My Little Shoebox

Friday inspiration from our designers

Hello MLS fans! It's the weekend already and we're gonna send you off with some inspiration from Beckie creating with our Harmony collection.

I love how she chose to mix up the positive and negative chipboard alpha's here.

Paper flowers are a great way to create your own coordinating embellishments.

This gingham ribbon shines on this card!

Tracy's altered project titled "anna's room" is just darling!

And Cindy is rocking this two pager above with our Sunday Market collection as well as this lovely creation layered with black cardstock that really makes it pop!

Thanks for stopping by today. We'll have a very exciting announcement on Monday for you MLS fans so stay tuned...

Tutorial Tuesday with Aphra

 

    Aphra's Layered Flower Tutorial

 

First, gather your supplies.  For my flower I used Harmony All Natural Paper, Harmony Cardstock Stickers, Pearls, pop dots, glue dots, scissors, 1" circle punch, and a scrap piece of cardboard.

 

 

Use your scrap cardboard to create a petal template.  Mine is about 1 1/2".  Don't worry if it isn't perfectly symmetrical; you'll never notice.

 

 

Cut out ten solid petals.  Then, fold five of them in half and cut out the center.

 

 

Cut out five more solid petals and trim them up a bit so they are slightly thinner than the others.  You should have fifteen petals.

 

 

Punch out a 1" circle and use glue dots to adhere the five larger solid petals around it.

 

 

Now use dimensional glue dots to attach the next two layers:  the hollow petals and the slender petals. 

 

 

To finish off the center, use a foam dot to add the scalloped circle sticker and an orange flower sticker.  Add a pearl flower and you're done.  Well, almost.  Add your lovely layered flower to your project and admire!

 

 You can see more of Aphra's amazing work at her blog here.

Creative projects with Harmony

Hello there! With CHA only days away now the team is already working on some amazing inspiration for you in February with our 2011Winter Releases.
For now we have some beautiful inspiration from our design team starting with Erin Yamabe and some beautiful family themed layouts.

This is such an adorable layout. Grand parents are the best!

 Love that these photos are black and white and the use of the stamps

Love the bling!

 Now let's take a look at some gorgeous projects from Cindy Stevens

And this beautiful gift bag is just too cute!

 

 

And to finish off Harmony, some more wonderful inspiration from Tracey

Tracey included a little background on how she was inspired to scrap this layout

“Daydream” Layout… I LOVE photos from the back… you can’t see the subject’s eyes, but you can see what they are seeing, and you can imagine what they are thinking at that moment in time.  Here is Anna, holding onto a telescope at the Wild Animal Park … not looking through the telescope, but looking out and over the beautiful landscape.  What could this 5 year old be thinking about?  There are a few fun things going on here… I covered the chipboard accent with MLS paper, then sanded it (because I can not cut a straight line for the life of me!)  I LOVE the look of paper covered, sanded chipboard!!!  I added several stickers to the top of the chipboard, but if you look closely, you will see that I stamped the flower image on the white cardstock, under the chipboard and in the same colors of the sticker flowers, giving a fun layered flower effect above and below the chipboard.  The border of this layout was created with Glimmer Mist… to pull the whole thing together

Another cute layout

That's a wrap for us with our Harmony inspiration for you. We hope you'll show us some of your beautiful layouts and projects on our Facebook wall.

It's soggy in CA

We're feeling just a wee bit water logged here in California after riding out the Pinapple Express. Yea I know, I giggled too when I heard that's what they were calling this downpour. I know compared to all you weather experts in the mid west and back east we seem like sissies but this much rain this fast is terrible!

Just ask designers Erin and Shemaine...Erin's roof is leaking and Shemaine's got video to prove how leaky her bay window in the living room is...but regardless of the rain we're still in the mood for a little Harmony...

Here's some beautiful projects by Carol

First a cute card

and an amazing layout with a masking tape technique

close up of masking tape...so nicely done!

another beautiful layout

amazing detail here!

and another beautiful card

Now we have some Harmony projects from Aphra

Her attention to detail amazes me

beautiful added accents of twine and bling really make these chipboard accents stand out.

Love this layered flower and design

This close up really shows the detail

Did I mention that she also has a great sense of humor?? Love this fun layout. Can you hear the hawaiian drums a rollin?

and a closer look at the title

 

and a beautiful card from Guest Designer Dina Wakley to finish today off! I personally love this collection and these ladies have really done a beautiful job. Be sure and leave them a comment letting them know which project you enjoyed the most.

Medallion flowers tutorial

It's tutorial Tuesday and today's tutorial is brought to us by our very own Rocio! She's got a fabulous tutorial on how to create medallion flowers. I'll let Rocio take it away from here:

How to create Medallion Flowers Tutorial
It’s simple and easy.  All you need is some wonderful MLS paper and MLS cardstock stickers along with glue dots, stapler, scoring board, 1” circle punch and your favorite border punch.  
First, cut a 1.5” x 12” strip of your favorite MLS paper, I used my favorite paper from the Harmony line called Tranquility.  Using your favorite border punch, punch along a border on one side of the paper as seen below:

Then score the paper every 0.25 inches.
Then fold each of the scores to form an accordion:
Staple the ends together to form a circle
Then punch 1 inch circle and add a glue dot in the center
Place the accordion circle on top of the 1 inch circle
Here is what the back looks like
Add an MLS cardstock sticker to the center
Finish embellishing as you wish and you can create variation using different border punches.

So that’s it! Thanks so much for making my tutorial part of your day. If you do give this technique a try please show us your My Little Shoebox medallion projects at our Facebook page!

 

Taking journaling to a whole new level

Journaling is an important part of your design process when creating your layouts. It's fun to scrap pictures from vacations,birthday parties and special times but more important is telling the story of these memories and events.

It's fun to think outside of the box when executing your story into your layouts like our design team member Nicole did in her layout here titled Photogenic

She printed her journaling right onto the patterned paper from our Harmony collection and accented a few of the words of her journaling with our mini alphabet stickers.

This technique can be done by creating a Word Doc and typing out your journaling and then loading your printer with whatever size pattern paper you'd like to print it on. Try to choose a style that isn't too busy so that your journaling doesn't get lost within the pattern.

We hope Nicole inspires you to try this technique the next time you are looking for a creative way to tell your story.

More harmony from MLS...

We are throwing around the love and Harmony around here... we just can't hold back these projects from Kathie and Taj.  The talent is overwhleming!!  You just have to see what these girls whipped up with this line...

Kathie Davis...

Taj White...









Thanks fabulous ladies... your talent is awe inspiring!!

We are living in Harmony with Pattie and Kathleen...

Thanks for all who played along with our sketch challenge... we will have the winner on Wednesday!!!  Super fun!!!

Today we are showing off amazing work done by our talented Mrs. Pattie and Mrs. Kathleen.  WOW did they ROCK Harmony... check out the lovely-ness of what they created...

First up Pattie...





How stinkin' adorable and are the colors and china dolls just AMAZING!! 

STUNNING... I love how all these creations look so different but all made from the same line.  Way to go Pattie and Kathleen!!

August Guest Designer...

It's Thursday again and this is our last official post with Virginia... we are so sad but we are so excited about what she brought to August this month.  I even tried to find my masking tape for a layout... I am feeling very inspired. 

 

Is this not the cutest layout... WOW we love the use of paper from Imaginary Friends and All A Flutter!! 

Way to go Virginia!!

Harmony Projects...

For the next 6 days and throughout our time at CHA we will be showing off projects that our amazing design team have made for the CHA booth.  We will be showing sneaks on our blog and to see the whole project you must go to our designers blog... sounds fun huh?? 

Monday is Harmony day...

 

Here are some sneaks of our designers...

Now head over to our designers blogs to see the whole images...

Erin Yamabe
Heather Brown
Pamela Young

Let us know what you think... we love hearing from you all!!