Create with Connie and Mary! Ombre Style!

One of the things I like to do when we get a batch of new In Colors is pair them up in an Ombre style to see how they work with our existing colors. I created FIVE layouts that feature each new In Color with color strips. This is the easiest way to showcase these colors in an ombre fashion. And while these are scrapbook pages, you can easily use the same method to create a card! This weeks Create with Connie and Mary challenge was OMBRE so these page designs worked out perfectly!

All of these pages are created using 5 colors, the All Things Fabulous Bundle, Water Painters, a Stamp-a-ratus and the Playful Alphabet dies with the Foam Adhesive Sheets.

This first page features the following colors: Night of Navy, Misty Moonlight, Pacific Point, Seaside Spray and Balmy Blue.

The flowers are stamped using the All Things Fabulous stamp set with the aid of my Stamp-a-ratus and 3 ink colors. I used Seaside Spray, Balmy Blue and Misty Moonlight in that order.

I used the smallest brush tip of the new Water Painters to flick a spray of Misty Moonlight ink over the page and repeated this technique on each page with the coordinating In Color.

I love how bright and fun this page and how my lululemon sweatshirt coordinates! In fact that is a theme in ALL OF MY PAGES :).

This page features Magenta Madness and the colors Poppy Parade, Melon Mambo, Rococco Rose and Blushing Bride. The flowers are stamped in Blushing Bride, Rococco Rose and Magenta Madness in that order. I love having the ability to create my own fun titles using the Playful Alphabet dies and the Foam Adhesive Sheets. No one else is going to scrapbook me, so I have to keep my own memories!

I love this ombre green combo! I used Bermuda Bay, Coastal Cabana, Just Jade, Mint Macaroon, and Pool Party and the flowers are stamped in Pool Party, Mint Macaroon, and Just Jade in that order.

Look! Another coordinating outfit! Haha! I had so much fun finding pictures and creating these pages to have on display in my craft room. This page features Early Espresso, Soft Suede, Cinnamon Cider, Crumb Cake and Sahara Sand. The colors are stamped in Crumb Cake, Cinnamon Cider and Soft Suede in that order.

You may also notice that there are two ribbons on each of my pages! It was so easy to find coordinating ribbons as there are so many fabulous options in our new catalogue.

I saved my favourite for last. Even my kids had a good laugh over my title! This page features the ‘yellows’ and starts with Mango Melody, Crushed Curry, Bumblebee, Daffodil Delight and So Saffron. The flowers are stamped in So Saffron, Daffodil Delight and Bumbleebee in that order.

I hope these pages have inspired you to play around with our color families to create your own ombre looks!

Go Back to visit Melissa and Next to see Connie’s creation!

Around the World with the NEW Catalogue!

This might be the most exciting Around the World on Wednesday blog hop in 2020 as we are all featuring things from the brand new catalogue! Its like an early Christmas! The suite that I was the most excited about was the Playing with Patterns suite on page 100. I absolutely loved the color pallet and after playing around with the Playing with Patterns Designer Series Paper I might go on record and saying is my favourite DSP of all time. That is quite the commitment but to me it is perfection!

I knew right away I wanted to create a scrapbook page layout with this suite adding in a few other stamp sets I was excited about. I love a good floral set and I was drawn to the images and sentiments of this new bundle, All Things Fabulous on page 121.

And look at my subject matter! Could he be even cuter? Hawkins has been my faithful companion and my best buddy during the past few months. As soon as I saw the Pallet Thoughts stamp set with “Hello, Handsome” I knew it would be the perfect set to use when scrapbooking my dog, sons or husband! And I love the distressed wood stamp in this set as well. It is the perfect layering piece!

The whole page is designed around the colors of the Playing with Patterns suite—Purple Posy, Night of Navy (however, I substituted our new In Color Misty Moonlight), Coastal Cabana (my favourite color of all time), Crushed Curry (once again I substituted Bumblebee), and Calypso Coral.

I really love the flowers on this page combined with the soft colors. The enamel dots are an awesome finishing touch that helps add dimension to the page. I like my pages to have lots of layers and textures. I used the largest Water Painter brush to swipe over top of the Bumblebee flowers right after I stamped them. I did the same thing on the barn wood piece to soften things a bit and spread out the color slightly. I also stamped the flowers multiple times to give a gradient look to them as well. That is one of the easiest ways to create different colours. Ink once and stamp repeatedly!

I was so excited and inspired by this page layout that I took all of the same elements to create this adorable mini album. I used photos of our ‘quarantine times at home’ as my subject matter. Ridiculously Awesome is a new mlllion dollar achiever set co-designed by Ronda Wade with artwork contributed by Sean Douglass. I LOVE the oversized fonts which makes this a dream set for memory keeping!

For the album shown below, I used all of the same products (minus the flowers) to create this project. I also added in the stamp set A Grand Kid. I love the phrases in it and can see myself using it a lot even though I don’t have ‘grand kids’. Its definitely not a set to be overlooked because of the title.

Click through these photos to see some different views of this fun mini album :)

The next stop on our awesome blog hop of 24 participants is Cindy Schuster from Nutmeg creations! Cindy works at Stampin’ Up! and is one of the amazing co-founders of Stampin’ Through the Catalogue. You can follow them on the Gram @stampinthroughthecatalog

Create with Connie and Mary--Its a Masculine...

The theme for the first Saturday is June is Masculine! I really wanted to create a scrapbook page as I was really focused on cards for May. I shared a different card each month for the month of May. So if you are new here today, feel free to spend some time going through my posts and hopefully feel inspired!

This masculine page features my youngest son and husband and is a mix of NEW and current products. I pulled out my Geared Up Garage bundle and paired it with our new blue—Misty Moonlight! The oil splats are stamped in Versamark and embossed in clear embossing powder. Its a great solve for not having my new Misty Moonlight ink pad yet. I added in a Night of Navy photo mat to compliment the blue background and used the Denim Ribbon to add another blue tone and texture. My favourite part of the layout is probably the amazing DSP background. This is from the In Good Taste DSP stack and it looks like thick white paint on a canvas with a blue tint. I added in a 1 1/4 strip of In Color DSP in the woodgrain pattern on the left side. I LOVE this pattern option in the 6x6 stacks.

To add a bit of extra texture or grunge to the gears I swiped my Basic Grey ink pad over top of Smoky Slate card stock. I then cut the large gear die out of this piece.

It you want to order any of these amazing projects, please use my monthly hostess code and shop my store!

The large gears are cut out with the ink pad swipe method and the small gears have the Basic Grey marker flicked over top.

Happy Anniversary to Me!

ONE year ago today I started my blog process. I knew next to nothing and could not have gotten here 365 days later without the help of Pam Kriangum who took my amazing branding photos and helped me create my vision. Angie Mackenzie, bless your patience as you guided me along with all the behind the scenes aspects of creating blog hop posts!

Many of you have supported me along the way helping with proofreading (auto correct can really sneak things past you sometimes!) and giving me awesome content ideas, leaving comments and sending me personal messages. I feel a lot more confident now than I did in the beginning and I am so proud of myself for making the decision to step out of my comfort zone and expand my technological horizons! I am swearing and sweating a lot less than I was last June! Hahahaha!

I hope you have enjoyed the projects that I have shared over this past year! Not only do I share scrapbooking and card projects but the Lifestyle component of my blog has recipes, musings and family photos. This is a collective form of memory keeping for me and my kids. One day they will be able to go back through all of my posts and hopefully have a few laughs and gain a better understanding of their mom as a person. ‘Moms’ are often just that, MOM, until our kids mature and realize, my mom is also a woman, a friend, a spouse, a superpower, an influencer and the list goes on and on!

So thank you for being on this journey with me! Some of you have been following along since the beginning and some of you are new! I hope you keep checking back every so often and always feel welcome to leave a comment!

Happy Anniversary to ME!

Out of all the photos Pam took of me in my happy place, this one is my absolute favourite. I felt like I was in a crafting magazine! I love everything about this photo!

This page is mix of old, current and new supplies! The new would be the Just Jade DSP in the woodgrain option from the new DSP stack. Goal Crush is stamped with the Lined Alphabet stamp set and the # is from the Hand Lettered Prose dies. I added in the Detailed Hearts dies as my heart is so full and happy!

Wildly Grateful is the perfect sentiment to how I feel and I realize how blessed I am to LOVE what I do and SHARE what I love! You can find it in the new Lovely You Stamp set.

Capture the Good--Create With Connie and Mary!

Hello my friends! I am so so excited to be a part of the Create with Connie and Mary Blog Hop! These two ladies have been pioneers in blogging and I can’t even express how honoured I am to be joining their weekly Saturday blog hop! It will keep me on my toes for sure! This is also my second card for “A Card a Day in May”.

You should have just been at Melissa Davies blog, I cannot say enough amazing things about her talent!

For my first venture into this challenge, we are using our favourite retiring stamp set. I finally settled on Capture the Good which is a million dollar achiever set designed by Tami White. I am so sad to see it retiring but I also know it will remain in my stamp collection as I absolutely love the camera image. I decided to make the camera image the focus of my card while stamping and embossing it with Whisper White on vellum. Smile is also embossed but in gold and I used my favourite color combo: Petal Pink, Daffodil Delight, and Call Me Clover with gold accents.

This card also features my favourite retiring DSP, Bird Ballad, and my favourite retiring In Colour, Call Me Clover. I figured I might as well get as many retiring things onto one card as I possibly could!

I also love the Perennial Essence Flower Centres too! I used them on so many projects!

When I create a card I really love I find it also inspires me to make a scrapbook page, as really a scrapbook page is just a larger canvas! So I repeated some of the imagery from this card onto a 12x12 page.

The larger canvass did allow me to add in a few more flowers, ribbon and a heart all while keeping the same elements as the card. I am pretty happy with how it turned out!

Next on this Saturday morning blog hop you will be visiting Connie Babert, the creative mastermind along with Mary of this hop! I can’t wait to see how she inspires us this week!

Click here to return to Melissa Davies

Click here to visit the amazing Connie Babbert