Write From the Heart with Kiwi Lane and My Mind's Eye

It's my turn to do an installment of Write From the Heart from Kiwi Lane- yay!  I will say that it feels like it has been a looooong time since it was my turn for this segment, though.  Hopefully I'm not too out of practice and can help you with your journaling.

Sometimes when I scrapbook, I feel like there needs to be some long epitaph to convey the story behind the photos, or even the story behind the people in the photos.  And this is true in some cases.  It's nice to tell a long narrative about how much we admire a person or how something came to be.  It's nice to tell part of our family's history by combining our new thoughts with a photo from long ago. But sometimes, just sometimes, we need to let loose and share more of our personality in our journaling.  If you're a fun person, shouldn't you tell the stories that show just how much fun you have?  I think so, too!  So today I'm going to focus on that-

Tell the silly stories!

Here's a layout that I did using the Milo collection from My Mind's Eye's Now & Then-
Before, using my Kiwi Lane templates to "Frame" my layout:

After:

Supplies: patterned paper (My Mind's Eye); brads, die cut, epoxy shapes (My Mind's Eye); epoxy dots (Teresa Collins); letter stickers (My Mind's Eye, American Crafts); ink, glitter glue (Ranger)

Templates:

Wacky 1

Tiny Wacky 1T

Paradise 1

Celebrate 7

Tiny Celebrate 7T

Photos

I love that these photos are part of a silly story about kissing some fish!  And I wanted to make sure that we remembered that we are part of a fun and sometimes silly family that likes to do strange things and have a good time laughing!  It's not a long, sentimental story.  And that's ok.  It's still a story that helps tell who we are.  And isn't that what scrapbooking is about?

And since we're here anyway, here are a few design tips:

- Use your photo templates as a crop tool, along with planning your layout.  They are translucent, so you can see exactly where you need to cut to make that perfect page.

- Cut down a shape to make a smaller shape.  If you notice, I have three sizes of water drops/splashes. I made the smallest one by tracing the Tiny Celebrate 7T template and drawing the same shape inside the traced shape.  It was about 1/4" smaller all the way around.  This made a smaller shape without needing a smaller template.

- Add interest to your pages using lines.  All my photos are on an angle, as are the bits of patterned paper. But, my words (title and journaling) are all on horizontal lines.  And my embellishments (the wave shapes and splashes) are all in vertical lines.  By having each element of the layout moving a different way, your eyes move around the page.

That's it for today.  Thanks for stopping by and Happy Scrapping!

Ideas to Inspire with Kiwi Lane

Good Morning all!  It's my turn for the latest installment of Kiwi Lane's Ideas to Inspire.... So are you ready to be inspired?  Good!  Let's get started!

This month at Kiwi Lane, we have the awesome privilege of working with the fabulous My Mind's Eye!  Eeeek!  I'm so excited!! Hence, the "Eeeek!"  Now, if you have never worked with any of My Mind's Eye's stuff, I suggest you find your nearest crafting/scrapbooking store and get your hands on some- you won't be disappointed! 

Now, I don't know about you, but I seem to put off scrapbooking birthdays... I think it has something to do with the feeling that I do the same thing over and over.  Well, this time I took that feeling of doing things over and over and ran with it.  Here's the theme for today's ITI:

~Use numeric repetition as a theme throughout your page.~

Here's the layout I came up (using My Mind's Eye's Now & Then Milo):

Supplies: patterned paper (My Mind's Eye and Scenic Route (background)); die cuts, chipboard, washi tape, letter stickers, epoxy stickers (My Mind's Eye); stamp (7gypsies); ink (Ranger, Tsukinedo); twine (Lilybelle's Paperie on Etsy)

Templates:

Spook Alley 3A, 3B

Wacky 3, 3T

Celebrate 1, 2, 5

Tiny Shapes 6T

The photos are from my son's 3rd birthday.  I used the number "3" in the title, but also used other three's throughout the page... can you find them all? ;)  Here's the list, in case you missed any:

- Three "3"s- one in the title, one at the top of the right page and the candles on the cupcake that resemble III (Roman numeral 3)

- Three burst shapes from the Wacky Accessory set along the bottom of the layout

- Groupings of three things: 2 balloons and a cupcake; small burst shape from the Tiny Wacky set (top of left page), "3" and "cute" die cut; title grouping that has a chipboard shape, the large "3" card and the tiny letter stickers

- There are three groupings of three things

- Three lines of journaling

That's right, peeps!  I even went so far as to emulate the theme in the number of lines for my journaling!

I will point out that I didn't use three photos on my two page layout (and really, when have you EVER seen me use so few pics on a two pager??).  But, I did keep the number of photos in an odd numbered grouping, which is aesthetically pleasing and worked well for the layout.

While the method of using numeric repetition can be quite effective, use it in small doses.  Meaning, it works better for small single digits, rather than larger numbers.  I love the look of this, but I'm certainly not going to use it for my hubby's thirty-something birthday pics. ;)

Now, can I just mention the paper and embellishments from My Mind's Eye's Now & Then Milo collection!  It is SUCH a versatile collection!!  The colors of blues, grays, greens and yellows make it pretty much the perfect pallet for both girl and boy themes, not to mention everything in between.  There's also a touch of metallic silver in the collection- both on the paper and in the embellies (brads, die cuts, printed chipboard, epoxy shapes).  It's not that over powering blinged out silver, though.  It's a soft, subtle touch of silver.  And it works for everything!  The paper itself is that heavy card stock that we have come to know and love from MME and, let's face it, we expect it from them.  The prints in the collection range from classic damask to small floral to geometrics to anchors- seriously.... so versatile!!  I LOVED working with this collection!  So much so, that I chose to use my leftovers from this project to do my Write From the Heart with Kiwi Lane  at the end of the month.  So be watching for that one!

I hope this inspired you to do something repetitive on your pages!  I'd love to see what you come up with-don't forget to post your creations to the Kiwi Lane Facebook page!  And link it here in the comments, too, please!

That's it for today.  Thanks for stopping by and Happy Scrapping!

Winner, Winner!! April Blog Hop Winner!

And the winner of a set of templates is......

 Linda C. said...

I love your layout - especially the funky flag banner at the bottom. I scrolled down to see some of your earlier blogs and found so many great ideas. The Fall Mini Album from Oct. 16, 2013 is beautiful. I had thought these albums would be too hard to do, never thought about using Kiwi Lane Templates to make the pages of the books. I keep changing my mind on which Kiwi Lane set I want next but I think they would be the Cascade Trails and the Tiny Floral

Linda C.- please email me at glo_owens@msn.com so I can get you a list of templates to choose from.  You have until Monday, April 21st at 11:59 pm MDT to do so, or another winner will be drawn.

Thanks to everyone for all your lovely comments- it sure does make a girl's day! :)

That's all for now, but I will have a post on Wednesday for Kiwi Lane's Ideas to Inspire!  Have a great day and Happy Scrapping!

April BLOG HOP!!! with Kiwi Lane

It's time for a blog hop!  Who's excited? Me, ME!!  Are you excited, too?  Well, you should be!  Why?  Because you're going to have crafting inspiration coming out of your ears AND there's a prize!  Here's the scoop- ONE random commenter from one of the blogs along the hop will win a $25 gift code to the Kiwi Lane Shop.  How's that for incentive?!  So make sure you start at the Kiwi Lane Blog and comment along the way (including the Kiwi Lane Blog)!  You have until Sunday April 6, 2014 at 11:59 p.m. MDT to make you comments.  The winner will be announced on the Kiwi Lane Blog on Thursday April 10th. 

Here's the line-up of blogs, just in case you take a wrong turn along the way:

1. Kiwi Lane 
2. Gail Owens (You are Here!!)
3. Catherine Povec  (Go Here Next!!)
4. Jennifer McDermott 
5. Kristy Lee 
6. Heather Conklin 
7. Misty Buck 
8. Jennifer Nicholes 
9. Barb Rapp 
10. Christina Steel 

For this month's blog hop, we were asked to create something using the Celebrate and Wacky template sets from Kiwi Lane.  Here's the two page layout I came up with:

Supplies: patterned paper (The Pier by Crate Paper); brads (Echo Park); alphabet stickers (American Crafts); wood shapes (Studio Calico); plastic flower (Queen and Co.); stamps (Autumn Leaves); pen (Staedtler); ink (Ranger)

Templates:

Photos

Wacky 1, 3

Celebrate 3, 5, 6, 8

Tiny Celebrate 3T, 4T, 5T, 6T

Tags 1

Tiny Tags 1T

Here's what it looked like when I "framed" my layout:

And a few detailed photos:

I loved the look of this paper for these photos- and I couldn't resist using a collection called "The Pier" to document our walk down the pier at Tybee Island in Georgia!  I loved the look of the weathered wood with the distressed colors that were reminiscent of wind tattered beach umbrellas and canopies.  I wanted to add some whimsy and almost a celebratory feel to my layout and I accomplished this with layering two shapes (the long triangle/pennant from the Celebrate sets and a tag from the Tag sets) in two sizes.  I also tucked the ticket shapes under the photos on one side to add to the fun feeling of the layout.  To add a hint of the sun and sea to the layout, I used a template from the Wacky set to make a "sun" shape on the left page, layered with "clouds" from the Celebrate and Tiny Celebrate sets.  I added a splash of blue in a wavy shape from the Wacky set to mimic the water on the bottom of the right page. 

Sometimes when I get everything on the page, I feel like some of the shapes are blending into each other, when I really want them to stand out from each other.  When this happens, I use a pen to highlight the shapes that I want to stand out.  This time I used a fine tipped black pen to do some quick outlines of the cloud shapes, the tickets, the pinwheel and the banner where I put the title.  I made my outlines quickly and didn't worry about perfection- an added bonus of using shabby-looking paper!

To make my journaling spot, I stamped a lined image on my left page using distress ink.  I thought it looked too neat for the feel of the layout, so I stamped it again- the same image just slightly askew from the original.  Then I used my pen to write my little story.

This layout turned out almost exactly like what I framed it to look like using my templates- and it's exactly what I had in my head!  Don't you just love Kiwi Lane Designs Templates?!  I do!

And for an added bonus for getting to the bottom of my long-winded post (Sorry, kids.  I'm wordy.  It's not gonna change anytime soon.), how about another giveaway?!  In the comment that you're going to leave on this blog post (ya know, the one you need to leave so you can be entered to win a $25 gift code to the Kiwi Lane Shop...), please tell me what template set you've had your eye on.  Or which one is your fave, if you happen to have them all.  You have until Sunday, April 6, 2014 at 11:59 p.m. MDT to leave your comment.  I will draw a winner and announce it on Monday, April 7th.  The lucky commenter will get to choose a template set of their choice from my stash!  Hooray!

That's it for now- don't forget to comment!  Happy Scrapping!