Sarah Eclavea on Thursday.....

Sarah is here today and she has couple of layouts to share, plus a tutorial for stitching on your pages without a machine!

Faux Stitching Tutorial By Sarah

I love working with one collection at a time because it speeds up my scrapbooking a lot! I have everything out so I don't have to constantly take new supplies out and I can use the scraps from one project on the next which means less clean up too! I worked with the Messages collection for these two layouts and I LOVE this collection. It is just so stinkin' cute!

For my first layout, Amazing You, I used a sketch from the Allison Davis sketch book. This was my favorite sketch in the book, but let me tell you it was a close race! They are all great and I could see using them all! I also used some Helmar zap dots on this layout too. As I mentioned I like to keep scrapbooking quick and one of my favorite quick mess free techniques is faux stitching. All you need a paper piercer and a marker and you are ready to go. I faux stitched the hearts on this layout. I bet you couldn't tell until I mentioned it! Looks real doesn't it? Here's how I did it...

First adhere everything on your page that you want to stitch over.

Then use a paper piercer to poke holes through the paper where you want your stitching to  go. I have found the closer together the stitching is the more realistic it looks and it is helpful to have a quide. I will draw a line with a pencil if I need it and then erase it after I poke my holes. On this layout I just used the edge of the white paper as my quide so I didn't need a pencil line.

When all your holes are made choose a marker and connect. I used a brown pen for this layout, but my favorite is a white gel pen on dark colored paper. Don't worry if your lines are not perfect . It looks more realistic when they are a little crooked!

On this layout, Understanding Isabel, I wanted to journal all the things my daughter Isabel is saying right now. I also used some twine from The Twinery, Beacon 3 in 1 adhesive and Helmar Zapdots.

What fun projects from Sarah...and hey, she taught me to pierce some holes and then connect the dots!  I never usually pierce them.  Be sure to visit Sarah's blog for more fun.