Tutorial Tuesday with Beckie Dreyer

Hello there and welcome to my wee tutorial using the Harmony collection.

I’d like to show how using circles can help to draw the eye into your layouts and even highlight items in your photos. 

To create this layout, I first cut a couple of strips from the Tranquilty and All Natural papers and ripped either end of them before adhering them to the centre of the Senerity paper.  I also adhered a strip of ribbon to the backing paper too.

Next I wanted to create some circles to highlight my photo.  To create the large circles I went to my kitchen and took two different sized dinner plates and drew around the largest one first on the Inner Beauty paper.  Then I put the smaller plate in the centre of that circle and drew around it. 

I cut the circles out and then adhered them too the layout flipping one of them over to give the contrast side.  I used the outside of the large circle as a guide for my title using the daffodil chipboard letters.

To highlight the shell that my daughter is holding I cut some more circles using a die cut machine and placed one of them around the shell. 

For added texture I added some jewellery wire which I secured with some staples and some flowers embellished with buttons.

To finish off the layout I created a little plaque by using the triple embossing technique.  If this is your first attempt at this technique I would start with a small stamp.

First ink your stamp with clear embossing powder and leave to one side but near where you are working.

Ink up a piece of cardstock just larger than the stamp and cover with embossing powder.  Heat with heat gun.

Before it cools cover with more embossing powder and heat again

Repeat this for a couple more times until it looks thick and rich J

Before it cools again, stamp into the embossing powder, you will not need to push down as it will sink into it.

Gently remove the stamp and there you have your plaque.

For a more distressed look, once it is cooled gently roll it back and you will hear it crack.

I hope this inspires you to use circles in different ways and to try some triple embossing with the gorgeous stamps from My Little Shoebox.

I will leave you with a card where I used the embossing technique and a circle to create a fun embellishment.

 A big thanks to Becky for all her time she spent on this fabulous technique! Be sure and share your project with us at the My Little Shoebox Facebook page here! We love seeing you load up our gallery with your photos!

Hello friends! We're excited to share two fun ways that you could win a fantastic prize package of My Little Shoebox goodies! We're sponsoring two contests that Becky Fleck is having over at the Page Maps blog this month.

The first contest is a layout contest:

To enter this contest, create a layout based on this sketch—any size, any orientation, any way you want to interpret it—using any products you would like. The contest ends at midnight, Sunday, December 12th(MST). This contest is open to US and Canadian residents only or anyone with a US shipping address.

 The second way to win is a card sketch contest:

Create a card based on this sketch, using any products you would like. The theme is wide open! The contest ends at midnight, Sunday, December 12th (MST). This contest is open to US and Canadian residents only or anyone international with a US shipping address.

For a look at both prizes that are up for grabs, visit the Page Maps blog here.

Good Luck to everyone that enters and tell your friends! A special thanks to Becky for promoting My Little Shoebox on her fabulous blog! We're all fans of her fantastic website with quarterly card sketches and monthly layout sketches.

For more of Becky's work be sure and visit Scrapbooking and Cards Today where she is a part of the Design Team as the sketch artist.

Hello there! So it's the day after Thanksgiving and everyone is still stuffed around here! Some are headed out to get those Black Friday deals but today I'm going to be scrapping at a crop with a friend of mine. I'd much rather create layouts than stand in line waiting but that's just me. Good luck to all that brave the crowds for Black Friday.

So today's Friday Feature is our Journaling Die Cuts and I have a fabulous project for you from our design team member June Goh using the Sunday Market collection

I love the layers on the cover here and the chipboard title.

a nice view of all the pages

Love how the die cuts are layered here.

and here. The die cuts make a perfect addition to this mini album. Very nice job June! We hope you'll share your journaling die cut creations with us at our Facebook fan page! We'd love to see your creative uses for them.

Have a fabulous weekend!

With Thanksgiving one day away we are all feeling the tug at our hearts of thankfulness. We have so many things to be thankful for and just to name a few

Family            friends

                       Health

And a beautiful Thanksgiving meal prepared with lots of love!

We would also like to extend our thanks to our amazing design team for all their hard work creating such beautiful projects to inspire our fans! We appreciate all that you do and the extras too!!

Here's some of their fabulous designs with our current My Little Shoebox collections in no particular order

Heather

Gudrun

 
Debbie

Shemaine

Tracey

Kathie

Deanna

Cindy

Beckie

Erin P.

Hilde

 

Carol

Susan

Rocio

Pamela

Kathleen

Pattie B

Melanie

June

Nicole

Erin Y

Thank you again for all your beautiful work ladies! Happy Thanksgiving to all!!

It's tutorial Tuesday and today's tutorial is brought to us by our very own Rocio! She's got a fabulous tutorial on how to create medallion flowers. I'll let Rocio take it away from here:

How to create Medallion Flowers Tutorial
It’s simple and easy.  All you need is some wonderful MLS paper and MLS cardstock stickers along with glue dots, stapler, scoring board, 1” circle punch and your favorite border punch.  
First, cut a 1.5” x 12” strip of your favorite MLS paper, I used my favorite paper from the Harmony line called Tranquility.  Using your favorite border punch, punch along a border on one side of the paper as seen below:

Then score the paper every 0.25 inches.
Then fold each of the scores to form an accordion:
Staple the ends together to form a circle
Then punch 1 inch circle and add a glue dot in the center
Place the accordion circle on top of the 1 inch circle
Here is what the back looks like
Add an MLS cardstock sticker to the center
Finish embellishing as you wish and you can create variation using different border punches.

So that’s it! Thanks so much for making my tutorial part of your day. If you do give this technique a try please show us your My Little Shoebox medallion projects at our Facebook page!

Thank you all for hopping thru our Thankful blog hop over the weekend! We appreciate all of your wonderful comments and support!

We've picked a random winner from all the commentors for a prize package of My Little Shoebox goodies!!! So let the drum roll please...........

The Winner is

April said...

What a great project!

This hop was so much fun. I'm thankful for my amazing family, that loves me unconditionally. I am SO blessed. :)

Thanks for the chance to win!
- April W

November 19, 2010 3:23 PM

Congratulations April!! Please email us with the collection of your choice to dt@mylittleshoebox.com and make sure to put Thankful Blog Hop Winner in the subject line

Hello friends! We are so thankful for each and every My Little Shoebox fan that visits our blog, subscribes to our newsletter and stops by our Facebook fan page. We love to see your creations with our collections and enjoy reading your comments on our blog. We are thankful you make us a part of your day!

Today our design team is sharing some thankful inspired projects with you at each of their blogs. We also have a chance for you to win some My Little Shoebox goodies as our thanks to you for your support!

So start at Beckie's blog and click to the next blog til you come to the end and find out how you can win!

Our team has really enjoyed the product swap we did with Creative Charms this month. Here are some more beautiful My Little Shoebox projects from the Design Team with embellishments from Creative Charms

A cute tag from Gudrun

A fun flower embellished layout from Tracey

Another beautiful layout from Kathie. I love the way she pulled off these embellishments on a masculine layout.

 A cute baby themed card from Beckie. How cute is that sentiment!

Erin used some cute trim on her layout here

Rocio used some cute bling on her layout

And this fabulous 12 inch letter H that Pamela made to hang in her son Hayden's room.

We love the wide variety of embellies Creative Charms has. Be sure and check out the Creative Charms website here.

Hello friends! With CHA just around the corner Helen has been very busy at My Little Shoebox! The girls were working hard at the warehouse yesterday and we have a few behind the scenes pics to share.

Here's Helen loading up on our fabulously popular mini alpha stickers

If you are wondering how the images for our stamp sets are chosen, just ask our littlest trend watcher, Mari (Erin Yamabe's daughter). Seems she had the eye for those mushrooms we chose for our Green collection.

Helen's smile says it all! Who wouldn't smile being surrounded by all those My Little Shoebox goodies!

We can't wait til January's Craft and Hobby Association show in Los Angeles! It's going to be another great year of beautiful designs from My Little Shoebox.

Well ladies we must tell you that all of your layouts were simply amazing! We loved that so many of you chose to create with us for our sketch challenge. We wish we could pick all of you as our winners. Here are a few layouts than shined!

Kim Arledge

Keely Yowler

Leeann Pearce

Wonderful layouts ladies!!!We had 15 entries into our challenge and we loved everyone's take on the sketch!! Using Random.org choosing a # between 1 and 15.....the winning is entry is....

11

>

>

>Lindsey!!

Here's Lindsey's adorable layout!

Congratulations to Lindsey. Please email us the collection of your choice to dt@mylittleshoebox.com and we'll get that shipped out to you!

A big thanks to all that played along with our sketch challenge!!! There will be another chance to win some My Little Shoebox goodies so visit us again soon!!

We love being girls. Cute clothes, hair bows and all things pink make being a girl so much fun! Our Cute as a Button line is perfect for us scrap those adorable photos of the special girls in our lives. So today let's celebrate girls!

Here's some adorable projects to get you inspired to create with our Cute as Button line. Let's start with this amazing altered bow holder from Aphra

How cute is this! I know I am always trying to find ways to keep my daughter's bows together and easy to find. What a perfect way to do that with this Bow holder.

I love that she personalized it for her little girl.

and added the nice touch of decor at the bottom of each ribbon.

Melanie and Shemaine both cut out little girls from the Jeami patterned paper to accent both their layouts.

We love the stitching Melanie added to her layout

and the bows Shemaine added to her little girls cut out ponytails. So girly!

Speaking of girly, we love this layout by Gudrun documenting her daughter's love of beading!

Many girls share the love of crafting so this layout was perfectly put together down to the details of stringing beads onto the design!

We love the added splashes of paint here too

And finally, the girly images on these sweet cards created by Carol are too cute.

Be sure and share your girly Cute as a Button creations with us on our Facebook fan page! We love to see what you are creating!

Oh and don't forget the deadline for our sketch challenge is tonight at midnight Pacific time! Here's all you need to know in this post.

Hello! It's Feature Friday, time for us to spotlight another fabulous product from My Little Shoebox! Our cute coordinating stamps are our newest addition to our collections and we love hearing how much you enjoy using them. We've created a coordinating stamp set to go with each of our collections.

Here's our Sunday Market clear stamp set

and an adorable card by June with this set

and another card with the same set from Cindy using the flower.

Here's our Green stamp set

Here's a cute layout that Pattie created using the Green set.

Love what she did with the mushroom stamp

Here's our Cute as a Button stamp set

Here's a cute card with our Cute as a Button collection from Shemaine

 and a fabulous layout by Melanie titled she's so chatty

I love the way that Melanie used the button stamps to add as embellishments to this fun layout. Love those pics of that chatty girl too!

Well friends what do you think? Don't these stamps look fun! We always love to see your work so be sure and post your My Little Shoebox stamped cards and layouts to our Facebook Page! You can find a link to our Facebook page at the bottom of blog.

Next Friday we have a little something special planned for you so be sure to check out our blog for all the details Friday Nov. 19th!

Hello! We hope you enjoyed this week's Tutorial Tuesday! We're following up today with even more tag inspiration from our design team. Let's take a look at how some of our team uses our journaling diecuts to create with.

Here's a fun TO DO board project created by Kathleen

Kathleen used transparency sheets and cut the centers out of the die cuts from our Green collection to create the lists for each day of the week

Aphra used Cute as a Button diecuts to accent her title and sub title in this layout she created.

Love all those layered circle scallops. That's a lot of work for beautiful dimension!

Taj used journaling die cuts to create two adorable bookmarks with a mash of our Green and Cute as a Button collections.

And finally Kathie layered her journaling die cuts into her layout design using our Green collection

We hope you're inspired to get out those diecuts and create! We love seeing all the My Little Shoebox creations posted to our Facebook fan page. Click here to post your work for us to see!

Hello! Today we have a fabulous tutorial by Cindy for Tutorial Tuesday! She's going to show us how to use up those die cuts and journaling tags!

Die Cut and Tag Tutorial

Die cuts and journal tags are one thing I tend to hoard. I hate to use them because sometimes they are too big and I can't find a way to make it 'fit' on my LO.
But then I learned that I don't have to use my die cuts in 1 piece and gave myself permission to cut them up and use them as a way to add design interest on my pages. Since this discovery, I am happy to report my die cut stash is dwindling and I am REALLY loving the look of them on my pages!
 
As you can in in my first LO (Fireman Sam), I cut a yellow journalling tag in half and positioned it horizontally on either side of my title.

This draws the eye to my title & creates a visual triangle, taking your eye around the LO.
 


 
On my second example (Daddy's New Truck), I cut 2 circular journalling spots in half and created a unique scalloped border.

 
This row of half circles helps define the bottom half of the page and draws your eye across to the photos.

You can also do a page with ONLY die cut elements in a collage type of LO, use pop dots (foam adhesive squares) and 'pop' them off your page or mat them on contrasting cardstock for a different twist.
The possibilities are endless!
 
I hope this gets you looking at different ways to USE THAT STASH!!
Thanks for stopping by!
Cindy :)

There's just one week left to get your sketches linked up to our Sketch challenge post here. The deadline for this month's challenge ends Monday November 15th.  We have enjoyed checking out all the entries so far and can't wait to see yours.

Here's some more sketch inspiration from our very own Pattie!

I love the stitching on Pattie's layout!

And we also have Erin Yamabe's layout titled birthday bash with our Harmony collection.

If you missed our previous posts with the other design team members takes on the sketch just click the Sketch Challenge link in the Catagories tab of our blog on the left to see previous posts.

Have a great day!

My Little Shoebox was asked to sponsor and participate in the Paper and Co Show in France, November 26,27,28, 2010.

Our very own Erin Yamabe was asked to teach during the event as well! Here's a peek at her class. If you've ever been to France share your favorite places or things you experienced there. We are sure Erin will have an amazing time and meet lots of new crafty friends!

Hello and happy Friday! Today's Friday Feature is our die cut cardstock. Each of the My Little Shoebox collections has a coordinating scallop die cut cardstock that you can use as your background page when creating layouts. Here's a few examples from our design team

Heather cut the scallops off of our 50 Acre die cut cardstock and used them as a border across the center of her layout adding adorable crepe paper to finish off the look.

Here's a closer look

Debbie layered pattern paper over the Fresh Linen Die Cut to create this adorable layout.

Shemaine aslo used the Fresh Linen Die to create this cute card with the scallop also as a border.

Kathie created this adorable card by using the Treehouse die cut as a border at the bottom of her card.

We hope our design team has inspired you to get out your die cut cardstocks and create today! Don't feel like you can't cut up your die cut papers to create accents for your cards and layouts. As a rule I usually purchase 3 sheets of cardstocks I like just for this purpose!

We are proud to have Creative Charms swapping products with our design team this month. We'll be creating all month long with their fabulous embellishments! Here's a little about Creative Charms:

Embellish…Enliven…Enjoy…this motto is the driving force behind Creative Charms (www.creativecharms.com), a paper-crafting embellishments design company based in Pittsburgh, Pa. Creative Charms is most well known for unique materials, whimsical designs, and smart packaging – allowing scrapbookers to be more creative in preserving life’s special moments.
The most popular categories within the Creative Charms line include the luxurious velvet Vintage Poppies, timeless antique looking Vintage Brads, the striking and dramatic Simplicity offering an array of embellishments in classic black & white, and finally the dainty and shimmering Dream Garden butterfly and flower collection presented in a soft pastel color palette.

Here's a cute fall layout Susan created with our Simple Life collection and some pumpkin ribbon and charms from Creative Charm

And this beautiful flower embellished layout from Hilde created with charms and flowers all by Creative Charms with our Sunday Market collection

And this darling layout with an amazing half pinwheel banner and Creative Charms accents in the middle by Deanna!

Here's a closer look at the charms

We'd like to thank Creative Charms for swapping products with our design team this month with such lovely goodies to create with! Join us each Thursday this month as we offer more inspiration from our design team using Creative Charms!

Journaling is an important part of your design process when creating your layouts. It's fun to scrap pictures from vacations,birthday parties and special times but more important is telling the story of these memories and events.

It's fun to think outside of the box when executing your story into your layouts like our design team member Nicole did in her layout here titled Photogenic

She printed her journaling right onto the patterned paper from our Harmony collection and accented a few of the words of her journaling with our mini alphabet stickers.

This technique can be done by creating a Word Doc and typing out your journaling and then loading your printer with whatever size pattern paper you'd like to print it on. Try to choose a style that isn't too busy so that your journaling doesn't get lost within the pattern.

We hope Nicole inspires you to try this technique the next time you are looking for a creative way to tell your story.

Hello! We have quite a tutorial for you today from our very own design team member Kathleen! She's sharing one of her favorite technique's for adding dimension to her layouts, Quilling!! Let's take a look at this fun tutorial.

Step 1: Take the green diecut paper strip and cut it in half

Step 2: Twirl the paper around the small point of a paper piercer or tooth pick until it is completely rolled

Step 3: Let the scroll unroll a bit until it is the size you want, then tape the end with double sided tape

Step 4: Add a small amount of clear-drying glue to the back of the scroll and hold it to your page until it is set

for this finished look

Step 5: to add extra dimension, try the same technique with the pink scalloped die cut strip

for this finished look

Step 6: To create the heart roll the two ends of the pink die cut strip towards the middle, allow to unravel a little, then pinch the point before adhering to the page

Here's the finished layout.

and a closer look at the quilled flowers

Thanks Kathleen for taking the time and great pics to share your tutorial today! Be sure and leave Kathleen some comments today on what you thought of her tutorial!!

If you create something with My Little Shoebox and Kathleen's tutorial be sure and post your project to our Facebook group here.

It's November! We hope you had your fill of Ghosts, Goblins and candy! Don't worry about October being over tho cause there is still time for you to participate in October's sketch challenge! We've got a fantastic prize up for grabs if you join the fun and create a layout based on our October Sketch! Here's a look at some more of the design teams sketches with this fabulous sketch:

From Kathleen

From Cindy

From Melanie

From Shemaine

 
From Erin P.

Thanks to our design team for all their wonderful takes on the sketch! I'm sure inspired are you?

If you'd like to create a layout based on the sketch here's the deets:

1. The layout or card using the sketch as inspiration must be posted to an online gallery or blog with My Little Shoebox in your supply list.

2. You must leave a comment on this blog post with a link to your layout online.

3. Layouts and links must be posted by midnight PST on Monday, November 15th.

4. link it up to this post here