Inspiration : POLAROID

Polaroid have been very popular these days and I couldn't resist posting about my love for them :)

You can turn any of your photos into polaroid on these websites :

La Photo Cabine

Poladroid

And some polaroids for the inspiration :)


Sources : Polaroid Passion


Sources : Everyday Polaroid
Sources : The Impossible Project


Sources : Bureau 206


Sources : Babart

Finding Inspiration Inside a Cereal Box?

Well, maybe not INSIDE the box, but certainly the design on the box itself can be a jumping point for your creativity! I thought I'd share one of my layouts from the Summer Camp gallery to prove my point... inspiration can be found everywhere!

The whole idea for this layout was born one morning while I was feeding Will his baby food. And while this is a fun milestone in your baby's development... you moms know that after a while feeding them little spoonful by little spoonful becomes quite the chore! Anyways, I was sitting there in between spoonfuls and glanced over at the back of the Cheerios box... and it hit me. THAT would be a great design for a layout! The big heart... filled with photos... oh my. Perfect. And fun! Here's the box with my little model....forgive the diaper showing because mama didn't bother snapping his romper shut after the last change. oops!

How fun is that box? Now, how did I take that box design and transform it into what you see below?

Well, I was going to do the photo filled heart idea. And I think I may at some time. But it just didn't work with this layout obviously. However I used the same idea in cutting out different squares/rectangles of patterned paper to fill in the heart shape. (This was a super fast technique b/c I didn't measure my paper scraps or cut with a trimmer... I just randomly cut squares and rectangles placing them in the heart as I went.) I also let my heart wander off the edges of my paper like the heart on the box. Finally, to make the heart shape more dominant among the mish mash paper scraps inside, I did some simple handstitching around it.

So, the moral of the story... be on the lookout for inspiration everywhere. Scrapbooking magazines are an obvious starting point, but don't overlook non scrapping mag ads, tv commercials, website design, product packaging, etsy, stationary/cards, etc. And if you're really organized you could create a little scrappy notebook to store all these great bits of inspiration. :)

(On this layout I used bits of the main kit, Summer Camp as well as bits from Footpath and Adirondack. And they are still available... so grab them quickly if you can! The Real Estate punch is also in the shop!)

Tuesday Inspiration : we LOVE collage artists

Mixed Media and Collage artists have always been a passion of mine : I've been doing Mixed Media since I was 17 and I've been lucky enough to take classes with some of the most talented artists like Karen Michel, Lynne Perrella, Nina Bagley, Michael De Meng, and more...

This week, I wanted to show you and bring you some inspiration from FOUR artists that I truely LOVE : Lynne Perrella (my Mixed Media mentor), Claudine Hellmuth, Teesha Moore and Karen Michel.

Be inspired!

Art by Lynne Perrella


Art by Teesha Moore


Art by Claudine Hellmuth


Art by Karen Michel


What about you? Who are your favorite Mixed Media artists?

Enjoy! And don't hesitate to visit these artists' amazing websites for more inspiration!

Outside Inspiration

This week is all about favorites so I thought it would be fun to survey the Design Team and share some of our "favorites" with you!

First up is our favorite sites for outside inspiration...

There is a world of inspiration out there to be feasted upon! Most likely you have heard of some of these sites but some may be new and they are definitely all inspiring! So, grab a snack or a cold drink, sit back and click away... and most importantly be inspired!!

April, Stephanie and Stephanie's favorite:

creature comforts blog

Sasha, Laura, Jenn, Joy and Nicole's favorite:

etsy

Waleska's favorite:

google image search

Lisa, Kelly and Emily's favorite:

tumblr

Tina's favorite:

green wedding shoes

Davinie's favorite:

ohdeedoh

Celine's favorite:

decor8

Maggie's favorite:

oh joy

Enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Go forth and Be Bold

I hope that you guys were inspired by boldness this week.

Remember that the weekly challenge is due by tonight. Please post your link to the thread HERE:

Here are our examples of the bold challenge:

From My Pictures

I made a shadow box gift for my husband for Father's Day! I was inspired by Tina's bold esty picks! My husband is an avid photographer and uses a polaroid just like that one to take photos.



Here's Tina's BOLD example..she was also inspired by one of her Etsy picks as well. She used watercolors and a few stencils to create the bold background.

Here's a few links to some fun BOLD things:

BOLD Quotes

BOLD Photos

BOLD Art Prints

BOLD socks :D

BOLD Jewelry

Where Shall We Store Inspiration?

There is no reason why you should be bored when you can be otherwise. But if you find yourself sitting in the hedgerow with nothing but weeds, there is no reason for shutting your eyes and seeing nothing, instead of finding what beauty you may in the weeds. To put it cynically, life is too short to waste it in drawing blanks. Therefore, it is up to you to find as many pictures to put on your blank pages as possible.

--Emily Post

Greetings again, my dear readers! Miss Emily here another day. Yesterday we discussed scraplifting etiquette, and a few of you commented that sometimes we don't realize we may be lifting another's idea because we see SO VERY MUCH inspiration all around. I whole heartedly agree with that statement.

I used to pull things off the web and store them on my computer, ads for design inspiration, color combos, art pieces, photos that spoke to me. I kept them in a folder called "Inspiration." But I didn't have a way to properly site the source. Then my friend Elizabeth directed me to tumblr.com. It's quick and easy to set up an account, all you need is an email address, password, and a name for your account. You may customize it, lots of backgrounds and display options are available.

Tumblr is a virtual bulletin board of sorts. Think of it as your online notebook of inspiration, just like the one you paste, staple, or sketch those ripped out magazine pages, color swatches, and design ideas into. Now instead of saving an inspiration piece to my desktop folder, I can now click on the copy the image location, load it to my tumblr account, then add a click through link to the original source. This allows me to always be able to cite my inspiration, and that dear friends is rather valuable to me as an artist.

I'll walk you through the basic process of posting an inspiration piece. Once you set up an account and log in, you will be on your dashboard. See in the upper left corner, under the word "tumblr" there's a picture of a filing system and the first letter is E? That's me.

Right next to the picture of "me" there are icons for the various things you can add, those being: text, photo, quote, link, chat, audio, and video. I only utilize the photo and link options, to be honest, I haven't explored further. When I'm out surfing the web for inspiration, say I'm on this site:


and I want to store an image from this post in my tumbler account, say, this photo of the banners:


I would click on that photo and a new screen pops up with just that photo.

I have a Mac so I hit the CONTROL key on my keyboard, and then click on the image. A window pops up like this:

I select "Copy Image Location" (For a PC, thanks to Miss Joy I suggest you RIGHT CLICK on the image, then COPY IMAGE URL) then I go to my tumblr account and click on the "Photo" icon. This window opens up:


From here you can browse your hard drive and load a picture, but the whole reason I use tumblr is so I don't have to keep things on my hard drive. Just below the "Browse" window you can see the words, "Use a URL instead" (it's underlined). I click on that, and this is what shows up:


It's SLIGHTLY different, instead of being able to browse your computer, there's now a spot for you to paste a URL. I'll now paste that URL I copied.


You can then add a caption or description in the appropriate box. Just below that box is another underlined sentence that says, "Set a click-through link." This is how I can link back to my source. I click on that, go back to the source, in this case it is http://simpleblueprint.typepad.com/blog/2010/05/brionesco.html, I copy that and paste it into that space.

Then I hit "Create Post," tumblr saves it and immediately takes me to my dashboard and voila! my post is now there. A dashboard is kind of your behind the scenes, nuts and bolts part of tumblr. If you want the pretty, neat and clean version, look over to the right, just under my name, is my web address: emilygpitts.tumblr.com


If you click on that, you get to my tumblr blog, the pretty version :)


Another fun thing about Tumblr is the "follow" feature. You can follow other inspiration seekers and find even more inspiration. The people I follow are not all scrapbookers, I get inspiration for home decor, stitchery, art posters, photography, sewing projects, bookbinding, and more. Here are some fellow SCers' accounts to check out while you are setting up your own account:

• emilygpitts.tumblr.com
• gluestickgirl.tumblr.com/
• stephaniehowell.tumblr.com/
• davinie.tumblr.com/
• hannalong.tumblr.com/
• moonlightgrrl.tumblr.com/
• kimberlyneddo.tumblr.com/
• jenniferjohner.tumblr.com/
• erinbenaim.tumblr.com/
• vanessameryl.tumblr.com/
• i-am-unique.tumblr.com/
• kristahenson.tumblr.com/
• the-jessica-numbers.tumblr.com/
• kellynoel.tumblr.com/
• joymadison.tumblr.com/
• amyharle.tumblr.com
• for more sites, see this thread
  

Once you start following other people, their posts show up on your dashboard as well and you can reblog them to your personal account. You can "heart" them. If you find something you LOVE that someone reposted from someone they follow, you can go to the original poster and start following them. It's a virtual web of inspiration. It's rather humorous when 5 or 6 people that I follow all post the same thing to their blogs, you can see we all have similar tastes :)

So all this talk about giving credit where it's due, and even more discussion of the scads of inspiration available to us, I suggest you check out Tumblr. The learning curve is rather slight, it's pretty self-explanatory.

Hopefully this post will be of great help to you in figuring it out.

Until tomorrow dear readers,
Miss Emily

insider tips : from inspiration to finished page

On Tuesday, I shared a few inspiration pieces with you. Today, I thought I'd show you how I used those ideas on a page.



I started with this piece as my main inspiration. I loved the way the hexagons were scattered on the background, and wanted to use a similar design on my page. I cut one hexagon from the Studio Calico exlcusive paper in Granny's Cupboard, and then used it as a pattern to cut more from other patterned papers from Anthology and Granny's Cupboard.



I played around with the placement of the hexagons and drew in where I wanted to add stitching, stamped journaling lines and some border punched paper. I use this trick a lot - once you stitch and stamp, there's no going back! This gives me a better way to visualize how it will look once I've added those elements. Once I'm happy with the basic design, I usually snap a quick photo. Because if I'm going to add stitching to the background I've got to go back to the beginning.



Yep. Everything came off the kraft cardstock. I added the strips of red at the top and bottom and stitched around my border, then added the graph patterned fabrip and the blue punched paper and did some zigzag stitching. I also stamped the journaling lines in pumice stone down in the bottom corner.



Then I need that photo that I snapped so I remember how to put it all back together! I added a few more hexagons and another fabrip to the page, and the stitched them all in place. The American Crafts glitter brads from Linens and Lace were the perfect accent to my small punched circles. At this point, if at all possible, I walk away from the page for a while. It's almost done, but I know it needs some finishing touches.



The next morning, I added the tab at the top of the photo (it's a sticker from the Anthology Labels - I punched a few hearts in it and backed it with the grey Aperture paper), the layered accent at the bottom right of the photo (that space just felt empty to me - I layered a piece of October Afternoon Thrift Shop paper punched with my Fiskars L Seal of Approval punch with a stickers from October Afternoon and Anthology, and then topped it with chipboard hearts). I also added a couple more small chipboard hearts tucked in with the other elements on the page. I added my journaling and did some stapling with my tiny attacher to finish the page.



I used some of the other ideas from the original inspiration post - the circles within the hexagons and planning my cuts around an element in the patterned paper. These ideas helped make my groupings more interesting than if it had all just been patterned paper.

So that's a little peek into my creative process - let me know if you have any questions! =)

I LOVE bags

Hello everyone!

I'm a girl.And I LOVE bags. I mean, I'm addicted to them. I must have about 40 different bags at home. Everywhere I go on vacation, I NEED to come back home with a new bag, which drives my man crazy! :D

Today, I wanted to show you some favorite from 3 of my favorite companies (bags and other cute stuff).

Oilily

yeah that is a hot air balloon BAG! :)
I've got this bag that I use as a camera bag :)


Fossil






Aren't you inspired by the designs? the patterns? the fabrics?

Desigual

I've got this bag too :)






Now, don't tell your husband I showed you this, ok? :)

c

Tuesday Inspiration : Heather Bailey

Hello everyone!
Lately I've been so much inspired by Heather Bailey, her fabric and her photography. It makes me wanna dig into my most colorful papers, fabric and embellishments and scrap!
Heather Bailey has been a very talented designer for years and has a very active blog where you can admire her latest creations fabric related and her amazing photographs.



1. Pop!, 2. Pop Garden & Bijoux!, 3. Pop Garden!, 4. One more month to go..., 5. Another Pear, 6. Marlo Bloom Handbag, 7. Three Pears, 8. Emergency Velvet, 9. Charlotte's Room, 10. Green Apple Pincushion, 11. Skirty 1 Detail, 12. Big Sister Skirty, 13. Shirty 1, 14. Little Sister, 15. Shirty 2, 16. Skirty 2 Detail

I just want to add more fabric to my scrapbooks now, use more flowers, paint my backgrounds in yellow and green, and that reminds me that Spring is finally here!

Feel free to visit Heather Bailey blog for inspiration : you won't be disappointed!

C.

tutorial : misted monogram

Happy Wednesday, all!! I'm here today to share the misting technique that I used on my "B" layout in the Joyland gallery.





I have to admit that I came at this page backwards. I was flipping through Real Simple and came across this page and fell in love with the large monogram.



I loved the size of the letter in relation to the other bits and pieces on the page, as well as the detail of the thinner, curving lines within the letter. I knew I wanted to recreate the look with mist, and begun flipping through my photos and old blog entries in search of anything that lent it self to being scrapped with a monogram. When I came to an entry talking about how Ben had the longest name in his first grade class, I knew it would be the perfect story to go with my technique.



I started by printing a large "B" in light gray (to save ink) on regular printer paper. I cut out my B and placed it in about the same place as it was in my inspiration piece. I chose a simple, sans serif font - I didn't want it to compete with the other details I knew I'd be adding.



I placed the sheet in my misting box and sprayed it with turquoise mist - I concentrated most of it towards the B mask, so that the outline would be well defined.



After I'd sprayed the mist, I took my printed B and drew a thinner version and cut it out. I used this as a pattern to cut my patterned paper to fit inside the masked off B on the page. I added stitched lines curving out from the body of the B to mimic the look of the inspiration piece.



Once my monogram was finished, I added strips of patterned paper and paper tape, as well as photos in one of the K&Co Handmade frames. I used the alphabet border stamp to fill in some awkward space under my patterned paper - it fit the space and tied in to the theme. One of the Schooltime ABC borders would have worked well, too.



This could also be a really fun technique for a set of monogrammed notecards, or maybe even on place cards at a dinner party. It would also work well for any short title for a layout. I can't wait to see what you all do with it. =)

-Lisa