Lucky 13

Hello friends.  You know what’s great about the Gossamer Blue kits? They’ve got everything you need in one, or 2 or 3 packages and it takes the guess work out of scrapping on the go whether it to a friend’s house, retreat or vacation.

I’m scrapping while on holiday in Europe and my kit arrived right before I left so I packed it right in my carry-on. I bring a small case of essential tools – small scissors, adhesive, pen, etc. so it’s an easy grab & go. Oh and my Instax printer.

Here is my December Kit getting ready to be scrapped on a balcony is Santorini, Greece.  Oh to be back there now!

This month’s kit is filled with little (and big) hidden gems.  Every time I started to create, I found something new and interesting that just kind of popped out of nowhere.

This is exactly what happened as I started working on this month’s pattern play.  I honed in on the Pink Paislee Memorandum clipboard elements.  My Instax printer prints small 2×3 ish photos so when I saw the clipboard paper and stickers, I knew I had to do a play on that.

Supplies: December Main kit, Main Kit add-on, Life Pages kit, Life Pages Themed Add-on

I created a background using papers from the 6×6 paper pad and then layered the hand cut clipboards around the page, leaving a feature spot for the photo.

We are on vacation celebrating our 13th wedding anniversary so I thought I’d do a huge title using the supersized numbers. Some people think the number 13 is good and others think the opposite.  I happen to think it’s rather lucky hence my title.

I used the labels from both the stationary set and the 6 x 6 paper pad to add my journaling, location and date.

Each little quadrant of the layout is it’s own little story that comes together to tell the bigger story.  It was quite fun adding here and there to tie it all together into one love story.

Strawberry Fields Forever

What the WHAT??? I did a 2 page layout.  I seriously cannot remember the last time I did one of these.  There's something about them that makes me all cray-cray so I just stay away from them.  That is until I am asked to do one.

My go-to technique for 2 pagers is to use a grid so can you guess what I defaulted to?



One thing I do love about 2 pagers is that you can include tons and tons of photos.  I think the most I squeezed in one time was 12, maybe 14. I can't quite recall but it was a lot.  I selected 5 photos for today's project.

I also like to use two different but somewhat similar backgrounds for each side of the page.  I'm all for things looking uniform but not exact so this suits my needs.




I love to use song titles or lyrics on my layouts and this favorite from The Beatles hit the spot. The song was the first track recorded during the sessions for the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), and was intended for inclusion on the album. Instead, with the group under record-company pressure to release a single, it was issued in February 1967 as a double A-side with "Penny Lane". The combination reached number two in the United Kingdom, breaking the band's four-year run of chart-topping singles there, while "Strawberry Fields Forever" peaked at number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 in America. Source

Fancy Free by Paige Evans + Win it before you can buy it GIVEAWAY

This has been one of the hardest secrets to keep for the last several months but I'm a woman of my word and my lips were sealed. I'm so excited that  I can share the news that my dear friend Paige Evans has her own scrapbook line with Pink Paislee!

Check out some of the collection below and more of it on her blog and then hop over to my Instagram (@heatherleopard) for a chance to win some puffy stickers and layered stickers she offered me to giveaway.

You guys!!! Patterned papers are my most favorite thing to work with. You have to see the whole line over on Paige's blog.  If you are anything like me, you will go bonkers over it all!  And the colors!  I'm not sure why I get so excited about the colors but I LOVE, love, love it!  It feels like a good mix for boys and girls but you know I'll be going the more girly route probably, maybe. The alphas and ephemera and......oh my, I could go on for days!

Look at the texture on those fun buttons! 

And those glittered wood veneer are SWOON worthy.

I absolutely love multi-color, multi-patterned Thickers so THIS is ah-mazing!

I am so honored that Paige asked me to help spread the word.  Paige and I have worked together on several collaborations, including 3+ years on the American Crafts design team under her leadership, online class collaborations, guesting gigs, and more.

I can't wait to work with this amazing new collection. My mind is already filled with so many amazing ideas.

So who wants to win it before you can buy it?  Head over to my Instagram (@heatherleopard) for details on how you can win a set of these gorgeous layered stickers and puffy stickers.

 

Paige, congratulations again!  Thanks for including me in today's festivities and I especially thank you for your friendship and advice. xoxo

DIY Star Garland

I love adding a personal touch to my holiday decor so when I started working on my mantle for the holidays, I decided to create some garland, on the cheap.



My trusty little assistant was more than happy to help me out with it too. BONUS: we even enjoyed a little walk together to collect a few sticks for the project.



How to: collect a few twigs  with enough to create at least 5 sets of stars.  Look for enough branches that have enough same size bits so that you can keep your stars in proportion.  Create your stars by laying them out on the table. Once you like their shape, you are ready to adhere them together.  I suggest you glue them together with hot glue.  If you don't have hot glue you can use double sided tape, which is what I did.  Cut strips of paper and adhere double sided tape to the back of them. Wrap each corner of the star nice and tight.  Once they are complete string them on some twine or jute. Add Bella Bows and other fun items to the garland to finish it off.



String the garland over a door, a wreath, a picture frame, your mantle or whatever looks nice!

Supplies: Bella Blvd Make It Merry collection and Bella Bows.

Currently 7

It's hard to believe my baby is 7. I keep asking her to just stop growing and stay little but she keeps telling me with her cute little sad eyes that she can't.  Boo hoo!

I still need to journal everything she's currently into at this age and I will get to that later this week. In the meantime, here's a layout I created about her turning another year older.



How to: Cut a supersized 7 out of white cardstock and back it with a pattern paper.  I chose a transparency so I backed it with more white cardstock behind the black polka dots. Cut the word "currently" from a coordinating pattern paper. I used a Kerri Bradford's cut file she gave me. Also cut the birth month at the same time from the same paper. I also used a Kerri Bradford file.  Next, add the photo, leaving space to add some strips of the top things you want to document in list format. Add embellishments and a little mist.





If any of you have a secret potion to keep them little, please send some my way STAT!

See the Beauty

It's time once again for the Gossamer Blue monthly Inspiration blog hop.  We have dozens of design team gals joining us toprovide you with just a little more creative mojo, which is sometimes especially helpful during the hustle and bustle of the holidays.

I mentioned before that I did a lot of this month's scrapping while travelling.  Sometimes it was in my room after a long day at an event but many of the times was while I was on an airplane.  This particular month was to Amsterdam, Greece and London.  Those are some exceptionally long flights so it was very fulfilling to fit in my scrap time.

I had a little fun with my the Pink Paislee Memorabilia line, especially the 6x6 paper pad. I knew I wanted to draw out so many of the colors of the flowers in my daughter's shirt, especially since they were almost identical to the floral print in the collection.  

Look how closely the shirt matches to the flowers. I swear I did not plan this.  I literally grabbed some pre-printed photos I had in my stash and dashed out the door with my kit.It wasn't until I was looking through them that I realized the coincidence.

I wanted to make a big statement with the different patterns but I only had 6x6 papers to work with so I cut several large triangles from a few of the papers, adhered them to the page and then filled in with smaller triangles from the same paper pad.  

I knew I wanted to stitch on the page so I went ahead and added my embellishments and reserved the space for the photo.  I went ahead and "built" my photo, the pocket and embellished it but I did not adhere it until after I was home and did my stitching and misting.

So, again I will say that these kits are perfect for anyone on the go.  You literally just need to grab your scrapbook staples, some pre-printed photos or take an Instax printer that connects to your smartphone and you are good to go!

Next on the stop is Jill Keller.  I love how she used the supersized numbers on her layout!

1st Day of 1st Grade

Oh my word, I never posted this layout from September. I seemed to post it all over social media but not here??? Better late than never!

I wanted to create a fun and festive background with all the adorable patterns from the Star Student collection.

I was inspired by school pennants so I create one in Silhouette, which you can download HERE.

I arranged them to cover most of my background. I then adhered the pattern papers to the back, using the Scrapbook Adhesives Crafty Power Tape. I left some empty so I could fill in with embellishments. I plan to journal along the white edge on the left side of the layout.

Supplies:
Star Student: Art Journal, Brainiac, Geek Chic, Daily Details, Borders, Treasures & Text, Trinkets, Chipboard Icons; Family Frenzy: Borders; Clear Cuts: Star Student Artistic, Typewriter; Invisibles: Teacher's Pet; Enamel Dots: Guacamole, McIntosh, Bell Pepper; Enamel DooDads: McIntosh, Bell Pepper, Ice, Milk White

Everyday Happy

Hello, my friends.  For this October's Pattern Play I'm talking about fussy cutting. Especially known in the quilting world, fussy cutting is when you cut a detail or particular piece of a pattern. With so many amazing pattern papers, this technique most definitely applies to us scrapbookers.

I love to use this technique with busier patterns, specifically florals so when I saw the beautiful heirloom roses paper from the My Mind's Eye My Story collection in this month's add-on, I grabbed my needle nose scissors, because fine tip scissors are the best for fussy cutters with an eye for detail.


Seriously, how gorgeous are the flowers with those dark grey contrasting leaves?! I cut 6 sets of flowers, two from the corners and 4 other random sets.


I adhered 4 of my 6 sets of flowers to the cardstock background and had two smaller sets remaining. I knew I wanted to use them to add dimension to the page so I added foam adhesive to the back and placed them over the largest cluster on my background paper. I added some gold mist splatter to the page just before adding the photo.


Next, I tucked my photo in the new cluster of flowers, allowing the flowers to overlap just slightly but not enough to distract from the photo.  All that was left was to add the finishing details - title, journaling and a few embellishments here and there.

So there you have it.  I transformed a busy pattern paper background into beautiful embellishments to help tell the story of one little girl, enjoying watching the butterflies among the flowers at the rainforest.

I want to know...do you ever fussy cut? If not, your should try it.  Grab a pair of scissors, paper and turn on your favorite TV show. It'll go by in no time at all.

Supplies: Gossamer Blue Main Scrapbook Kit, Main add-on, Main Addon 2, Life Pages kit, Life Pages add-on, Bits & Pieces

Where did November go?

Hello friends.  The past 5 weeks have been quite crazy. It was a good crazy but wowzers, I wasn't present online for most of it.

I've been keeping a secret for nearly two years about a project I was working on at work.  It was for a new product launch that will change the way businesses do business from a technology perspective. So I've been working on the marketing for it and the last 2 - 3 months just been cray-cray.  That's not to say I wasn't creative but I didn't have time to post any of it.

Part of my job was to make sure our sales teams are trained on this brand new product. And there's a lot to learn - new ways to talk to customers, new ways to reference products, etc. so I was asked to lead a 80 city roadshow practically all by myself with a goal to hit 20 of those locations in November.  

Anywho, I had to travel for those and since I enjoy quite a bit of wanderlust, I was up for the challenge.  Here's what my schedule looked like:

• November 1 - 6: Singapore for work
• Back home on the weekend to hug my babies
• November 8 - 10: Dubai for work
• November 11 - 13: London for work
• Back home on the weekend to hug my babies
• November 16 - 20: Orange County and Bay Area, California for work
• Back home on the weekend to hug my babies
• Week of Thanksgiving: we were supposed to be home with the family things happened and our trip that we were going to take this week, had to be moved to the week of Thanksgiving.  Long story and I'll spare you the details. The point is that being gone this week was planned way before I knew I'd be travelling the 3 weeks before Thanksgiving. Otherwise, I would have stayed home
• November 23 - 29: 13 year anniversary trip to Amsterdam, Athens, Santorini. We were supposed to go to other countries and I'll tell that story later too
• November 30 - December 6: London for the big product launch.

So that explains my blogging absence.  I did take my scrap supplies with me and got to craft on the flights and in my room when I wasn't working or jet lagged.  It was quite fun actually.

Be prepared for my blog to pick back up again now with all the projects I created but didn't get to post as well as regular and more frequent blog posts. 

I think I'll channel Paige and do some posts about my trips.  The question is how to manage through all the photos???

Remember to Dream

I feel like a broken record but I LOVE this month's Gossamer Blue kit.  I mean Crate Paper / Maggie Holmes SHINE! And Seven Paper, Pink Paislee - SWOON!

I created this layout using only the elements of the Main kit.


So apparently my beloved printer doesn't support my PC upgrade so I resorted to my Canon Selphy and discovered it doesn't support my PC upgrade either.  This is a scrapbooker's nightmare.  Luckily, I had my Instax printer so the photo is a little smaller than I'd like and I had to rework the layout idea I had but it saved the day and I like how it turned out.



I love, love, love the ephemera so I decided to layer the tags and bits and pieces.



The title was an absolutely breeze, mixing and matching words from the ephemera pack and a few alphas.

I think you'll love this kit just as much as I do.  Get yours from the Gossamer Blue store before they're gone.

Count Your Blessings

My daughter was recently baptized Catholic. It was such a beautiful day in so many ways.  My aunt, who is also my Godmother and my uncle are her Godparents. They are such a great example of living the faith.

I count my blessings every day for multiple reasons but when it comes to my family not only do I feel incredibly blessed but there's reasons to celebrate. It wasn't the easiest road traveled for me, but in the end, I was given the gift of two beautiful girls. We recently baptized the littlest and the Illustrated Faith collection was right on point with the sentiments I wanted to extract.  Since this was a baptism, I chose to use a mostly white theme with a little pop of color. I loved the "You are..." phrases in the praiseworthy paper so I cut them out and scattered them around the page, choosing some that had the perfect words and others that were fill in the blanks.  The rest was all about layering some coordinating elements from various collections. I love to mix and match whenever possible.  It adds more variety to the pages and guarantees that no two pages from any collection will look alike.  The title was a mix of alphas, including the new Tiny Text alphas. How great are those???  Finally I added some white butterflies and a few more embellishments to complete the page.  I documented the church and baptism date and then journaled on the back.



Since this was a baptism, I chose to use a mostly white theme with a little pop of color. I loved the "You are..." phrases in the praiseworthy paper so I cut them out and scattered them around the page, choosing some that had the perfect words and others that were fill in the blanks.



The title was a mix of alphas, including the new Tiny Text alphas. How great are those???  Finally I added some white butterflies and a few more embellishments to complete the page.  I documented the church and baptism date and then journaled on the back.


The rest was all about layering some coordinating elements from various collections. I love to mix and match whenever possible.  It adds more variety to the pages and guarantees that no two pages from any collection will look alike.  I really loved the paper with all the little sentiments. There are a few that have a blank space so I cut those out of the paper and scattered them around the page in lieu of journaling.  I chose to write in words that mean a lot about my daughter and about this wonderful day - You Are... chose, a gift, special, pure, brave, caring....

Always......

I created this layout using the Gossamer Blue November Main Kit only while I was on an airplane.
The great thing about the scrapbook kits, especially these by Gossamer Blue, is that all the guess work is done for you and everything coordinates so magically.  It's all packaged up in a few bags that fit perfectly in your suitcase. Then, I can a small container that holds my adhesive and a small pair of scissors.  
It's a simpler layout than my normal style but it tells the story of a little girl who is already so sweet. I love the Be Happy card. It has a ton of really great reminders that we all should live by.

Created with the Gossamer Blue November Main kit.

2 Cute 2 Spook

I hope you are all in the Halloween spirit no matter where you are in this world.  Something about dressing up and begging strangers for candy while walking house to house in the darkness is just so great, that one day out of the year. I digress...

I was recently asked to choose inspiration from an Pinterest image, which you can view on the Bella Blvd blog. 

I did something I seldomly do and kept my design to a few simple colors, colors I never use but totally work.

Bonus: I got to scrap some photos from 3 - 4 years ago and I just love looking back and living in this moment again.

Love this day

Hello everyone. I'm having fun on the blog today with my main kit from Gossamer Blue.  I had these photos from our trip to Hawaii last year and as I was looking through my cut files, something sparked and I was suddenly inspired.

When I saw the cut file, I didn't see triangles. I saw mountains. I saw Diamond Head, the volcanic mountain my family and I hiked last year.  

I selected a few triangles to add photos to and then just filled the rest in with my favorite patterns from the kit.  

I even added my journaling inside one of the triangles and then kept the embellishments to a minimum.  I love this layout so very much!

Thanks for stopping by today.

Halloween Collage Tutorial

I'm excited to show you my last project as a design team member for American Crafts.  I feel so blessed to have been on their design team for the last 3 years.  Many thanks to Paige Evans for believing in me and giving me this opportunity, from my original guest designer feature to a trusted design team member.  It's been an amazing ride and a wonderful opportunity to document so many memories.

I hope you all are getting in the Halloween spirit but if not, maybe this post will help get you there.

How to:
1. Gather all your supplies – frame, tags, banners, embellishments, etc.

2. Select one piece of patterned paper for the background of your collage. I chose black and white and used watercolors to add color. Once dry, attach it to the back of the frame.

3. Next, select at least 3 backgrounds for your photos. I chose to use a combination of banners and tags. I layered spider web doilies, tags, washi tape, and more tags. Place your photos on top. I printed some of my photos 2x3” and others 3x3”.

4. Add tassels to the upper left portion of the frame and attach an embellished sentiment there as well.

5. Add paper flowers to the bottom right to help balance the outer frame. Add rosettes to the inside of the flowers.

6. Lastly, attach your photo tags to the frame.

My girls LOVE looking at this. They keep saying, "oh, remember when we...."

Thanks again American Crafts!

Supplies: Halloween collection: (340051) – Tags, (340362) – Washi Tape, (340366) – Washi Tape, (340367) – Pennant Banners, (340369) – Pom Pom Flowers, (340370) – Dimensional Stickers, (340372) – Notch Banners, (340377) – Adhesive ribbon bows, (340377) – Doilies, (340378) – Adhesive layered embellishments, (340381) – Tassels, (340382) – Brads, (340383) – Brads, (340384) – Tags, (340385) – Layered Tags, (340386) – Screen printed clothespins, (340386) – Screen printed clothespins, (340389) – Brads, (340390) – Buttons