Laurel having fun with the Noah collection!

Hi everyone!

Laurel has some fun projects to share with us today using the Noah collection!

"Hi Laurel here with an altered art project and some cards all of which use my Cricut in one way or another.  I started out with a small canvas that I picked up at a garage sale.  I decided to alter it and make a home decor piece for a baby's room.  The Noah collection was perfect for the little boy feel that I was going for.  I cut out the various pieces using my Cricut and I used the Beacon Zip Dry to adhere them before sewing.  The airplane and pennants are mounted on foam squares.  I then embellished with some of Nikki's canvas buttons and some twine."


OUT FOR PUBLICATION

"I then decided to make a baby card to go with this and I thought the die cut with the saying Thank Heaven for Little boys was perfect.  The pennant and stars were cut with my Cricut."

"While working with the Noah paper I thought that it would make cute boy overalls so I once again went to my Cricut to create a shaped card."

 

Thanks for sharing your AWESOME creations with us today Laurel! You are amazing!

Showcase on YOU!

Hi everyone!

It's my fave time of the month again, when I get to share projects using Nikki's products made by YOU! 

First I want to share a GORGEOUS frame from Erica Marshall! Erica used the Audrey collection!

Next we have a BEAUTIFUL layout from Irit Shalom!! She used We are Family and Beatrice on her layout!

And lastly today, I have a gorgeous layout to share from Nicolle Kramer!! She used Will he B the 1? and Sugar Cookie!

I just love all of these! Thank you ladies for sharing your creations with us!!! If you would ever like to be showcased on Nikki's blog, send me (Julie) an email at bmwgirl@cox.net -- please include an image of your Nikki Sivils project and your blog address! 

Thanks for stopping by!

Katrina with some Alpha Sticker Fun

Hey everyone, it's Katrina here just sharing some layouts with you!  I have one from Exit Here and a couple from the Noah collection.  Also, I am going to show you how you can mix all those fun alphas from the alpha sticker sheets that are in the collections.

We Call Road Trip

The dogs love taking car rides most of the time (as long as they don't know it's a "v.e.t." trip!) and they also like going to get Andy's Frozen Custard!  So, I took the opportunity to take some pictures of them hanging out the back of my Element in the parking lot waiting for their custard!  Exit Here was the perfect collection for this...since they are calling a road trip for ice cream!  (BTW...we have four dogs now, this was before the puppy.)  This is an 8.5 x 11 layout, which is a size that was perfect for the photo strip I created.

I love to mix the alphas!

Adding little touches  with the Cute as a Button Burlap Buttons and with layering the punch outs and stickers gives your layouts some interesting focal points and details.  

Snips, Snails and Puppy Dog Tails

Jetson loves to dig and I had captured these pictures one day when he was in full digging mode.  The Noah word strip was where I "started" with the layout idea and it grew from there.  The title was inspired by the cut-up snail that I think is so cute and had to use!  Titles are hard sometimes for me, so I look for something in the paper lines to inspire a "play on words" a lot of the time.

Once again, I love mixing the alphas in the title and the tiny journaling tags are a great place to add some of those fun mini letter stickers to highlight your title.  

I used the negative space of circles, backed them with pattern paper and then embellished the centers to make them stand out.  I used an odd number of circles, which always seems to work better....3, 5, or 7, etc.  I backed two of the circles with the same paper to give some unity to the circles and to also make the center one stand out.  

Spending Time with Dad

I love this picture of Carleen and her dad at the baseball game we went to when he came for a visit.  The Noah papers were perfect for the picture and I played off the stars all over the layout. 

I punched a few various sized stars out of some of the papers of the collection and used them as accents on the layout.  

 Once again, I mixed the alpha stickers.  These blend seamlessly between collections and are perfect for long titles. 

I hope I have encouraged you to try mixing up those alpha stickers you have in the collections and creating some fun and unique looking titles for your pages.  I will have a couple of additional photos of a the projects on my blog.  Thanks for stopping by today!

A Nikki update....

Hi all, its Nikki here today! I hope everyone is having a great Summer! It is so HOT here in MO and we’ve not hit our hottest months yet… so we took Bella for a swim! She's a good little swimmer too... especially when there are ducks to swim after!! 

 Had to share this one.. 

Gosh I feel like I haven’t blogged here is so long, time goes by so fast, I’m still in shock we are almost half way through the year. Where does time go!?! 

I have several things I’d like to share with you…

After a lot of thought I’ve decided not to design for the fall/winter or go to Summer CHA 2012. It’s been a rough last year in my personal life, loosing my grandma has been so hard. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to not have her around and I’ve not done a great job at grieving, instead I’ve just acted like it never happened then it hits me all over again so this is something I need to get a handle on.  I also just recently found out that one of my dads has prostate cancer, he’ll be fine just hard to have a parent go through the process. My dad goes in for surgery today so hoping all goes well for him and his recovery.  Then there’s my poor baby brother, Barron, who just got released from the Grossman Burn Hospital in LA, CA. (He lives in Santa Monica.) Barron was at a beach party and they had a fire-pit (its chilly in the evenings near the ocean) a girl tripped and fell on Barron and he then fell backwards into the fire. He has 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd degree burns on his, back, butt, back of one arm and one leg. He’s had two surgeries and they’ve taken skin graphs off his thighs to cover the worse burns. Luckily he lives near one of the best burn hospitals in the USA so we do feel very lucky about that. I’m hoping to go out the Santa Monica to take care of him for a week as he has a very long recovery ahead of him.

(These are pictures that he upload on Facebook.)

This is him and I about a year ago...

Okay so I don’t want to sound like a “Debbie-Downer” as everyone is going to be okay and make it through its just been one “hit” after another and I need some time to be with my families and focus on them. Also on myself too, I’ve put on 12 lbs, my blood pressure is too high and so is my stress level. I just need to try and relax and breathe. I need my family and they need me.

I do have some fun stuff coming up though, like I’m going to have monthly project kits that I will sale here on my blog and I’m working on selling all my product directly to the consumer too.  I do plan on being at Winter CHA 2013 which I’m sure I’ll be ready for after some nice down time.  I’m keeping my design team diva’s too so they will be working on projects all fall and winter. 

I personally started training for a 5k using the “Couch to 5k” trainer app. I’ve never been a runner but I really like it. A lot! I start running and there is a sense of release and letting go that I just love, so maybe in 7 weeks I’ll be running in my first 5k! (I’m only one week down.)

I do want to share some great “press” that my company has gotten lately…

Creating Keepsakes Magazine has one of my layouts in the August 2012 issue from my new “Exit Here” collection:

Canadian Scrapbooker published 2 layouts created by some creative Canadian’s in their Spring issue, they used my “School is Cool” collection:

And Australian Scrapbook Memories wrote a nice article about my company and interviewed me for their May 2012 issue:

Please stay tuned for some of the fun monthly project kits and all the design team diva’s awesome projects. And I just want to thank all of you that have been by my side during this last year and recently too. I have the best friends and support group. I look forward to some summer days of nothingness.  Hey maybe I’ll get to even scrapbook again!

Thanks for your time and understanding.  

A Fun Mini Album with Exit Here and Melissa

Melissa Pablo created this adorable mini album, so we decided to give it it's own post!  She has lots of details and fun pictures thru out the entire album.  She used the Exit Here collection and the Scalloped Chipboard album pieces.

Las Vegas Road Trip Mini Album

This was a fun project to make using the Exit Here collection. This photos were taken last February when we went on a 24-hour back & forth road trip to Las Vegas. I used the scallop chipboard albums and also added a couple of extra pages so i can include all my fave photo from that day.

Melissa had SO much eye candy in this mini, that we didn't post a few of the pages, but she will have them on her blog!  So make sure to check the entire mini album out over there!  (she is making me want to do a mini right now!)

Sarah is here on Thursday!

Diva Sarah Eclavea is here today with a very cute girl layout using the Noah collection!

When I saw the "Noah" line I knew it was perfect for these pictures of my daughter going to see her first movie in the theater! She was too excited to sit still for photos, but I managed to get this one of her and one of her favorite cartoon character Lightning McQueen. I also used some twine from the Twinery and Beacon 3 in 1 adhesive.

How adorable is that road with the car on it! Be sure to visit Sarah's blog also! 

And I totally forgot we need to pick a winner from Erin's guest posting.  The winner is.....

 Kris Berc said...

I adore Erin and am so thrilled to see her back here again to guest design. Love all of her projects! I'd love a chance to create with Audrey :)

Kris, please email me at cardipaws@sbcglobal.net with your shipping address so that we can get the Audrey collection kit out to you!