Sunday Sketch with Emma

Hello CTK friends!  Emma back on the blog today to share this weeks Sunday Sketch.  As you know, I do love the sketch challenges ;)

First up, let's have a look at our fun sketch that we're working with:

Our sketch is 12x12 but I haven't created one of those sized layouts for years now, so I had to get a little creative in down-sizing it to fit my Life Crafted album.  Here's a look at the page I've put together:

I've tried to keep to the similar design but just brought the side elements in closer together!  Because the background was plain I thought I'd mix things up by using a little bit of the Vicki Boutin glaze along with the Carta Bella stencil (available in the store).  I'm not big on using the mixed media goodies I have but every now and then I give them a try.

 I love how this adds a subtle pattern to my backing cardstock!

Once my background had dried (the waiting for things to dry always gets me, I even used a heat-gun - just seems to take forever, ha) I started building my layers under my photo.  I used a couple of tags included in the  month's cut-aparts and layered them ontop of the tiny alphabet stickers included in this month's Life Crafted kit.

I typed my journaling up on my computer and just picked a type-writer font.  I've popped it at the top of my page to fill a bit of that white space.

For the bottom of my page I tried to match the sketch - I went with the pink woodgrain paper (to match in with the pink tag I'd used) and added that cute coffee stamp/puffy sticker at the bottom left!

Once my photo and journaling were in place I just added a few extra embellishments - I just love the puffy stickers included in the Life Crafted kit this month and they're a perfect match for this page about our new coffee shop!

This little page came together in no time using the sketch! I love creating these pages for my Life Crafted album - it's such a fun and stress-free size to work with.  I've filled one album already and already a few pages into my second!  Really looking forward to buying the new plastic pockets so I can add a little variety to my album as well!

Thanks so much for joining me on the blog today.  I can't wait to see your pages using it.  Be sure to share your page with us in the CTK Facebook Fanpage!

Product Highlight with Emma

Hello CTK friends :)

Emma on the blog today and I am so happy to be able to share one of my projects using the April kits.  For this layout I wanted to focus on using the fun Maggie Holmes Sunny Days Accent Stickers that are included in this months Add-on Kit!

First up, here's a look at the page I put together :)

This is sized to fit in my Life Crafted album and as usual I've gone with a white cardstock background (I just can't break out of the habit!).  I added a few black ink splatters at the top and bottom of my page and centered my photo.

I love layers so I've gone added one of the stickers at the very bottom then on top of that I've popped one of the die-cut pieces (also from the add-on), one of the 3x4 LC cards and a small section of one of the digital TN papers before laying the photo on top!  Yes, I love layers :)

Once I had my photo cluster all set I had some fun picking out my favorite stickers to add around it.  That yellow "sunshine" sticker was a must have but I wanted to add a bit more dimension (rather than have it stick straight onto the photo) so I added a scrap bit of paper behind then used a foam-dot to give it some depth). 

The "so this happened" title is actually from the digital journaling cards - I just pulled the words out and re-sized it to fit my page then fussy-cut around the lettering - super easy!

The stickers are such a quick and easy way to add dimension to the page - and I'll often bend them up slightly on the edges just to give the page a bit more movement (like the yellow sticker, I'll add a bit of scrap paper behind to stop the sticker sticking properly!).

That umbrella sticker is so cute, knew I wanted to use it straight away but I couldn't find any photo's with an umbrella to match, but I figured a beach shot was close enough :) 

To fill a bit of the white space at the top/bottom of my page, and to balance things out, I've used a bit more of the digital paper I'd printed (I just printed it onto plain copy paper so it's nice and thin!).

At the bottom of my page I've created a small cluster on the left side using the seashell stickers, which are a perfect match for a beach photo, then layered a print & cut word (something I created using silhouette studio).  And those flip-flops on the right side just finish it off :)

Love how this one finished up and even though I've used all those stickers I've still managed to create a page with lots of dimension!  Thanks so much for joining me on the blog today - I hope this will inspire you to use those fun stickers on your projects!

In My Studio - Album Storage

Hi CTK friends!  This month the Scrapbook Team are sharing some ideas on how they store one of our most important items - all our albums :)

Hi sweet friends!

I keep my albums along with some other scrappy stuff as cardstock and other goodies in my IKEA Kallax shelf unit which is placed in front of my desk. Since I haven't got enough albums for ALLLLL of my layouts I also store some of my pages with page protectors in boxes that fits in my Kallax shelf.

I actually store all my albums in an old kitchen hutch that we painted white.  My little 6x8 albums are the perfect size for the shelves.  The hutch is just tucked behind the door as you enter my room (also holds my mini-albums and alpha baskets).

All my layouts are filed away in albums by year (of photo) and I've just typed up some very plain looking labels for the spines.  I'd say that 90% of my layouts are about my son or niece so I just mix them together (rather than split them up per person) and I've stuck with black cloth albums for consistency.  While I wait for more albums to arrive (they are so hard to get over here!) I just pop them into the plastic sleeves and sit them in a clear tray in my shelving unit.  So they are still easy to flip through if anyone wants to look at what I've created! :)

I love the IKEA Kallax cubes for most scrapbooking storage. I have some knock-off Target brand cubes too, which is where I store the albums I have. I’m going to let you in on a little secret though...the majority of the scrapbook layouts don’t hold residence in my albums. See that stack of Citrus Twist Kits boxes next to my albums? Yep, that’s where most of my layouts live. Maybe one day I’ll buy more albums and be able to empty those boxes. But for now, that’s where they’ll stay. 

I am keeping my larger albums, mostly 12x12 or 6x8 in an Ikea  shelf.

My smaller, handmade minis are put away in Boxes, which fit in the Ikea shelves perfectly. I can grab them out whenever I feel like looking at them.

Since I’ve started making Traveler’s Notebooks this year, I bought some covers to fit them in and they look so pretty on the shelf.

Hi there!  Living in an apartment and having to share my workspace with the family means that everything has to have a place at all times.   We opted to transform our sofa table (Kallax Unit from Ikea) to storage/display furniture, so I use empty cabinet space to store my most recent filled scrapbook albums, layouts (in their plastic sleeves) and TN inserts.  Once the album gets filled, it moves to the bookcase in the office/den space of our apartment, so that anyone can access them at all times.

Hello lovelies, Neftali with you, and welcome back to another happy section of my crafty space! Today I am sharing how I store my albums. And well, I can’t say that I’ve got it all completely figured out for all of my albums, but here is what I’ve got so far. At the moment I keep all of my 6x8 mini albums, planners, notebooks, Travelers Notebooks, and Mini Albums in this 3x3 cubbie shelf unit. On top of it sits our television, since my scrappy space is shared in our tiny living room space. I like to keep my albums separated by size for the most part, but I also store them by type: TN’s together, Mini Albums together (in a wire basket), 6x8’s together, as well as planners and notebooks together. It’s pretty simple! 

But where are my 12x12 albums?? You might be asking yourself that question and, well, I have a simple answer. I don’t have any 12x12 albums! As crazy as that might sound, I have opted to keep my 12x12 and 8 1/2 x 11 layouts in plastic Iris containers until we move to a bigger home where I can buy a beautiful display storage system for those larger books. So, yes, I do have a nice growing stack of filled up iris boxes under my desk, but I’m happy with that at the moment. As far as album storage goes, this is how I opt to store mine considering the space limitations in my home. I hope you find some of these ideas useful for your small spaces. Thanks for visiting today! 

Sunday Sketch with Trina, Nathalie & Emma

Hi CTK friends! It's Nathalie, Emma & Trina on the blog with today's Sunday Sketch :)

First up, here is a look at the sketch:

It seems like most days with my daughter, McKenzie, off at college, that my pages tell many of her "away" stories. I'm lucky enough that she calls, texts and sends photos home on a regular basis. This page is sharing one of her stories, so it seems perfect to use this vintage book page from our October Little Things Scrapbooking kit. I started by simply stitching the book page down to my 6" x 8" PL page to create a mini layout.

The little crosses on the sketch inspired me and (mostly) I grabbed from the Scrapbooking kit to fussy cut them from the smaller patterned papers. Pretty much I love sprinkles of anything on my pages!

I also used exclusive patterned papers and embellishments from the Little Things Pocket Life kit that I absolutely love. In addition, the Little Things October Traveler's TN stamp was perfect for stamping sentiments on the page. I used my Tiny Attacher to staple some elements on the page. (Who else uses a Tiny Attacher just for the look of having staples without actually stapling something down?!)

I don't like flat pages and often add foam pop dots beneath some elements to add dimension. I did this with the fussy cut flowers in the photo below.

I can't wait to see what you do with this month's sketch. As you can see, all 3 of us took different approaches to the sketch, so have fun and please share!

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Hello friends!  No surprise that I love a sketch; it's such a huge time saver for me (and life is pretty crazy right now so it's the perfect solution to get a layout finished!).  And this week's sketch is a super fun one.  Here's my take:

I have used this month's Main kit and teamed it up with a few sentiments from this months TN Stamp.

My background paper is plain white cardstock cut slightly smaller than 6x8 so I could back that up with one of the pattern papers (Indigo Hills v2 “Ridge” by Pinkfresh) to create a subtle border around my page.

For the background I used one of the stencils from Vicki Boutin's Field Notes Stencil Set (sadly it's sold out at the moment!).  One of the circle stencils has the exact cross pattern I needed so I just used some modeling paste (left it in white) and positioned them in a few spots on the top left of my page (to match the sketch).

I also hand-cut a few of the crosses from one of the Maggie Holmes papers using my scissors (so they're far from perfect!) and just popped them on top, once the modeling paste had dried ;)

I positioned my photo roughly centered, height wise)  on the right of my page and instead of having 2 photo's like the sketch, I've just used a large die-cut piece to anchor it.  Then I stamped a few sentiments underneath to fill the white space underneath (how perfect is this month's TN stamp?! Love it!).

To finish off the page I added a couple of the flower die-cuts in opposite corners of my page, popped a couple puffy heart stickers on, then added a bit of machine stitching (because my pages feel naked without it) and called it done! 

The only slow part  in putting this page together was waiting for the modeling paste to dry (but even then I just left it sitting under the heater vent in my room so it didn't take long lol).

Take care, Em xo

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Hi there! How awesome are Trina and Emma's designs!  I find sketches a great starting point for a project, as they are a building base of your page; but let me show you my take on the sketch...

I used the Main and Embellishment kits along with the TN stamp set to create my page, and of course a bit of mixed media!

I created my background using some watercolor paper and a few of the Pinkfresh Studio liquid watercolors (available in the CTK shop).  I wanted to bring the blue/purple color in the Indigo Hills 2 ephemera (included in the Main kit) so that all the other colors will stand out.

Next i used an old Heidi Swapp stencil and some texture paste to create the white crosses on the background.  While this dried, i cut a few crosses from some of the papers, and used  a bit of foam adhesive to attached them to page.   I decided to switch the placement  of  the title; so, I added used some gold paint to color one of the wood pieces -included in the Scrapbook kit- and layered a piece of ephemera under it.

I kept pretty true to the sketch from then on.   First i used papers from the kit to back and layer the photos of my son, and then just switch the position of them a bit.   Once in place, i added a few extra stickers from the Embellishment kit, as well as some elements from the cut apart page.  To finish, i added a few sentiments to the page using the TN stamp (love all the phrases included in this month's stamp set!)

I love how easy this was to put together by using the sketch as a blueprint for my page, and mixing in a bit of this month's "Little Things" kit.   

Now it's your turn - we can't wait to see how you interpret this weeks Sunday Sketch. Remember to share them with us in the CTK Facebeook Fan Page!

xo