Pillow Box Challenge!

Pillow Boxes are a fun and creative way to give a small gift!
We love using them for all occasions at the LBH.
We challenged our Media Team this month to create something fun and unique with a pillow box! Here is what they have created!

 

Lindsey- Authentique- Classique Beauty

Nadine Carlier- Jillibean Soup- Saffron Pepper Soup & Maya Road Metal Flower
Nadine created a Video Tutorial for her Pillow Box- Check it out below!! :)

Natalie Sherran- Echo Park: Dinosaur Adventure Mini Theme

 

Susan Liles- Echo Park- A Pirates Life

 

Susan Tidwell- Authentique- Playful

Valerie Bishop- Maggie Holmes: Confetti

Vicki Chrisman- Chickaniddy- Yippee

 

 

I hope this inspires you to create something fun using a pillow box!
You can purchase these clear pillow boxes at The Little Blue House for .79 cents each!

 

Keep Creating!

Echo Park: Dinosaur Adventure Mini Collection

Nat here to start off the week with some layouts I made with the Echo Park "Dinosaur Adventure" mini collection.  I love collection packs for the obvious reason: there is no fuss or stress with matching patterned papers. These are great for "one-stop" creative planning if you are in the mood to power through and get a lot of layouts and projects done.

Let me share some tips on the method of my madness.

• I don't put a lot of focus on the actual content and/or pictures I will be scrapbooking when I am "power scrapping" with a collection pack. A collection like this was perfect for some zoo pictures and some misc pictures I had on hand. Of course, if the collection pack was truly themed (holiday, birthday, etc), I would pick pictures accordingly.
• I lay out a patterned paper that has all (or most) of the colors represented in the collection.  Some collections you may pull colors from 2-3 sheets; a mini collection is limited on papers so 1 generally does the job.  From my stash, I pull about 5-7 pieces of cardstock (more if you have a larger collection kit) that coordinate with the colors in the collection. These will generally be my base pages/photo mats. If you want to "power scrap" try not to use a full 12x12 patterned paper as a base page….especially in a mini collection. It's a little easier to do in a fuller collection.

• Collection packs generally come with a sticker sheet and/or other coordinating embellishments. To make the collection go further, I raid my stash and pull some other pieces that will build on to the collection.  Some great ideas include wood veneers, label stickers for journaling, letter stickers, enamel dots, and basic ephemera. 

Now let's get started on how this layout came together.

I started by cutting a 10 1/2" square away from the center of the orange cardstock.  Why did I do that? It's a great way to preserve paper that you won't even see in the finished layout and use it as photo mats.  You can go through all of the math and get everything centered and draw a square and trim it out. OR you can do like I did and cut everything using your Silhouette or comparable die cut machine. I'm lazy.

it's like magic. smart magic.

After I cut the square out of the orange, I layered a 11 3/4" square piece of brown cardstock on top. I cut some photo mats and cropped my pictures accordingly.

you would have never known there was a huge cut out behind that brown cardstock.

I cut some strips of patterned paper and placed on the base page. Don't stress. Just cut and glue scrappers. Cut.and.Glue.

I started building the page using a cut out journal "pocket card", some golden punched circles, a paper clip with some twine tied in a bow, some golden enamel dots and a kraft journal strip.

I wanted a little more texture on my page, so I used to Scor Tape to adhere some orange rick rak.
From the collection, I pop dotted 2 of the palm tree stickers

I finished my layout with a title using some letter stickers from my stash. For a little dimension I put glossy accents on my title.

This layout came together so quick and easy.  That's my kind of layout when I am power scrapping.

Before I let you go, I wanted to share some other layouts I made using the same collection.  I was able to get 5 layouts out of this mini collection kit. With my leftovers, I embellished a pillow box (to be shared on the blog later this week).  I have a few scraps leftover that will work great for a gift card holder (my favorite things to make next to layouts), a gift tag or card. I may even be able to stretch it and get another layout done.

who said a dinosaur collection had to be ALL "rough and tumble"?!?!

my small stash of scraps leftover!

So, do you love "power scrapping" with one collection pack? I'd love to hear how you "power scrap".

If you are local, The Little Blue House has a great Scraptivity workshop that is catered to this style of scrapbooking: "Scrap a Pack Workshop". If you stress about the creative process but want to get a lot of pages done using one collection pack, this is the class for you.

Have a great week!!!

Nat

Authentique: Classique Beauty Assemblage

Authentique:  Classique Beauty

Have you been seeing assemblage pieces everywhere?.... I have.  It's left me inspired to try my own.  This was a fun project using Authentique : Classique Beauty and a few odds and ends from around the house.  

This project requires....

Authentique : Classique Beauty :Beauty One, Beauty Eleven, Beauty Six

24 gauge wire, or something close to

Glass Jar (this one was purchased from Dollar Tree because it did not have writing)

Styrofoam

Peat Moss

Yellow and Black marker

Wink of Stella in Gold

Queen and Co. Trendy Tape : Vintage Ephemera 

Yellow tulle trim

Rhinestone Trim

White Doily

Glue Gun

Buttons, flowers, paperclips in coordinating colors

The first step was cutting out the image and coloring a few places to tie in the yellow...

Go over the marker/pencil with a touch of the Gold, Wink of Stella pen and attach the other parts of the image.  I let the size of the jar dictate how large to make it.  Cut out a triangle to make a party hat.  I just kept trimming until the proportion seemed right.  Add some embellishments to her hat.  

So nothing holds this portion in place but the jar itself, I used glue dots so I could adjust this until it stayed where I wanted.  

Put some Styrofoam in the lid, doesn't need to be pretty.  It will not be seen.

Add some peat moss to cover the foam, don't worry about fit now-  it gets a haircut when everything is in place. 

Make some stick pins with a pencil and wire.  Wrap around the pencil about 3 times and bend at a 90 degree angle.  Just slide the paper through the loops and it should hold nicely.  

Add wire to the large paper clip to make it stand up tall.

Assemble a flower with buttons, sequins and rhinestone with some wire between the button and flower. Butterflies and arrows were done the same way.  

Now stick things these things to the foam, trimming and adjusting heights.

Slip the jar on top of it all and trim the pieces poking out so that you can get the lid to stay on.  

Add some washi tape to the jars rim, finish off with yellow tulle trim, some rhinestones and a doily.  

Cut an approximate circle to cover the top, distress the edges slightly.

Stack some buttons and glue together with hot glue to make a faux finial.

Attach to the top.

After making a few projects do you find yourself with some great scraps?  Between vetoed ideas and paper remnants... there's always a few projects to whip together. 

This was pulled together with scraps, stamps and some black and yellow ink.  Stamped some butterflies, inked them up, trimmed them out and glued it all together.  

Use your scraps, use the paper!  Paper hoarding gets us nowhere!  ha,  my excuse is I get to buy more if I use it all.  

Thanks for checking out my projects!

Lindsey Banner

Jillibean Soup Mixed Media Layout with Nadine Carlier

Hello, Scrappy Friends! Nadine here today to show you a mixed media layout I created using Jillibean Soup Saffron Yellow Pepper Soup Collection and different mediums from Prima Marketing available in The Little Blue House Store.

Supplies needed:

Jillibean Soup Saffron Yellow Pepper Soup Collection
Prima Marketing Art Basics - Clear Gesso, Modeling Paste, and Heavy Gesso White
Various Spray Inks
Stencils
Chipboard Banner
Twine
Buttons
Distress Ink Black Soot
Flower Stamp
Black Marker
3D Foam Adhesives
Other Adhesives
Scissors, Paper Trimmer, Distress Tool, Spatula

1. On a piece of Bazzill Vanilla Cardstock, I spread some Clear Gesso randomly onto it and then dry. This creates a seal so when spraying ink sprays onto the cardstock, it doesn't just absorb into the paper and wick. I like to randomly spray the inks and then spray lightly with water so I can make the inks run down the paper over the gesso. This technique will only work if sealed with the Clear Gesso first.

Once the spray inks are dry, I then used some modeling paste with different stencils and then stamped with a flower stamp dipped in a spray ink that I let run down the page.

2. Distress and layered up papers from the Jillibean Soup Saffron Yellow Pepper Soup Collection. On some chipboard banner pieces, I painted some Heavy Gesso on them dried, and then sprayed with some spray inks. Inked up the edges with Distress Ink Black Soot and used some 3D foam adhesives on the banner and behind my pictures. Flicked some watered down Heavy Gesso and black ink onto the page and adhered some buttons. Outlined my pictures with a black marker and around some of the stenciled circles onto the background.

All done! I ended up with a fun mixed media layout with lots of texture.
Thank you for looking and happy crafting!

Nadine

Stars and Stripes Project by Susan Liles

Hi, it's me, Susan Liles here with something new to show y'all!  I'm so happy I got to play with this STARS and STRIPES paper and stickers from ECHO PARK.  It's a fun mini collection and I LOVE anything patriotic.  It was hard to keep from buying all of our red, white and blue collections up at the store!

Anyway, today I wanted to share what I made with that collection and my quick design process (sort of a tutorial) of how I created this very quickly and easily using just a couple of basic ideas for the pages.  Also, I may not show all the pages here (it's 5 decorated pages front and back!), but the sample is up at the store for all of you "touchy feel-y" types.

I started with one of those cute .99 frame stands from Ikea and 2 binder rings.  Then I started designing ONLY TWO page "types".  The first page is one of them and the second page is another.


Now I don't mean page SHAPE, although I did alternate those with 4x6's and a banner shape just for fun.  What I mean is, I stuck with just 2 general layouts and simply changed them up a bit for each page.  Look close and y'all can see that. 


"Layout 1" has a layered piece going across the bottom, a wonky rectangle, a circle element in the corner, and some other element along the left side.


"Layout 2" has a layered piece going across the top, a wonky rectangle for a picture and large elements in one or two corners only.  Once that general concept was prepared, all I had to do was embellish!


Y'all may think at first by just keeping the format simple like this, your book would be boring or repetitive.  The embellishments are what makes each page striking and different.  By using this method, this book came together fairly easy, and all I used were the papers, stickers, some ribbon and a few other "extras" that I had at my fingertips!  You could easily establish this concept with any mini book or album.  Let us know what you think, or come by and check out the "real thing" today!

Is this Layout 1 or Layout 2?  Wink!!!!

All supplies can be found either in-house at The Little Blue House or on our website: www.thelittlebluehouseonline.com