Love Apptually

Laura Whitaker

Hello scrapbookers!  It's Laura here with you today sharing a page created for our "Social Media" theme!

Since my youngest son and I are currently residing about 3 hours away from my husband, we use social media a lot to stay connected.  We call and text each other several times a day, but my youngest is at school all day long so we have to work a little harder to keep him connected with his dad. Skyping during dinner, as often as possible, is an easy way for them to have time together. I am so grateful that we live in a time that it is super easy for us all to have daily contact!

One night while we were having dinner and skyping, I snapped a photo as I knew that this would be something that I would ant to document.  And as it turns out it is perfect for this weeks theme! The photo is a little dark as it was taken during the winter months when it is dark before 5pm, but the memory is still important.

I began my page by deciding on a title, which was a little tricky for me at first, but then it hit me and I ran with it!

Because my title had the word "love" in it I decided to use this cut file that I created, and had lots of fun filling in the heart with colourful patterns from the Par-r-rty Me Hearty collection.

Because I was so excited about my title, I worked on that next. Which is a little unusual for me.

I layered my photo over some vellum and a die cut  and cut apart tag from the same collection. Then I added some simple embellishing.

I decided to go bold with my journaling and use it as a main part of my design, then I embellished around it as well.

A few strips of pattern along the bottom of my page finishes it off!

Thank you for visiting friends!

Dad's Perfect Day

Today we wrap up our celebration ideas for Dads. We hope that you found inspiration from our talented design team.  We want to wish all the Fathers out there a very happy & special day this weekend!!

Laura Whitaker

Hello friends! Laura here with you today, we are still celebrating fathers, here on the Imaginisce blog and I wanted to create a page to document my husband's favourite past time, fishing!  Which he loves even more if one or more of our boys goes along with him!

The Par-r-rty Me Hearty collection has some great elements that worked perfectly for a fishing page!

I used an old sketch of mine as a jumping off point for my page, and had some fun with triangles and these great masculine colours!

I added stitching around each triangle for a bit of texture.

I love using tags on my pages, as they are a great way to add in a bit of twine, cutting one or two from the cut a part sheet in this collection is a super easy way to facilitate that!

The little fish puffy stickers couldn't be more perfect!

And this fun phrase, cut from the bar code strip of one of the papers is so perfect, too!

Supply List: Par-r-rty Me Hearty patterned papers, stickers and puffy stickers; Hemptique twine; American Crafts cardstock; Steadtler pen; Mr. Huey's mist.

Thanks so much for visiting!

Dad

Father's Day is just 2 weeks away so we asked our DT to create any type of project that they wanted with the theme of Fathers.  We just adore the large DAD letters that Laura has created as the focal point on her layout.

Laura Whitaker

Hi scrappy friends!  It's Laura here with you! We are celebrating Dads this week and I have a fun layout and free cut file to share with you all!

I used some fun papers and embellishments that had a masculine feel and great colours for my photo from the Par-r-rty Me Hearty collection to create this layout, which documents what a great dad my husband is.

I created a cut file to feature as the focal area of my layout, I wanted to use a couple of larger pieces of patterned paper and my photo to fill in the centres of the letters.  Putting this piece together was the first step in my creative process.  I am kind of loving how it turned out! 

Next I focused on adding some style to the top of my layout, tearing my cardstock background so that I could add a couple of more pieces of patterned paper and a fun tag, that was fussy cut from the Par-R-Rty patterned paper.

Then I layered my "DAD" onto my background but I did not adhere it down at this point.  I wanted to be able to lift it so that I could work on adding some mixed media to the background.

I used a variety of water colour paints in greens and some muddy yellows and blended them out to achieve a mottled green-ish base for my focal area.  Then I added some splatters of Mr. Huey's mist around my page.

After I adhere the focal area down, I trace around it with a brown Sharpie to help it pop.

I kept my embellishing to a minimum adding only two small clusters around my die cut.

As a last step I added one more narrow strip of patterned paper to pull some colour to the bottom of my layout, and then stuck in a little sticker label.

As promised here is the free digital cut file that I created.  Click on the image to be taken to my download page.

Supply List:  Par-r-rty Me Hearty patterned papers, stickers and puffy stickers; American Crafts Cardstock; Leows water colour paints; Hemptique button twine and bakers twine; Mr. Huey's mist; Sharpie fine tip felt pen; Staedtler felt tip pen; misc. buttons.

Thanks so much for visiting today!

May Challenge Winner

We're thrilled to see many of you taking part in our monthly Challenge Sketches.  Over the next few months we are going to take a bit of a break - let's call it a 'summer' break.  We know many of you get busy and are travelling and so are we!  So let's all enjoy our summer and family time together!!

We do have a lucky winner though from last month's challenge.
So our May challenge winner is .....

Cassie W.

Congratulations Cassie!!

To claim your prize: 

Please send an email to Imaginiscewinners@gmail.com with your mailing info no later than Fri., June 10th and put May Challenge Winner in the Subject heading.

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We want to give a HUGE thanks to design team member Laura Whitaker for creating so many amazing sketches.  We just love each & every one of them.

Today Laura has another sketch to share with us.  Feel free to create & be inspired by this amazing sketch.   You are more than welcome to post a link to your creation at the end of this post as we would love to see your work!!

Here's her fabulous sketch...

And here's the beautiful layout that Laura created from her sketch.

Supply List:  Imaginisce Sunny collection ephemera, polka dot paper, phrase stickers;  Par-r-rty Me Hearty patterned paper and stickers; Leows water colour paints; American Crafts cardstock; Staedtler fine tip felt pen; Tm Holtz Tiny Attacher.

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So as we mentioned earlier .... please feel free to create any type of project using this sketch as inspiration and post a link here on this post to your creation. We'd love to see it!!

Memorial Day/Canada Day Banner

We hope that you've been enjoying the Memorial Day themed projects that our Design Team have been sharing here on the blog.

We know that many of our readers are not all from the United States and one of our design team members is from Canada. So for our Canadian friends we're pretty sure that you'll love this post today and perhaps you'll be inspired to create one of your own!!

Laura Whitaker

Hello crafty people!

It's Laura here with you today sharing a fun craft in honour of Memorial Day.  Actually, in Canada where I am, we celebrate Memorial Day in conjunction with Canada Day on July 1st.  But I am all too happy to get a jump start on the celebrations!  Well sort of, Canada Day is also my birthday and this year a big one - so I am not overly anxious for that! *wink, wink*  Anyway, let me share my project with you.

I decided to create a banner to show my Memorial Day / Canada Day spirit!  I am hoping to be able to use it at a party, hint hint to my family! Ha!


The Imaginisce DT was lucky enough to receive a Banner Punch board by We R Memory Keepers, courtesy of our joint mother company, American Crafts.    I finally had an opportunity to open mine up and boy all I can say is "what took me so long?"!  I think you all know how much of  a Silhouette Cameo fan I am and I have used the software to create banners on numerous occasions but this punch board tool is even easier and quicker than the Silhouette!!  And that my friends is a big deal!

I had the punch board opened up and 9 banner pieces cut out in minutes!  You can find a video tutorial here, but you won't need it ha!

I used papers and embellishments from the Par-r-rty Me Hearty collection because of the great red colour in the papers both in this subtle pattern and the pretty red and white stripe.

This black pattern is the B side of the red and white striped paper and these little pieces shown here were off cuts from these striped banner pieces,  I flipped them over and they made the perfect adornment to the top of my banner. Which meant that I had little to no waste.

I did use my Silhouette to die cut a couple of red Maple Leafs to embellish some of my banner pieces.  I made them large enough to spread over two pieces after cutting them in half. I love the look!

I cut one red banner piece to add a sentiment to the centre of my banner.  The alphas are from the Thicker set that coordinates with the Par-r-rty Me Hearty collection, too.

I didn't have quite enough of some of the letters in white, as I needed multiple "a's" and a couple of some other letters, so I grabbed some white craft paint and got busy painting out the letters that I needed.

I also painted the white letters that I was using, I knew the paint would add texture to the teal coloured letters and I wanted all of the alphas to match.  The paint went on quick and easy and dried really fast.

There is a pretty blue paper in this collection too, so US friends you could easily swap out the red leaves for blue stars to create your own Memorial Day banner!

I adorned the two outer corners with puffy gems in red and white, also from the Par-r-rty Me Hearty collection!  The most challenging thing about this project was photographing it, because of its length.

Supply List; Imaginisce Par-r-rty Me Hearty patterned papers, puffy stickers and Thickers; We R Memory Keepers Banner Punch Board; DecorArt white paint; Red Heart crochet thread.

Thanks so much for visiting today!

Sweet Summer

Do you love using your digital die cut machine? Then you'll love this post because Design Team member, Laura, has another fabulous FREE svg cut file for you!!!

Laura Whitaker

Hello crafters! It's Laura here today with a new layout to share, using the Sunny collection.  This time I opted for a more muted and quieter page than my usual bright and vibrant layouts.

For the last several summers we have vacationed on this lake, and as such spent a lot of time cruising around on it.  ( I do not imagine things will change much in the near future as we made a permanent move to this lake.) One of my son's favourite spots is this rope swing that is nestled off the side of a public island.  Unfortunately it is really a tough spot for photographing his fun as the sun shines into the camera all day long.

As a result my photos are a little dark, which is why I wanted to keep my page light and soft.  To do this I pulled lots of yellows, greens and turquoise from the collection

I started my page by creating the background, adding in some water colour paints in colours pulled from the collection.

Then I built my patterned paper layers under my photo strip, doodling a bit for impact and to tie in the dark colours of the photos.

I tucked in a cut apart journaling card to the right of my photos, and added a bit of journaling and my title.  I did a little machine stitching just for fun.  And used a Dear Lizzy stamp to add in the date.

I filled in a little of the white space with some ephemera in the lower corner of my layout, to repeat my colour combination.

Lastly, I created and added this fun sunshine sequin embellishment.  I put American Craft sequins, Imaginisce Par-r-rty Me Hearty puffy stickers and a couple of little punched hearts into it.
 

I punched a piece of plastic from the ephemera packaging to cover the sequin sun with.

If you want to create your own sequin sun, please click on the image below to head on over to my download page to get a copy of my free cut file.

It is available in Silhouette, SVG, PNG and PDF (to create a fussy cutting template) versions.

Supply List:  Imaginisce Sunny collection patterned papers, ephemera, alpha stickers, 3D stickers; phrase stickers; Imaginisce Par-r-rty Me Hearty collection puffy stickers; American Crafts cardstock, sequins, and enamel shapes; Art Alternatives Clear Gesso; Artists Loft water color paints; Dear Lizzy date stamp; Memento Tuxedo black ink, Mr. Huey's mist.


Thanks for visiting crafty friends!

New Sketch Challenge & April's Winner

Can you believe it's another new month??  Well, with that new month comes another new fabulous sketch challenge.

We love seeing your creations and hope you'll join us this month.

April Sketch Challenge winner is .....

STEPHANIE S.

She created this fabulous page using last month's sketch. Isn't it great?

Congratulations Stephanie.

To claim your prize:

Please send an email to imaginiscewinners@gmail.com no later than Fri., April 8, 2016 and put March Challenge Winner in the Subject Heading.

Now let's see our new challenge ....

MAY'S SKETCH CHALLENGE

CHALLENGE  RULES:

1.  Use this sketch as inspiration to create any type of project (layout, card, home decor, altered item, etc.)

2. You must use at least 75% Imaginisce product on your project.

3.  Use twine or ribbon on your project.

THE PRIZE:

A collection pack of SUNNY

Submit your entires no later than Fri., May 27th, 2016.

Winner will be announced on June 1st, 2016.

Now let's see what some of our design team members created with this wonderful sketch.

Supply List: Imaginisce Sunny Collection patterned paper and ephemera; Imaginisce Par-r-rty Me Heart Collection stickers, Thickers and puffy stickers; American Crafts cardstock; Ranger Texture Paste; Mr. Huey’s mist.

Supplies:

Imaginisce: patterned paper, die-cuts, sticker stacker, stamp (Sunny). American Crafts: cardstock, twine.

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Have fun and we can't wait to see what you create!!!

Sandcastles

Do you remember building sandcastles? I know I do and I've enjoyed creating many with my own children over the years when we've gone to the beach.
Check out this beautiful, fun & colourful layout by DT member Luara.

Laura Whitaker

Hello scrapping friends!  I have a new layout to share using the super fun Sunny collection today!  

While scrolling through a bunch of photos trying to decide on one (some) to use for today's reveal I came across this one taken last summer of my son making sandcastles at the beach in a park where we used to have a trailer to spend our summers.  The photo had me thinking that I should create a sandcastle cut file, which then led me to create this truly whimsical layout.

I began my page by cutting this large sandcastle outline and a coordinating solid sandcastle.

Then I matted my photo and added a few simple layers behind it including the 3x4 cut apart journaling card, which called for some fun beachy embellishments!

I also cut a large sun from some of the yellow and red patterned papers - I am so loving how vibrant this collection is, it makes me happy and dreamy for summer days!

Next I created my title area, using some of the Sunny collection alpha stickers and phrase stickers.  I love mixed font titles!

One last embellishment cluster in the top left hand corner to complete a visual triangle.

To finish off my page, I sprinkled some yellow watercolour paint around my page.

Supply List:  Imaginisce patterned papers, ephemera, alphas stickers, phrase stickers, 3 dimensional stickers; American Crafts cardstock, brown Precision journaling pen and orange sequins; Artists Loft water colour paints.

Thanks so much for visiting!