Bethany's 10th birthday: a layout and PL page

Late last year some of us lucky Jot Girls were given the chance to work with the lovely Make a Wish collection by Cocoa Vanilla Studio. This collection was perfect for me - it's got all my favourite colours (pink, aqua, and yellow) and is a fun mixture of graphic prints and floral designs. It's got a bit of a birthday theme running through it, although it would be easy enough to use it for other themes too.

It was also perfect timing for me as the collection arrived at about the same time as Bethany's birthday and I quickly set to and made both a traditional 12x12" layout, as well as Project Life double spread.

I've started a bit of a tradition of creating birthday layouts where I document a mini interview with the birthday girl - asking about their favourite foods, and activities and other simple questions to try and capture this moment in time. It's fun to see how the answers evolve over the years!

For the first time I also got brave enough to let Bethany actually do the journaling herself! I thought this added an ever greater element of capturing her personality, and she loved the ability to contribute with me on a page.

Like a lot of collections these days the Make a Wish patterned papers included one that could be cut apart as 3x4" journaling cards. I love having this option and it often prompts me to create a Project Life page, even though it's not strictly a Project Life product.

So absolutely everything you see on this double-page spread comes from the same collection. There's so many different options of embellishments (wood veneer, puffy stickers, vellum ephemera, glitter enamel dots, chipboard... you name it!) that I didn't need to look in the rest of my stash to augment it in any way.

I still had plenty of stuff left over that I later created Moriah's birthday page and project life spread with it as well! If you haven't heard of Cocoa Vanilla Studio then I encourage you to pop over and check out their website and blog. They have new collections coming out all the time - and a fabulously talented Design Team to show them all off!

Happy Saturday!

Sizzix News and Awards

I have to admit, when Sizzix approached me about a year ago and asked me if I would come on board and work for them as a Creative Blogger that I jumped at the chance. Who wouldn't? We all know who Sizzix are, and we all know they're the market leaders in die-cutting machines and dies. 

But I never for the life of me imagined that my role would lead to this! When Sizzix decided they wanted to increase their exposure in Australia they turned to the Television Shopping Network channel TVSN and started coordinating some shows. And when they needed a Sizzix representative to help sell their products live on the show they asked me if I would be interested.

It involves making a whole heap of projects, as well as having a bunch of prepared demos that I could make on the fly, and of course it also means actually turning up and presenting alongside the TVSN host. Did I mention that this is LIVE TV?!!

Anyway, I must have done a good enough job in January when I presented 2 shows because they asked me back again, and today I did the first one.
There is still opportunity to see it online if you're interested. TVSN have a Catch-Up section online where you can stream the shows. Here's a link to today's show.
And if you're in Australia or New Zealand you can see tomorrow's show at 4:30pm. 

Do you already own some Sizzix dies? Do you want to be crowned as the Top Sizzix Maker and have a chance to win some amazing prizes and a guest blogging opportunity?
Sizzix are celebrating their 40th birthday by launching the 2017 Sizzix Awards. All you have to do is create a project using at least one Sizzix die. It can be in any of the following 4 categories: Papercraft, Sewing and Soft Crafts, Innovation and Upcycling. Fill in the entry form HERE and you are in the running.

There's lots more info on the Sizzix Lifestyle page here.
Good luck!

Krumspring Teaser post

Figured I might as well be honest in my blog post title hey? This is all about getting you to check out the amazing stamps on offer at Krumspring. It's possible you might not have heard of them before, and if so, then you're definitely missing out!

Krumspring are a European stamp company (Danish to be exact) who create high quality acrylic stamps. Maria who is the owner and designer is known for her love of geometric patterns, and this clearly influences many of her stamp designs.

I'm lucky enough to be Guest Designing for them this month and I was able to work with all their newest release stamps, as well as a couple of 'old' classics. Here's a little sneak into just SOME of the projects I've created...

The latest releases are available in the Krumspring shop both individually and as a bundle, and they ship worldwide. You can find the bundle HERE.

If you pop over now you'll also find that Maria has generously included some FREE digital designs for you to download. But they're only available for a limited time. These will be perfect for your Easter projects right?

So I'm going to have a series of posts over on the Krumspring blog during the month of April, so keep checking back. The first one is already live and includes two fun cards. You can find it HERE.

xxx

Jot Magazine April Mood Board Challenge

I fell in love with the April Mood Board at Jot Magazine the minute I saw it. Probably because it's like my standard go-to colours of pink, aqua and yellow... only the super-saturated version! So I considered it something quite different for me to create with, but still within familiar territory ;-) Check it out.....

Just love those rich colours and the lush florals. But ultimately it was that handbag up in the top right that caught my eye and gave me the inspiration to create my card. I thought I could almost replicate the same sort of design in paper form, making a bit of a copy of it.

Whilst I was figuring out what I could use to make the flowers I remember the very latest bundle of Sizzix dies that had only just landed on my doorstep. One of the new releases designed by Tim Holtz is this set of Small Tattered Florals and it comes with no less that 21 different dies! It was literally perfect for cutting out all these varieties of different flowers, and in a size that was made for cardmaking!

A bit of mixing and matching later and I had glued down my final arrangement, and added some hand-stitching to bump up the texture another notch. Plus it's trying to imitate the embroidered floral design on the handbag remember?

You can find all the details for playing along with the Jot Magazine Mood Board challenge for yourself right HERE on their blog.
xx