details. here's a closeup of riley's bag so you can see the collage properly: 

digi kit: an icy christmas by amber shaw and studio flergs, from sweet shoppe designs; plus a few other digi papers of unknown origin, possibly from katie pertiet of designer digitals; over the rainbow glitter style by studio flergs; colorful real-life paper scraps including october afternoon, echo park, we r memory keepers, studio calico, pebbles and lots more; florals: prima; felt snowflakes, red velvet wired ribbon, plain 10x13 kraft gift bags and gems: michaels; silver star brads, gem brads and xmas badges: oriental trading; ink: colorbox, vintage trimmings from my stash

ok, so which bits are which? the dark green mat at the very back, the red flower and white snowflake, the scatter of red rhinestones, the wonky layered trees, the red and white braided vintage trim and the machine stitching are real life elements... everything else is digi, bumped up with varying degrees of drop-shadow. i always go strongest on the name so it realllllly shows up... because let's face it, we all LOVE to see our names in big sparkly letters on a fancy present, right?

my favorite part of these miiiiiight be the gloriously wonky trees. the ones below are from lindsay's bag. there were a number of styles included in the digi kit i used, "an icy christmas" by amber shaw and studio flergs from sweet shoppe designs, and that's what i used in my digital composition, to get all the sizes and shapes lined up. then, before i printed out the collage, i deleted the digital versions of the trees, so that i could replace them with real-life versions, which i made by hand-cutting lots of colorful paper scraps into triangles, and stacking them in various combinations. this was definitely a fun and super-easy thing to do and i can imagine making a collaborative project in which a grown-up makes and prints the digi collage and some kiddos make the trees and attach the other embellies! 

i hope that your holiday preparations are going well and that you are taking time to enjoy christmas eve and look forward to the big day tomorrow! ♥♥♥

still feasting...

...over at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ that is; we continue to celebrate all the foods of the holidays. there are sooooooo many tasty treats at this time of year, it sometimes feels very difficult to make good decisions (restraint is HARD, darlings!) but luckily on christmas cards, we can go as wild as we want without caloric repercussions!

patterned paper: echo park, my mind's eye, doodlebug; mini bingo card: jenni bowlin; digi santa pocket scrapbook card (printed on kodak premium glossy paper): katie pertiet, designer digitals; dimensional chipboard sticker: echo park; candy and cocoa die cuts: october afternoon; woodgrain sticker and happy holidays card: my mind's eye; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, sewing machine 

i've used the fabulous current (nov 21) sketch at stuck on u sketches, which works rather nicely on both cards AND layouts! i think it's quite a fun coincidence that the "happy holidays" sentiment card being beneath the santa card, and all of them being clustered on the strong horizontal line, makes it look like santa is emerging from a particularly festive and well decorated chimney! :)

stephanie has also made another a lovely "christmas feast" card to inspire you, why not hop over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and check it out!

SOS177: NOT ready for xmas!

this week's challenge at shopping our stash has a pretty good twist to it, are you ready? we want you to break out those christmas stamp sets... BUT... (...wait foooooor itttttttttttttt...) we want you to use one or more of the stamps for a NON-christmas card or project! told ya, it's a little twisty* but once you start thinking about it, kind of fun! as it turns out, i only have ONE xmas stamp set** but luckily it contained a stamp i could use. first, here's my card:

banner stamp: my mind's eye (stamped multiple times using various colors of ranger archival ink and then cut apart and re-assembled as a multi-colored banner); patterened paper: american crafts dear lizzie and amy tangerine, studio calico, recollections, echo park, doodlebug; i ♥ sticker: love elsie; happy birthday sticker: crate paper; glossy white cardstock: ranger; chalk ink for edges: colorbox; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, gluedots, sewing machine

can you tell which element it is? well duh, lauren, of course they can, because there's only one stamped thing: the banner! here it is in its set, which was from my mind's eye "12 days of xmas " line:

i used the new (nov 7) sketch at stuck on u sketches for my layout, it's a good 'un, don't you think?

also, almost every single element on my card was a pre-cut "leftover" from something else, found in the baggie of miscellaneous cool stuff... in which i store things i've cut out but not used. i got the mini polaroid, the flowers, the square-w-rounded-corners clouds piece, and the strip of pink border-punched paper all from there, woohoo!

for additional examples of meritorious stash usage, not to mention some downright AWESOME cards, check out my lovely DT sisters' work at shopping our stash! ♥

*also, i think we'll be able to tell pretty quickly this week who really read the description and who saw just the "xmas stamps" part on a challenge aggregator site and linked up without even looking at the DT cards; so that will be fun, lol! :)

**yes, i am pitiful, what can i say?

when in doubt, add a cupcake!

that pretty much sums up my card-making philosophy. bling is good, too; and banners. it never hurts to use your favorite color, either; which in my case, is ♥PINK♥! (i may have mentioned that before...?) bearing in mind all of this advice, i sat down last night and made this:

patterned paper: crate paper, k and co, october afternoon, basic grey, prima; tag: pink paislee; velvet floral: petaloo; banners: crate paper; pearl flourish and border punch: recollections; twine: doodlebug; lace from my stash; ink: colorbox; adhesives: elmer's brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, glue dots, sewing machine

hey wait, i almost forgot the most important factor of all: start with a really awesome sketch! stuck on u sketches happens to have a brand new one, which i really love. i've condensed it quite a bit to fit everything inside my six inch square card... in retrospect, i wish i'd've left a little more white space, actually; but i think you can still see the bones?

there's loads more inspiration at stuck on u sketches, plus they have other challenges each month, for using diecuts and even some cool pocket-scrapbooking themes. you should probably go and check those out, darlings! ♥

hello, sweetie!

ok, so, that's NOT a doctor who reference, though i did briefly consider making a "river song" birthday card for my friend josh.* but in fact the title is actually this week's challenge at shopping our stash for which we'd like to see a "sweet" theme of some sort, in honor of saturday, october 18th being "sweetest day". you could make something for your "sweetie" and/or include images of sweets like cupcakes or candy on your project. guess which i did? yes, indeedy, sweets... especially cupcakes... are kind of a favorite of mine, both artistically and nutritionally, lol. here's my card:

patterned paper: amy tangerine and dear lizzy- both by american crafts, creative imaginations, basic grey, echo park, crate paper; birthday tickets and make a wish journal card: october afternoon; cupcake sticker: echo park; brad: american crafts; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape

once again, i've used the current (oct 10) sketch at stuck on you sketches. i'm really loving those lately, i suppose because i like to make cards with lots (and lots!) (and LOTS!) of layers, and their sketches seem to have just the right level of detail for me. of course, most normal folk would use these on a 12x12 layout; but obviously "normal" is not a word that gets used very often in the laurniverse! :)

i'm sure you'd like to jump on over to SOS now and see what the other DT members have made, i assure you it's always a trip worth making, but this week we have the lovely ira huberts as our guest designer, so be sure to leave her some love! ♥

*i might still do it, actually, i mean who wouldn't like a river song birthday card??! unless you've never seen doctor who and you have no idea what i'm talking about, in which case i suppose it'd fall a bit flat, wouldn't it? yeah. sorry. my friend josh would definitely love it, tho! :)

more patterny goodness

we are still celebrating the delights of holiday pattern-combining at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥; specifically, we'd like to see cards that have at least three different patterned papers... but there is no limit on how many prints you may amass if you're feeling quite maximalist, as i was this week!*

patterned paper: october afternoon, echo park, k and co; patterned tags and alphabet stickers: (seriously old school) basic grey (that i still really love!); poinsettia: prima; other florals and leaves plus white bobbly trimming: making memories; brad: my mind's eye; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape runner, 3m foam tape, scotch double stick tape, sewing machine

i was again drawn to the current sketch at stuck on u sketches; technically, i think their sketches are intended mostly for layouts-- of which their team's examples are particularly inspiring; but they say they do get the occasional card, and i'm pretty sure they'll be getting additional ones from me since they seem to include just enough artfully arranged layers to make their strong shapes especially interesting,! (i'm not just saying that because they chose my sadly-not-a-chicken card to win their absolutely awesome august blog candy, though they did, and i thank them very much indeed!)

after you check out the fabulous fare at stuck on u sketches, be sure to hop over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ to see stephanie's awesome card and maybe... link up one of your own?

*ok, yeah, i am MOST weeks, actually; what can i say, i like pattern-on-pattern, and i always have;  and quite a few layers, too, for that matter! :)