February Sneak Peek #6

And, here's one final peek at the February Doubleshot Kit before the website updates tomorrow night with all of the February kits. Gramercy Road by Gossamer Blue is on tap this month - pretty winter colors for some pretty winter photos.

February Sneak Peek #5

This is our first look at the February Doubleshot lines - Authentique Cozy. 

This cute project is from the Authentique blog by designer, Shellye McDaniel. The heavyweight nature of Authentique papers make them especially sturdy for creating paper projects, like boxes or houses. You can check out all the details for creating this project on Authentique's blog.

February Sneak Peek #4

Webster's Pages Hall Pass was a mid-release, and it was too cute to pass up. You'll love the color combo and the fun designs on the papers, with great B-sides for lots of mix-and-match potential!

February Sneak Peek #3

Today's sneak peek comes to you from BasicGrey's blog by BG Designer, Lisa Dickinson. She is showing off BasicGrey's new J'Adore line, and you'll have a chance to play with it in February! 

Um... I think I just want to scraplift Lisa's layout!

February Sneak Peek #2

How cute is this paper from Pebbles' We Go Together line? It will work for so many things...Valentines if you leave the To/From strips attached. Or, cut that To/From off the bottom, and you've got twelve adorable embellishment cards for some cute "We go together" themed layouts. Best thing? Pebbles papers always have non-themed and easy-to-use B-sides, so you'll have lots of options with this paper and the rest of the goodies in this kit.

February Sneak Peek Week Starts Today

I can hardly believe that it is already January 25, 2015. Weren't we just celebrating Christmas last week? The older I get, the faster time flies... And, it's time to start our sneak peeks at the upcoming February kits, which will go live on our website on Saturday night!

Today's peek is a montage of goodies from Crate Paper's Kiss Kiss line, which will be appearing in the February Flavors of the Month and Project Life Kits.

Weekend Inspiration!

It's Friday again! Ah, can't you just feel the weight lifting off your shoulders a bit. It's time to think about kicking back and doing something you love for a few hours. Why not pull out your January Flavors of the Month Kit and create a layout based on this month's sketch? We've got a photo-filled 2-page sketch this month, brought to you by Becky Fleck over at www.pagemaps.com. How will this sketch inspire you?

And our designers' take on the sketch...

by Rochelle Spears, using the BasicGrey Vivienne Kit (1/15 FOTM Kit)

and a variation by Brenda Ragsdale, using the BasicGrey Vivienne Kit (1/15 FOTM Kit)

Project Life Inspiration: Adding a few more photos with Inserts!

Good Morning! Have you ever found yourself scrapbooking an event, and you have just a few more photos and memories than will fit on your 2-page layout? Project Life scrapbooking offers an easy and seamless solution - the 6x12 insert. Today's post shows you how to seamlessly incorporate additional photos and cards into a Project Life spread using the 6x12 Design H pocket protector.

Becky Higgins Project Life 6x12 Insert: Design H

This 2-page layout was created using photos and cards from the January Project Life Kit. Notice the first vertical column of photos on the right page, starting with the 4x6 photo of the boys throwing snow at each other. This is the 6x12 insert. You can see that Aphra designed the insert to coordinate with the layout, and she placed the insert in between the left and right pages.

This is the same layout with the insert flipped to lay over the left page. Notice the second vertical column on the left page, starting with the "Sledding Adventures" card. This is the 6x12 insert flipped over within the 2-page layout. Again, both sides of the layout are coordinated whether the insert is laying on the right or the left page.

In traditional scrapbooking, adding more photos generally means creating an additional layout, but with pocket scrapbooking and divided inserts, adding a little bit more is a cinch. I'll be adding these 6x12 divided protectors to our TSR Store very soon!

Daily Inspiration

Good Morning! I hope everyone had a relaxing weekend. The weather warmed up a wee bit here, which is always a good thing in January. Today, let's take a look at all of our designers' layouts created with the Pebbles Happy Day layout kit, featured in our January Flavors of the Month Kit, along with coordinating goodies in the Embellishment, Patterned Paper and Project Life kits. I love how all of the layouts and cards created with this are, well, HAPPY!

by Brenda Carpenter

by Rochelle Spears

by Brenda Carpenter

by Brenda Ragsdale

And, for all you pocket scrapbookers... a Project Life style layout...

by Aphra Bolyer

Weekend Inspiration!

Hello Friends! Friday is in full swing, and the weekend is upon us. Everyone should have their January kits by now (well, the US folks anyway), so why not print out the January Recipe Cards and create a layout or two in your down time this weekend. The Recipe Cards, with their cutting instructions and step-by-step assembly directions take hours off the scrapbooking process and allows you to be creative while catching up on your favorite Netflix series.

This month's Recipe Cards:

Pebbles Happy Day layouts by Brenda Carpenter

Amy Tan Stitched layout by Rochelle Spears

 BasicGrey J'Adore layout by Brenda Ragsdale

Dear Lizzy Serendipity layout by Tammy Harp

Project Life Inspiration: InstaWeather and PicFrame

Hello Scrappy friends! It's a new year for Project Life, and I, for one, am so excited. This year I have challenged myself to try something new in my album each month. A new technique or product or style or whatever. For January, I decided to incorporate an InstaWeather collage into one of my Snow Day Fun layout. I love the extra detail that the app includes.

I thought I would share with you how I created the pictures and the collage. It was quite simple using two apps on my iPhone. The first one is called InstaWeather. There is a free version and a Pro version. You can create the pictures above with either one. Basically, you snap a picture and upload it into the app, which adds the current weather to your pic. Then, you can save it to your camera roll. You can also upload the photo to Facebook or Instagram.

The next app that I used is PicFrame. It is so super simple and versatile. Again, it has a free version as well as an upgraded one. The main difference is the number of collage templates. 

For a 4" x 6" photo, you have to be sure to set the ratio of the picture to 3:2. 

Then, you select your collage. For my photo, I chose the white one with three horizontal pictures. I was able to insert my three square photos, save, and then print. Super easy.

I hope you are inspired to give these apps a try. If you get stuck, do a quick search for YouTube videos. There are tons of tutorials out there to help you out.

In the meantime, if you have any suggestions or requests for Project Life Inspiration, leave me a comment. I'd love to hear from you.

Endings and Beginnings

Whew... what a whirlwind 2015 has been so far - complete with last second changes to the January kit line-up, waiting for what seemed like forever for the replacement product to arrive, and a beat-the-clock session of kit assembly and packaging in order to get the kits shipped out within our normal delivery window. We loaded up the kits for delivery and my husband and I promptly turned around and rushed out the door to take our second son to his far-away college for the first time. Moving your kids into the dorms is such a bittersweet experience for everyone. We're all excited and tentative and a little overwhelmed.

It's the end of something and the start of something at the same time, and it's always bittersweet...

A little change to the January lineup...

Hello All! The Simple Stories Life Documented line was scheduled for our January kits, but the entire product collection is still sitting in customs, tied up because of some sort of labor dispute... Simple Stories was supposed to have received this product line by last week at the very latest, but they still haven't received it, so they have been unable to ship it out. As a result, we had to make a last-minute substitution with the Dear Lizzy Serendipity line for the Life Documented line in our January kits. Dear Lizzy was supposed to be on tap for February, but we bumped it up to January, and we're hopeful that we'll get the Simple Stories Life Documented line into the February kits.

So, if you saw the sneak peek from Tuesday and were wondering what is going on with the January line-up and the lack of Dear Lizzy layouts in the gallery this month... now you know. :)