Scrapbook & Cards Today Blog

It's Mystery Box time...and its GOOD!

Good morning!  Did anyone else wake up this morning and say "thank goodness it's Friday"?  I know I did!  Who could resist a grand royal wedding?  And, in honour of the royal nuptials today, we have a pretty royal giveaway fit for a scrapbooking princess!  Oh, there are many sparkly crown jewels in this box!  In fact, there are at least 5 lbs. of goodness for one lucky winner.  Did I mention there is a little Bazzill, Doodlebug, American Crafts, Maya Road and more in this box?  It's good!

Just leave us a comment below before Thursday, May 5th at 6:00 p.m. and we will choose one lucky winner to receive this mystery box!  Good luck!

And here is last week's winner of the amazing Jenni Bowlin Studio kit!

This Jenni Bowlin set is AWESOME and in my Favourite colours as well. This will be an amazing Giveaway for a very lucky person. It is so Versatile and I would think lots could be made from this pack. Thanks for a chance to win.  Beverley  Posted by: Bev Leeson | April 27, 2011 at 03:29 AM

Congratulations Beverley!  We will be in touch with you for all your details.

Just a reminder, we will be releasing the May Project 12 sketch right here on Sunday, May 1st!  It is another beautiful sketch by the ever talented Becky Fleck of PageMaps.  And, we are just 9 days away from a BIG announcement!  Be sure to join us on National Scrapbook Day on Saturday, May 7th. 

Have a great weekend!

~ Catherine

 

Reader's Submission Thursday

Recently we received this cute project from Stacy Rodriguez that we just had to share!  With wooden spools popping up everywhere, what a great way to use them and possibly a project to do with the kids in time for Mother's Day!

"On this fun little project I used scrapbooking supplies and created this super cute braclet with a few beads, some fabulous Jillibean paper & twine,  Xyron adhesive and some super cool Maya Road wooden bobbins.  I have included step by step instructions on how this braclet was created so that you can create one too!

 

Step one - Cut your strips of paper to the width of the bobbin and also cut pieces of twine then run through your Xyron machine.

 

Step two - Simply wrap the paper and twine around the bobbins.

 

Step three - Grab some beads and stretch magic and simply alternate the paper bobbins with the twine bobbins placing a bead between each bobbin.

 

Thank you so much for sharing this with us Stacy!  We are on the look out for other Mother's Day projects so if you have one you would like to share, please send it to us with MOTHER'S DAY in the reference line to ideas@scrapbookandcards.com.   We would love to feature your artwork right here next Thursday!

~ Catherine

Add dimension to your cards with Becky!

Hello again, everyone! Are you jelly beaned out yet? Have you nibbled the ears off all your chocolate bunnies? I'm so glad peeps come just once a year (and can I say that my hips are, too!?)! :)

In Monday's post, I shared with you a fun trick to add depth and dimension to your pages, but store them flat in your albums. That same technique works great on a card, as you can see here by this birthday card I made for my favorite aunt.

 

For the lone yellow butterfly, I stacked three punched butterflies, one on top of the other, but applied adhesive only to the center body. Once it dried, I attached it to the card, added a few pearls and lifted upon the wings to separate them.

 

The sentiment inside the card says, "You are one of a kind." This technique works great with all paper punches and dies, and I invite you to share your creations with us here on this post!

~ Becky

A great cloud trick from Sarah!

Good morning!  We have our newest design team member Sarah Hodgkinson here and in honour of 3T's Tuesday, she has a great little trick to share!

"I hope everyone survived this past calorie-ridden weekend. The Easter Bunny was kind to our waistlines this year and brought more books than chocolate. Perhaps his metabolism has been catching up with him as well. We were also happy to see that spring has finally arrived in our little part of the world. In light of that I wanted to share with you one of my favourite springtime Core’dinations techniques.

Core’dinations ColorCore Cardstock has several collections including Core Essentials, Core Impressions, Black Magic, Chocolate Box, Vintage, Glitter Silk, Gemstones and more. WhiteWash, a collection with a whitewash finish and 20 different colour cores, is a perfect match to many seasonal layouts and cards. Using a course grade of sandpaper, you can remove the whitewash coating to reveal the colour hidden inside. When I first saw this cardstock I immediately thought of clouds and have dabbled in all sorts of ways of creating them (shape dies, punches, Cricut machine, etc.). My favourite colours include Cellar Door, Wash Board, Watering Can, Cottage Porch and Weather Vane. For the card below I used Watering Can.

 

Supplies: Core’dinations cardstocks (WhiteWash, Core Essentials and Core Impressions) and Sand-It Gadget tool, Jillibean Soup kraft card base and twine, My Mind’s Eye patterned paper (Stella Rose Collection), Fiskars heart and grass punches, EK Success flower punches (for clouds), Melissa Frances rubon, Creative Impressions mini-clothes pegs, Helmar layering tape and Cricut onesie cut (New Arrival cartridge).

So, here’s my cloud trick...
You need two matching flower punches of different size (EK Success). You only punch 3/5 of the flower petals from the straight edge of the WhiteWash cardstock. Then grab your sanding tool of choice and reveal the blue core. Finally, some layering tape behind the smaller cloud adds a nice dimension to your card or layout.

 

Two weekends ago, at ScrapFest in Kitchener, ON, I was inspired by Caroline Lau from Maya Road’s coolio make and take and created this tag with some treats that she gave me for being her bullhorn backup voice. Yes, it’s true. I’m much louder in real life...and taller.

 

Supplies: Core’dinations cardstocks (WhiteWash and Core Essentials) and Sand-It Gadget tool, My Mind’s Eye patterned papers, Maya Road chipboard tag and wood bingo motif,  Jillibean Soup twine, EK Success flower punches (for clouds), Martha Stewart butterfly and cornflower punch, Fiskars grass punch, Hero Arts stamp, Tsukineko ink (VersaFine), Uniball black pen and Helmar layering tape.

Until next time, Happy Spring!  ~ Sarah Hodgkinson

 

Designer Challenge Monday with Becky Fleck!

Happy Easter Monday, everyone! I don't know about you, but I seriously over did it in the jelly bean and chocolate bunny department yesterday. And no, you are never too old for an Easter basket, as my mother says to me every year when she presents one to me. *blush* So, while this challenge should be "How to lose the three pounds I put on over Easter weekend because I ate too many Peeps," I think we'll get on with some scrappy fun instead! So put the jelly beans to the side and let's get started.

We all love dimension on our pages, but sometimes the bulk makes it difficult to store them in page protectors. And when you heap it on a card, the Post Office doesn't hesitate to punish you with another ounce or two of postage! Here's a fun technique that gives you all the dimension you love, but lays flat for storage or mailing.

 
supplies: patterned paper, buttons (BasicGrey); butterfly punch (Martha Stewart); ink (Ranger); baker's twine (The Twinery); seam binding (Hug Snug); dictionary paper

As you can see from this layout, rows and rows of small punched butterflies add so much dimension and tactile interest to the page. But the great part about this technique is that all of those lovely, little bugs will lay flat for storage or mailing. How, you ask?

 
 

After punching out the butterflies from patterned paper and dictionary paper, I folded each one in half and then gently flattened them again. I glued them to the page by applying adhesive only to the center body of each butterfly. Once all of the butterflies were in place, I gently lifted up on the wings. Paper has memory, so even when this layout is placed in a page protector, when it is slipped out, the wings will pop back up again for instant dimension.

Here is the sketch from Scrapbook PageMaps Vol. 2 that this layout was based on:

 

I hope you'll join me again on Wednesday, where we'll try this same technique on a card! Enjoy your Easter Monday, everyone.

~ Becky Fleck

Thank you Becky for a great sketch, a great challenge and a great technique!  We also just came across another fun technique to share.  Would you like to learn how to make the Maya Road Zipper flowers that we featured in our Most Wanted from the spring issue that look like this:

Then just click here http://mayaroad.typepad.com/mayaroad/2011/04/zipper-flower-video-tutorial.html!  Perfect for Mother's Day gifts!

Just a reminder to make sure you have May 7th circled on your calendar!  This is National Scrapbook Day and not only do we have our very talented team on deck to deliver some fabulous challenges, we have a BIG announcement to make.  Yes, it's BIG...really BIG!  We cannot wait to share!  In fact, it's killing us to keep it until then and I am pretty sure we'll have some hints in the upcoming days.

See you tomorrow!

~ Catherine

 

Happy Easter fun!

For those celebrating Easter this weekend, we wish you a very Happy Easter!  Earlier in the week we had asked you to send us your easter projects.  Unfortuantely we had some technical difficulties yesterday and were not able to post them but better late than never.  Here is just some of the fabulous artwork that was sent including a Passover layout too!

 

Cassandra De Grace

 
Kathy Wade

 

Linda Cummings

 
Maria Matter

 

Nicole Doiron

 

Tanyda Rudd

 
Tina Phillips

and even a Passover layout from Irit Shalom too!

 


We hope you have a wonderful day!  Join us tomorrow as we have Becky Fleck here and you know what that means...there will be a sketch too!

~the SCT team