Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Graduated Pages Mini Album

a guest design team project for Crafty City

Today I'm sharing a new album made from Lemon Craft's collection Sweet Secrets.  Archana Joshi owner of Crafty City was kind enough to send me this collection to play with as a Guest Design Team project for her store.  A Video link to the complete walk through is at the bottom of this blog post. Archana is offering all my viewers a 10% discount through the end of October with the code PattiDT10, be sure and check out the Crafty City Store for some wonderful products (discount does not include kits)

This Mini is FOR SALE
USA only, payment via PayPal
Please email me if you are interested nwlady2@gmail.com


I am calling this original design a Graduated page mini which is easy to see why.  The base of the mini is 8"x10" with a 4" spine.  Constructed of medium weight chipboard and covered in a cream cardstock.  Each page of the mini graduates in width by 1" starting with the first page being 4" and the last being 9" for a total of 6 page sections.


Inside the front cover I've included a huge circle photo mat to complement any photo you'd like to showcase.  I am including a circle template that fits perfectly inside the pearl trimmed frame so whomever purchases this will have no problems filling it.


All the pages measure 7 1/2" high. The first section, as I said, measures 4" wide when tied and closed. Open to the right, as shown above, it expands into 3 sections each housing a tucked in spot for photos or journaling or those little treasures you'd like to keep.


When opened to the left the sections expand to include a fourth.  Lots of space for a variety of photos, journaling and whatever you'd like to preserve on them.


The next section expands to  5" and has a beautiful side lace pocket with a nice folded tuck in inside.  The lace has been mounted onto clear acetate to create stability and strength to the pocket.


The next group of pages expands to 6" in width and showcases a beautiful lace pocket filled with tuck in mats.  I found this fantastic beige mesh butterfly in my stash that had just been waiting to adorn this page.  It's so fun to use things you've looked at many times and now find they fit perfectly. To secure the surprise hidden inside this page I used a LOVE white clothespin with a cream Seam Binding bow on one side and a button adornment from the collection on the opposite side.  The clothes pin neatly holds the mats on both sides in place.


When you remove the decorative LOVE clothespin from these pages they pop open to share side by side Belly Bands complete with fussy cut sprays of flowers.  The flowers are free in the middle so the tuck in can slide behind. Folded, large, photo mats store neatly on each side behind each belly band.


Increasing another inch to 7" the next page has a gorgeous flower and paper element anchoring the top flap and acting as a stopper.  Released it pops up, down and out to reveal numerous large areas for photos.


The backside is a simple, but lovely, pocket housing three mats.


Moving to the 8" wide page shares a plain page with just the lovely print of the collection showing except for a tied ribbon bow at the bottom which promises something fantastic when opened.


Within these two pages are 3 sets of waterfalls each allowing for different sized photos.  Because it's secured with the tied ribbon closure it allows the waterfalls to grow in size to accommodate all the photos.  So much is here in such a small area, I love it!  There are lots of surprises under the waterfalls as well but I'll let you discover them when you watch the video. 


Probably my favorite duo of pages are these with the lace scallop pockets across the bottom.  I would be remiss if I did not thank Cheryl Wells for the lovely laces within the pages of this mini and Manuela Ott (Bunny Bow) for the bags, sacs and envelopes tucked here and there throughout.  I am blessed to have such generous crafters share their things with me.


Inside the back cover is a humongous envelope filled with all sorts of goodies for the purchaser of this mini to help decorate the pages to their liking.  Some ribbons, and paper elements, butterflies and clothespins, some tab pulls and oh yes photo templates to take the guesswork of what to put where.

Please join me on the video to see the full walk through front to back of the mini.  I do not have a tutorial for this but I do have a playlist of many How Do I Do That  videos that will walk you through basic mini album construction. 

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Monday, October 8, 2018

Authentique Solitude Leftovers to Cards

a Country Craft Creations project share 

Well if you're a regular visitor to my Blog, YouTube or any of my social media outlets you know I've been trying to stay in the habit of using up my scraps before I store them away.  This time it was with Authentique's Solitude collection, a wonderful assortment of very vintage Christmas designs and images.  I had so little paper scraps left I had assumed I'd only have a couple of cards to share with you.  As happens lots of time the scraps grew and I ended up with twelve Christmas cards and still a few designs left for maybe three more.


This was the first card I made and wow do I love it.  Super simple, super elegant and something I'd love to share with anyone.  This one was larger because the image is 4x6", all the rest are 4 x 5.5".


On the video (the link is at the bottom of this post) I'm going to give you three examples of perhaps making a card a little differently than you usually do. I'll share all the cards I made to give you loads of food for thought and hopefully inspire you to look at and use up your scraps into cards.  On this particular card I fussy cut the little girl out of the mat.  Popped both the mat and the little girl on scraps of chipboard, or a couple of sheets of scrap cardstock work well too.  I then added the ribbon and bow and glued the girl back into the design.  Now she's dimensional!  To hide where I snipped the border to get to her I've added one of my snowflake clusters.  Easy Peasy!



The next idea, well there's no two ways about it, I'm going to be an enabler and tell you if you don't already have a branch punch in your crafty stash you need to invest in one.  Mine is an older pine bough punch by Martha Stewart.  All your little scraps can be punched to make a lovely wreath like the one shown here.  The scrap only has to be as wide as the widest part of the branches, which is pretty small.  It takes a bit of time to punch them all but I love the visual it provides!  I've also included some of these same branches around the fussy cut robin on this card.  It will add so much punch to your cards if you add them here and there.


OK the last idea I'm sharing here is using the negative space to create a card.  I had punched out the snowflakes and I was left with this beautiful negative space image of a snowflake.  I added an acetate pocket behind and filled it with sequins and shiny bits and glued a backing on it. Voila instant shaker card.  Across the middle is the punched snowflake with of course some shiny Stickles added to it. The small photos show the negative space cutting to add just a small border around to form another snowflake (on the left above) and the dimension of the altered negative space (on the right).


So come and join me on the video and see the other cards I created.  
As always, thank you so much for stopping by.  
I really love when you visit!
Patti


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Sunday, September 30, 2018

Authentique's Solitude Christmas Mini Album

a Country Craft Creations design team share

It's so hard to realize that Christmas is in the air, well at least the air of all of us crafty people.  Tammy Merrill from Country Craft Creations sent me the new Authentique Solitude to play with and it just oozes Christmas memories.  


To me it's a very nostalgic collection full of images of Christmas and Holiday's past.  It will be the perfect mini album to house a huge amount of this years Christmas memories. I did a little cutting and pasting of images on the front cover to scoot the girls under the tree limbs and pull the limbs around them like a snowy embrace.  Using ArtDeco Snow Marker, Stickles Icle and Red brought the cover to life.

This is a 5"x7" mini with a 3" spine.  It's constructed of medium weight chipboard and covered with Artisan Kraft Cardstock. All edges were inked in Tim Holtz Iced Spruce Distress Ink.  There are 8 pages with many flips and flaps to add to the amount of space housing photos.  This mini was designed so that the receiver could add a multitude of 4"x6" photos.


I'm going to do a few tutorial videos, which will be added to the Authentique Solitude Tutorial Video Series Playlist on my YouTube channel.  I'm not going to walk you through where to glue each paper and embellishment but instead show you how I created the page designs I used.  That way you'll be able to use these designs in any project you so choose.  There is no cost to use my designs I'd just appreciate a shout out and link back to my blog, facebook or youtube.


I used a split page design on the page on the right above.  You do this by splitting the hinge in half and adding a swing side pocket to the top and the bottom.  I also included this adorable belly band to slide a mat overtop.  I like using something like this or the stopper on the left page above to keep everything neat and tidy and help pages and photos from escaping the mini.


I also included some swing tab closures in this mini in place of magnets.  They keep the pages together and provide a nice visual interest as well, like the little bird above.


There are lots of mats, tags and a little book or two like the one above tucked here and there.  This allows for many more photos and memories to be added.  Don't forget when you add your photos to add journaling too so generations in the future will know where and who and why you added that photo.


On one of the tutorial videos I'll share how to make this swing out page using the belt loop tabs and a magnet.  Super easy and super fun to do.  Don't you just love the images?


As is usually the problem there is so much to share with you.  I think I'll end with this photo and let you join me on the walk through video which won't share any how tos but will share each page in detail with you.  Thanks so much for stopping by and sharing your time with me! 



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Sunday, September 16, 2018

Leftovers to Embellishment Clusters


Recently I did a blog post sharing a mini album using Prima's Misty Rose for Country Craft Creations.  As always I had bits and pieces left over.  I've used the majority of these making twelve embellishment clusters and the rest will be used to finish decorating the cards they are used on.  If you'd like to see the process of creating these clusters check out my video.  I will have a follow up video posting shortly sharing how I turned the twelve clusters into cards so stay tuned for that.




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