Pretty Little Planner Pins

Hi everyone, popping in quickly today to share some pretty little planner pins made with the gorgeous May Riga kit from Clique Kits.

Planner pins can be used, well of course, in planners!  But you can also add them to pretty much any of your projects.  Think pocket page spreads, traveller's notebooks, even to a cluster in your larger layouts.

Or what about as a sweet little bookmark for a gift?

I've used the two exclusive flairs from the May kit in these pins, how pretty is this gold one!?

I've also added some tulle to two of the pins for some extra texture, as well as some machine stitching.   

The next time you have a spare five minutes of crafty time, why not try making some of these cute little pins.

Thanks for stopping by today!

God Bless The US - Memorial Day - A Travellers Notebook Spread

As an Aussie girl, when I think of honouring the armed forces of our country, I naturally think of the ANZACs (Australia & New Zealand Army Corps), and the more recent serving men and women of Australia, who I personally think don't get the acknowledgement they should.

When we visited Hawaii in December 2017, Pearl Harbour was high on our list of places to experience.  What surprised me about our time here was not just learning about the attack in 1941, but to really witness and feel the pride and appreciation that American citizens have for their serving men and women.  It wasn't uncommon for example for someone wearing a veteran cap to be approached by a complete stranger who would thank them for their service.  This really isn't something that happens in Australia, and the emotion and pride was so palpable.

So with the release of the God Bless The Us - Memorial Day traveller's notebook collection from Traci Reed, it was the perfect opportunity to document our visit to Pearl Harbour and this experience from a different country to ours.

Patterned papers are a base for both sides of this spread, and I have to tell you I was so, so excited to see the beautiful whitewash woodgrain in this collection!

I've used one of the 3x4 cards on the left side with a fussy cut flower from my favourite paper from the collection.  When you purchase this collection, you'll get both TN sized papers and 12x12 papers, so my tip is that the patterns on the 12x12 papers are at a larger ratio, so will be bigger than on the TN sized papers.

I've printed out the flower paper that I wanted to fussy cut from the 12x12 paper rather than the TN sized paper, because the flowers on the TN sized paper were too small for how I wanted to use them on this spread.

To frame my photo I've layered some papers from the collection, then embellished with more fussy cut flowers and a snippet of one of the bunting printable elements.

I added some journalling strips and a date stamp to to the bottom of the page and called this one done!

Be sure to check out God Bless The US - Memorial Day over at the Sweet Shoppe Designs shop.  This collection is definitely versatile and has so many papers that can be used in both patriotic and non-patriotic projects.

Thanks for stopping by today!

A Pretty Layered Card with Clique Kits & Maggie Holmes

Today I'm playing with the gorgeous April 2018 main kit from Clique Kits called Winter Park.  This kit features the Maggie Holmes Flourish collection and I just love the combination of both rose and yellow gold in this collection and the kit.

I've created a card for this project with lots of layers, stitching, and some lace from my stash.

The gold vellum frame sits on top of a tag and shows some of the pretty pink florals through the centre, while still adding some extra detail in its own layer.

Maggie's Flourish collection has such lovely sentiments in it, and this one 'plant kindness, grow love' really suits my sister's (who is receiving this card) personality.

And here's a look at all of the layers.

You can check out more projects created with the Winter Park kit by Clique Kits by joining The Clique Facebook group or by following Clique Kits on Instagram or Facebook.

Thanks for dropping by today!

Week 8 Pocket Page Spread with Word 2 Ur Mutha

Hi Everyone!

Today I have a pocket page spread using the gorgeous Word 2 Ur Mutha travellers notebook collection that is being released over at the Traci Reed Designs shop today.

This collection is a super fun and sassy Mother's Day collection, and includes phrases like 'Straight outta Carpool' and 'World's Okayest Mother'.  Us mums can totally relate to that right!?

I decided to use it for a weekly spread that isn't Mother's Day themed, and you can see there's just so many elements in the collection to create with, even when you're not working on a Mother's Day project.

This week the boys in our family went to a rugby league football game in the city but at the last moment the weather turned on them and they had two choices, either get completely drenched in the torrential downpour to get to the stadium, or borrow the only available umbrellas, that just happened to both be hot pink (and yes, walk through the city with them).  Too funny! Of course I had to get this story in my album.

I've trimmed one of the 12x12 patterned papers and one of the 6x4 cards down in photoshop to 3x4 inches, and isolated one element of a larger design that I wanted to use.  In this case it was the woodgrain in the title card and the grid paper in both of the journalling cards.  I love being able to do this with digital kits.

I've fussy cut some of the gorgeous floral elements to use in my title card.  I layered two of them behind the label so that it looks like one larger element, and then added a smaller piece on the lower right side for balance.

This week we really did get a lot of rain.  I took a screenshot on my phone of a rain radar from our Australian weather service and included it this week. 

This tag originally read 'Mommin Like a Boss', so I trimmed off 'Mommin' to make it fit my story of our culinary adventures.

I a huge fan of banners, and love that most of Traci's collections will feature a banner element. I absolutely adore this one, and trimmed it down to fit a little shaker element I created.

Be sure to stop by Traci's shop to check this collection out if you're looking to create a mother's day project, or if like me you just adore the colours and elements and want to create a non-themed layout.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Clique Kits iNSD Challenge - Hand Cut Letters

Hi everyone, and happy iNSD!

Clique Kits are hosting two days of challenges this weekend over on their Facebook iNSD event page, and my challenge for you is to use hand cut letters!

I've created a pocket page spread and added a 3x8 insert for this project, and my hand cut letters are adhered and stitched to vellum in the insert.

I've used the limited edition iNSD kit (now sold out) from the Clique Kits shop that features Jillibean Soup's Bohemian Brew collection. 

There's a few different ways to make your own hand cut letters, including going completely freestyle.  But I wanted to have letters that were fairly close to the real thing, and just a little rustic.

I played with different fonts in Word until I found one I was happy with and then adjusted my title to the right size for my spread.  I finally settled on Impact in font size 190.   Once I was happy with the font and the size, I printed the document out on regular copy paper. 

Then I  trimmed each letter and some patterned paper out so that they were an easier size to work with.  I held them loosely together and followed the outline of the printed letters to trim each one to the right shape.  I didn't adhere the copy paper to the patterned paper at all because I was happy for some variance there so that the  letters did look a little rustic.  I also didn't trim the inside space of the 'r' or the 'a'.

And here's the finished letters!  I adhered them to a 3x8 sheet of vellum and stitched around each one with my sewing machine, then added one of the exclusive Clique Kits flair and some ephemera from the kit to finish off the insert.

I love these big bold letters for this spread!

The back of the insert was a little messy so I used the same printed letters to trim out more patterned paper for that side. It doesn't make any sense to read, because it's in reverse ha! But it still looks pretty, and sometimes that's all that matters.

I hope I've inspired you to try some hand cut letters in a project.  I'm lucky enough to have a Silhouette machine, but for anyone that doesn't this is a fantastic way to achieve the same results with your titles.  It's also great for those times when you might be after a slightly imperfect, rustic look to your letters.

Thanks for stopping by today.  Be sure to check back in with the Clique Kits iNSD Facebook event for more inspiration and challenges from the Clique Kits team.  Next up is Erica Thompson with a cut file challenge!

A Pocket Page Spread with Traci Reed Designs

Hi Friends!

I hope you have a bunch of fun plans for iNSD this weekend.  My jumping off point for the weekend is a pocket page spread using Traci Reed's Caroline collection.

Let me just say this collection is me all over.  The colour palette, the florals, the scripty fonts... I love every bit of it!

This is week six in my 6x8 album, and Kayci sent me a couple of photos that I wanted to get down as well as my own photos.  I also created an insert just to include more of the pretty papers and embellishments from the collection.  

If you're wondering what on earth 'three blue ducks' is about, its a restaurant we went to on our wedding anniversary weekend.  The card is a reservation card and it fit almost perfectly into the 2x2 pocket.

To make my title card this week I opened the png of this journalling card in photoshop elements, and added three separate lines of text to record the week number, the month and the days of the month that this week covers.  Then I used my eyedropper tool in photoshop to recolour each line of text with colours picked from the floral elements on the card.  

Oh my gosh, this rooster right!?  You know, just hanging in the middle of a restaurant...

The Caroline collection really lends itself towards lace and stitched elements.  I pulled a mini Prima doily from my stash for one of the insert pockets, and added a couple of French knots to the banner on another.

And some gold sequins for another pocket because, gold., and sequins., guys am I right?

The reverse of the 4x6 insert.

I added a banner element and some more French knots to this pretty filler card.

You can't see it in this photo but Kayci gave me this Doin' it for Dolly card a little while after the rodeo event that she and Benny attended to support a really important community cause.

I adhered some pretty lace as a tab with my tiny attacher and slid it in behind the photo. I love how I have a photo of the card at the event which was hundreds of kilometres away from where we live, and also have the physical card as a memento right here in my album. 

If you'd like to check out this collection you can find it over at Sweet Shoppe Designs in Traci Reed's catalogue.

Enjoy the festivities of iNSD, and I'll be back tomorrow with another share!