Merry and Bright!

Hi Everyone...it's Sonya from Sonya's Paper Trail today and I'm sharing a holiday greeting card today.  I have a lot of holiday cards yet to make so I'm making cards in "bulk".  When I make cards like this, I like to do them in multiples of six.  It's enough to quickly build up a supply, but not so many that I get tired of making that design.  Here's the card I would like to share with you all today:

 

Want in on a little secret?  

Everything on this card is really, really old!  The papers are from a DCWV stack from several years ago.  The papers were not meant to coordinate, but I love the striped paper against the polka dotted blue paper.  The stamped image was a RAK I received from a friend on the Cricut message board a couple of years ago.  I colored it with my Copic Markers and added some Stickles for the snowy effect.  The snowflake brad is also rather vintage!  And the little sentiment is from My Craft Spot.  I used my Cricut for the shape I stamped on, as well as the little tag.  The cartridges were Storybook and George and Basic Shapes.  

 

Here's a close up of my coloring for you.  Oh how I love snowmen!!

I hope I have inspired you to look at your crafty supplies to find some treasures that you may have been holding onto for awhile.  I know one of my goals in 2014 is going to be to use more of what is already in my craft room.  Want to join me in that challenge?!

Have a super day!

Hugs,

Sonya

Using Sketch Sheets to make a scrapbook

Hello everyone!! Java Jen here from Java Jen Creations again! Thanks so much, Sheila, for allowing me to share here again!  Hope you're all having a great Thursday! Our summer has been filled with lots of traveling so far and we've been having lots of great family time!!
We all know how to scrapbook our own pictures by grouping pictures from particular events or themes but it becomes a little more difficult when we are asked to do someone else's pictures. I want to show you how easy it can be by using the FREE sketch sheets that are available to print at Above Rubies Studio ! A friend at our church asked me to make a scrapbook for her daughter's 1st birthday. She brought me the pictures that she wanted in it and we decided together, what pictures would go on what pages and what page titles would work for each one.  If you go to the Above Rubies Studio site , you will see a link on the right side to download and print the free sketch sheets. There are many different ones, depending on what your project is.  I used the ones for 12x12 layouts.

The nice thing about these sketch sheets is that you can simply give yourself a blueprint to work off of. On the back of the pictures, I used a sticky note with the page # they belonged to. We had these sketch sheets filled out and pictures sorted in about a half hour!  I managed to take pictures of several of the completed pages before we left for vacation but I'll have to post the others later. 

 I used Storybook for the font for her name.

 I used Once Upon a Princess for the word Princess and the crown.  With my Gypsy, I welded the words "Our Little" using the A Child's Year font.

The words on the pages above and below were welded using the Birthday Cakes font. The expectant mommy is from New Arrival. The tags are from Don Juan. I used a clipboard stamp from a new set I recently purchased from My Creative Time with Emma . I just love her stamps!!

These pages were so much fun! I used a cloud cut from Create a Critter and embossed them with the Swirls cuttlebug folder - then inked them with a light pink ink! So easy to do but it adds so much pretty detail! The newborn cut is from New Arrival and the words were welded using the Baby Steps cartridge.

Close up of the embossing and inking and the little newborn cut.

You'll notice that I left journaling places on each page or two-page spread so that they can fill in the details of their stories. That is definitely something that I always encourage my customers to do. I can't do that part for them! :-) The "Grand Adventure" cut is from Baby Steps.

I hope this project encourages you to try these sketch sheets for yourself! Once you have your sketches done, just pull out your Gypsy and design away! That's the other reason this project was manageable! 

Have a fantastic day and thanks for stopping by!