Flower Garden

Here is another amazing page from Heather. I love how detailed and layered her pages are.

Here is a closer look ...

For details, visit her blog at http://heatherahudson.blogspot.com/2011/05/flower-garden-scraptales-mega-meet.html

A beautiful mermaid

Heather created this amazing page with Creative Imaginations paper ...

Here is a closer view of the mermaid she cut out.

For more information, visit her blog, here  http://heatherahudson.blogspot.com/2011/05/scraptales-mega-meet-layout.html

Handmade Decorative Border

Die cutting machines, decorative edge scissors and punches can make some amazing borders.

But, don't discount stickers and die cuts. They can make unique borders on cards, too.

Just look at this one Candy created ...

First, she created a card out of cardstock. Then she tore and inked papers from Creative Imaginations and then layered them onto the front of the card.

Next, she took a die cut from Creative Imaginations, inked the edges, and used dimensional foam to adhere it.

Then, she ran flower die cuts (from the same package by Creative Imaginations) ran them through the Xyron Sticker Maker to turn them into little stickers and then adhered them to the bottom and right corner of the card.

Using detail scissors, she cut the cardstock and paper away from the areas below the flowers.

Finally, she added a touch of Distress Ink to the bottom edge to finish it off.

Simple and unique.

Creatively escape to the islands with Candy

Sometimes paper companies create beautiful papers that are, what Candy calls, "unscrappable." As much as we love to look at them, we cannot figure out how to incorporate photos without either covering too much of the paper or taking the focus away from the pictures.

But, every once in a while, a company comes out with a fabulous line that is perfectly scrappable, like the Sonnets of the Sea Collection by Creative Imaginations.

The collection is small -- with just three double-sided papers -- but it covers everything. There is a sheet with island maps, another with travel words and a third with sand and shells. The backsides offer larger shells and two patterns that could be used as mats, backgrounds or letters.

For this design, Candy used one sheet as her background. Tore and inked two others and attached. Then, she cut out one of the shells from leftover paper and adhered it with dimensional dots as an accent. The title was cut out of another paper using a QuicKutz font and the journaling block was taken from another leftover section, torn and inked. Eyelets and a bit of twine finish off the look.

The final result is inexpensive, but elegant and allows the photos to take center stage.

A mini album for a little one

Jamie has been busy again creating this adorable mini album with Creative Imaginations papers.

Click on the images for a closer look.

or visit Jamie's blog at  http://jamielanedesigns.blogspot.com/ for details.

Oh Sweet Baby

Jamie has been working with the Lullaby Baby Boy line from Creative Imaginations. Here are a few of her creations ...

Visit Jaimie's blog for details ... http://jamielanedesigns.blogspot.com/

Accu-Cut Gifts

Did you know that Scrap Tales has a HUGE Accu-Cut die center?

There are envelopes and cards, boxes, frames, mini albums, alphabets and much, much more. All are available for your use at no charge -- as long as you buy your paper at Scrap Tales.

Accu-Cut dies can cut through chipboard, grungeboard, shrink plastic and multiple sheets of cardstock.

Here is one of the projects Candy recently created ...

The chipboard letters are from Maya Road. The dog tags are made with a QuicKutz (Now Lifestyle Crafts) die and metal adhesive paper, cardstock and Alcohol Ink. The stars are made with cardstock, a gold Paint Dabber and a QuicKutz die. The paper is from Creative Imaginations and the doily inside (under the cookies) is from Little Yellow Bicycle. It is all held together with Glue Dots.

The sample, minus the cookies, will be in the store soon ...

I wanna be a rock star

Papers with frames look great, but are sometimes difficult to work with. Do you make your photos fit inside? Do you cover up part of the frame?

Well, for this page using Creative Imaginations paper, Candy cut out the middle of the frame with a craft knife and placed an 8x10 photo of her son behind it.

It creates a unique way to frame a photo. With a different style paper, you could do a wedding photo, family photo or a school picture.

2011 CHA

They are there! Our favorite store owners, Melissa and Lisa, are in sunny California. They are supposed to be attending CHA -- THE biggest craft and hobby show of the year. It is where all of the scrapbook companies announce, showcase and make available for stores to purchase their new products. If you are a paper artist, like me, it is better than Christmas! But, it looks like they had some time to sightsee, as well! Just kidding ... they are actually hard at work. Yesterday they spent the day in classes with some of my favorite companies -- Little Yellow Bicycle, Creative Imaginations and Ranger. Today, they will hit the show to start buying all of those wonderful new creations to bring to Scrap Tales.

Melissa just sent me the first photos ... she promises to add captions after I post them, so here they are ...

From LYB:

From Creative Imaginations:

And from Ranger ... on CANVAS!

We should get some photos of some of the new products that will soon be in the store later this weekend, so stay tuned!

By the way, Scrap Tales is promising a special store discount when we have 100 followers on the blog, so be sure to follow and tell your friends!

Picking the paper

When customers walk into Scrap Tales, they often ask for a specific themed paper -- like Christmas or Halloween or Baby Boy.

There is certainly nothing wrong with that. In fact, that is how Scrap Tales is set up -- by theme.

But, sometimes the Christmas paper doesn't match the Christmas photos. What do you do then?

There are basically two choices ... you can either work with cardstock that matches the photos or look around the store for something else that will work.

This garden page created by Candy, for example, is using Creative Imaginations paper that was technically part of their Halloween collection. Candy doesn't "do" Halloween, so she doesn't have any Halloween photos. But, since she was given this paper for a Design Team task, she found a way to make it work.

She printed out a photo as an 8x10 and attached it to a sheet of cardstock. Then, using the Fiskars Detail Craft Knife, she cut the gate open on the paper and attached it to the cardstock. When the doors are open, it looks like this:

The title is cut out of leftover photos (the smaller the flowers in the photos, the better) using QuicKutz (now Lifestyle Crafts) Garden font.

The facing page, which uses coordinating paper from Creative Imaginations, shows a few other features of her mother's garden, matted on cardstock by American Crafts.

Click on the photos for a bigger picture, or stop in the store for a closer look.

For my valentine

This amazing card is from Laura -- she's on staff at Scrap Tales and is one of our instructors. Laura is also on the Dreamweavers Design Team ...

This card started with beautiful Creative Imaginations paper. What is it they say on those decorating shows?  Oh yeah, it was my "inspiration piece".   I really liked it, but thought that it

would be difficult to use. I was wrong. 

The silver foiled patterns reminded me of old fashioned Valentine cards and luxe fabrics. I was considering which materials would be simple and elegant--and an idea was born--velvet paper and metal!  I just love both of these items and use them whenever possible.

Although I was concerned that the Dreamweaver paste might not work well on the velvet material, I discovered that I was, once again, very wrong. The silver paste worked like a dream! I used the Dreamweaver stencil LM 241, which reads "Happy Valentine's Day." I masked out the additional letters with Scotch removable tape and pasted as usual.

The metal is a Quickutz (Lifestyle Crafts) product. I used it in the Revolution machine, but I could have put it through any non-digital die cut machine. It was very easy. I put the stencil, Dreamweaver stencil LM 272 ( Dangling Heart) down, followed by the metal (face down), a rubber embossing mat and the blue plastic embossing mat. The metal is adhesive backed, so once it was embossed, assembly was a breeze.  The Creative Imaginations paper is fancy and flourishy.  It was easy to find a part of this paper that enhanced the elements that I used on it. 

If you would like to see what I am talking about in person, stop by Scrap Tales and check it out.  We currently open at 9 am every day of the week, so it should be a little easier to find some time. 

If you like the Dreamweaver Stencils, check out the Thursday Dream Schemes.  Every design team member (including myself) posts every Thursday.  It is a great way to get some ideas for ways to use your stencils.  You can start with Dreamweaver's blog at www.dreamweaverstencils.blogspot.com  or, you are certainly always welcome to check out my blog at www.rememberinglifesmoments.blogspot.com.