My Mind's Eye Blog

Kit Spotlight- Simon Says Stamp + Kelly Purkey

Life as you know it is already a project and we're here to help make documenting it even easier! Introducing Project Kits from Simon Says Stamp and designer Kelly Purkey. She's put together a fantastic bi-monthly kit full of coordinating supplies to help you get those everyday moments documented. 

We're thrilled to include the brand-new Cut & Paste Charm 6x6 paper pad from My Mind's Eye in the latest kit. The cool grays, beautiful teals, and bright yellow and orange were the inspiration for this happy kit.

Simon Says Stamp and Kelly are giving away one  August & September Project Kit (see photos above).

The August & September Project Kit will include many products custom designed by Kelly Purkey including a Stacked Deck perfect for Project Life, clear stamp set exclusive to the kit, badges, and stickers.  

Kelly Purkey 4" x 6" photopolymer clear stamp set "Hey Hi Hello There"
1 Camera Shaped Paper Clip with a heart
1 pack of 6" x 6" designer papers by My Mind's Eye "Cut & Paste" Collection
1 pack of Silver Arrows by Pink Paislee
1 Sheet of Jenni Bowlin Speech Bubbles Rub Ons
4 Kelly Purkey kit exclusive 1.25" badges
1 Sheet of Kelly Purkey Grey Coordinating Alphabet Letter Stickers
1 Sheet of Kelly Purkey Coordinating Label Stickers
16 Kelly Purkey 3" x 4" Double Sided cards "Stacked Deck"
6 Simon Says Stamp 3" x 4" 120# Smooth White Notecards Perfect for Stamping
3 Letterpress Kelly Purkey Design 3" x 4" cards
2 Neenah Desert Storm Kraft 3" x 4" cards
4 Simon Says Stamp White Woodgrain 3" x 4" cards
2 Wood 3" x 4" cards (These die cut like butter!)
1 Tsukineko Starlight Silver Brilliance

 

We love sharing beautiful kits that include our products and this one is fabulous!

If you'd like to be entered in this contest, leave a comment here. We will draw a winner next Wednesday.
Good Luck!

Mini Albums with Monika | July Edition

As we scramble to fit in the last days of summer fun {school begins here next week} I took a few moments yesterday to pause and think about how truly wonderful our life is and documented a few words in a mini album. Hi all, Monika here today to share yet another mini album with you. This is my last month with MME and I wanted to share something extra special.

Supplies Used | Kate & Co. Cambridge Court:  Chevron Paper, Striking Paper, Bouquet Paper, Lovely Day Paper, Bright Florals Paper, Mini Florals Paper, Chipboard Elements, Enamel Dots; Find Your Wings and Fly: Alpha & Word Stickers, Other Supplies: adhesive, foam dots, Sharpie, paper doily, binding machine

This month I am using the Kate & Co. Cambridge Court collection, focusing on the polka dotted patterned papers for my mini album. I loved the graphic appeal of those dots and the fabulous colors are so fun. Keeping it clean and simple, I scored my papers at the 6" mark and folded it over to form my pages. 

For the cover, I used the chipboard elements and lots and lots of foam adhesive to make each layer of chipboard a little higher than the layer below.

Because it's fun to have different sized pages in your mini albums, try trimming the journaling cards and placing them between your larger pages.The extra journaling room is an added bonus. For the 4x6 card, I scored and folded it in the middle and chose photos that were then {2011} and now {2013} to reinforce the theme.

Sprinkling a few enamel dots around your page ups the cuteness factor, too!

What can I say, we're still crazy about each other after all these years. We've been lucky in love for 15 years now and looking forward to the next 15!

I've enjoyed my year with you all sharing my first love in scrapbooking, the mini album. Working and creating with all the colorful, lively, inspiring collections from My Mind's Eye has been a true privilege and such a thrilling experience for me. I hope that in some way, I've inspired you to try your crafty hand at making one or two for yourself. Always remember how wonderful life is and find joy in whatever you choose to do!

Have Fun and Craft On,

Mixed Media with Karen- July Edition

This is Karen, back with another month of Mixed Media with Karen. This month I wanted to do something slightly different. Two month or so ago, I'd had this talk where I was reminded about how everything doesn't matter the same amount. And how I have a tendency to blow some of the smaller things out of proportion when they don't go well. I wrote a blog post about it where I explained how it's good to imagine your life like a pie chart and see which things have the bigger pieces so you can always remember what matters most.

I decided I wanted to create a page that reminds me about this revelation and my recent art journal was the perfect forum for that. The first thing I needed was a circle so I went and grabbed a dish.

After I cut out my circle, I randomly created some pie pieces out of it, some small, some not so small. I then used those as a guide to cut slices out of the Kate&Co papers.

Then I grabbed the Oxford Lane - Polka page and glued my pieces on there (I cut off some of the edge, I like to do that.) and then stitched on the intersecting edges. One I had that, I wrote the name of each section with mini letters.

I then spent some time being stuck. There was this huge circle in the middle of my page and I had no idea where to go next. This happens to me often, I get stuck in some random section and feel like it was all a mistake and I have no idea how to move forward. So I walked away for a while. And then I had the idea to put my title along the edge of the circle in big, bold letters. So I did exactly that.

It says: The most important thing is to remember the most important thing.

Now that I had that, I was feeling better but I still felt like it was undone. I kept hearing a little voice that told me to journal on all the lines but I hate my handwriting and was sure it would ruin the page. After a few hours, I finally gave in to the voice and did it anyway.

I loved it. I loved having all my thoughts and having that texture in the background. The last step was to add my border and some other texture bits. So a bunch of color and I ended up here:

I love how it turned out and I loved knowing that I made it through to the end of this page even though it was challenging and I thought I was stuck. Most importantly, I love the reminder to remember what matters most.

Thank you for letting me share my page, if you decide to make a pie chart of your own, I'd love to see it so make sure to leave it in the comments. See you next month!

Project Life with Shelly

Hello everyone! This is Shelly back this month with another installment of Project Life inspiration. Today, I am featuring an average week in the life using Kate&Co -Cambridge Court Collection along with a touch of Find Your Wings and Fly –Sky’s The Limit Collection.

Supplies: Kate&Co-Cambridge Court: Lovely Day pattern paper, 6x6 designer paper pad, decorative brads, sticker accessory sheet; Find Your Wings and Fly-Sky's the Limit: Layered Ephemera pattern paper. Other: Becky Higgins design A page protectors, date stamp, BohemianTypewriter font.

There is always a product that I use as my jumping off point with my weekly spreads.  I have been just itching to put those circle stickers on the Cambridge Court’s sticker accessory sheet to good use in my album. So that is what I went for first. That is when I saw the colorful stripes on that camera card! Perfect.

I used the speech bubble sticker to date my week. I wanted it to really pop off the title, so I opted to mix in the soft grey from Sky’s the Limit. I added a little color to my title card with the enamel tops from the brads. I like to keep my albums fairly flat, so all I did was take my finger nail and popped the top right off of the metal part of the brad. Easy! And I like that it gives it a different look. I also embellished the camera card with one.

The second card is actually the other side of a journaling card that I used for the previous week’s spread. It coordinated so well, that I just went with it. I like when that kind of thing happens.

I trimmed one of the cards to add a little extra journaling to one of my pictures. It made good use of the extra space in my picture.

When working on my pocket pages, I do the same thing as I do for my traditional scrapbook layouts. When I do one thing to one side, I like to do the same thing to the other side. I made a filler card to match the title card using the same pattern paper and one of the round stickers. Oh how I do love those round sticker sayings.

I needed a 4x6 journaling card, so I simply trimmed down a 6x6 lined pattern paper to use as a journaling card. I love how it adds a little extra color too.

I ran my journaling cards through my printer. Unfortunately, my printer grabbed the paper a little crooked. I didn’t let it bother me though. There was no need to waste a good sheet of pattern paper, so I just went with it. I shared how I do this in previous posts HERE and HERE.

I do have to say that I wasn’t too sure about the glasses card when I first saw it, but once I saw that this week included the last day of school for my daughter, I just thought the glasses would work perfectly for
it! It is very teacher-ish to me.

Thank you for stopping by today. I hope you enjoyed my simple approach to pocket page scrapbooking. I love putting all those different journaling card pattern papers by My Mind’s Eye to good use to record my everyday memories.

Paper Kit Week with Karen

Hi everyone!

Welcome to the last day of Paper Kit Week!

This is Karen and I am here to share with you the layout I've made using the contents of the Find Your Wings and Fly paper kit.

I am still on a 6x12 kick and I just got back from a vacation in Turkey where my kids got to spend a lot of time with their cousins and I, of course, snapped a ton of photos. As I went through the pictures I took, I fell in love with a set where all four kids were present and laughing, so I printed them out, pulled out my kit and got to work. Here's what I ended up with:
The biggest challenge of using only the kit, for me, was figuring out how to make my title. If you've seen my work, you know that I like to use long titles on my pages. When I looked at the sticker sheet, the
circle for "The best" stood out to me right away. And so did the "memories." I'm a big fan of making things work for you, so I cut down both of the stickers to the shapes I wanted them to be and put them on my page.

I then built the rest of my title using one more sticker from the sheet ("thank you") and a few of the word sheets from The Sweetest Thing and alpha stickers from the Find Your Wings line.  And my title was complete! It reads: Thank you for the best playful, sweet, and happy memories together.

Once I had all those vertical lines coming down from the top right of my page, I knew I wanted some thing in the bottom, coming up. So I took the Rainbow Harlequin paper and cut off along the white lines to have the diamond shape stick out. I then cut up the yellow strip from Mixed Media and, finally, wanted to have the same black I had on the upper right, so I cut a zigzagged section from back of Quatrefoil and I layered them on top of each other to create the bottom portion. I stuck a little label to put the date in between and one more yellow word on top.

I wanted to share with you one more thing. When I cut out "the best" to use in my title, I had the green circle section left over. As I put the pieces of my layout together, I kept going back to these leftovers. I
loved the colors and really wanted to use them. I decided to cut it in half and use each section on one edge of my page.

I love the feeling of something being cut off on one side and continuing on the other and the little extra bit it adds to my page. I wanted to mention this so that you remember you don't have to waste a thing. Even the parts you didn't intend to use can become an additional element. I cut up this sticker and used some of it on my title and some of it on my page as a standalone element (and I even have some more left over.)

Once I was done with my page, I stitched all over for extra interest and texture. I feel like the stitching ties the whole page together. I also stitched on my photos and some of the elements. If you look carefully, you'll see I stitched right over my son's face because it was off of the edge of the paper, this doesn't bother me but it's one of those things you have to think about before you stitch and make the decision consciously.

There we go, thank you for letting me share my layout and a recent memory that I cherish. I hope you liked it and I would love to see any of your recent layouts so please link me up in the comments!

Paper Kit Week with Shelly

Happy Thursday everyone! This is Shelly with my take on Kit Week!

When I was presented with this challenge, I was a little worried that I just wasn’t going to have enough “stuff” to play with. Boy was I wrong! The bonus for me, I am pretty sure this was the fastest page I have ever completed. I dumped everything out on my table and just went to town. There was no “wait, let me go look for this or that.” It was already in front of me just waiting for me to create. Nice. Really nice.

I chose to work with the My Girl Paper & Accessory Pack, which was a perfect match for my own little girl.

Supplies: My Girl – Genuine, Pinwheel, Playful, Multi Plaid, Fancy Free, Sweet Girl, and Kite String pattern papers; Sticker Accessory Sheet

I decided to go with a layered look. That Genuine pattern paper with all those cute cards waiting for me to cut out was just too tempting for me. After layering two pattern paper squares on the base, I pulled out a few of my favorite cards to tuck behind the pictures. My go-to technique to customize pre-printed cards is to transform them into tags. I simply hand cut a little topper to place on the top of the “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” card, and punched a hole through the star sticker.

What page isn’t complete without a fun banner? I paired up the long skinny “Giggle” card with a strip of orange “Kite String” pattern paper.

To add a little something extra to my pictures below, I fussy cut the “E” from the “Hello” saying, and trimmed the chevron arrow from the Accessory Sticker Sheet in half to place on each end of my picture strip. I really liked how the arrows “hugged” my pictures.

So there you have it, my kit inspiration. I have so enjoyed seeing what our designers have created using only the fabulous Paper and Accessory Packs. I hope you have too. Thank you for stopping by today. Now pull out those collection packs and get to creating!

Paper Kit Week with Monika

Monika here today for Paper Kit Week and I'm featuring the Find Your Wings and Fly collection by Rhonna Farrer. I chose to use the "Sky's the Limit" Paper Kit for my home decor project because when I began pulling all the goodies out of the kit, I was so inspired by the uplifting words and messages found on the sticker accessories sheet.

I began by covering an oval wooden shape I had in my stash with the patterned cardstock,then I die cut more of the gorgeous papers and used foam adhesive to add dimension to my inspirational art that I have been displaying in my studio. This art is especially for those days that I need a little bit of extra sunshine and good words. 

I just layered and layered and layered die cut shapes and stickers until I couldn't layer any more! I even added some of the round stickers at the bottom with a spiral cut flower in the center. 

DESIGNER TIP  Adhere your stickers to a sheet of cardstock and fussy cut around the sticker to make your own die cut accent pieces.

Join us again tomorrow for more inspiration using Paper Kits from My Mind's Eye. And don't forget to embrace your best self today!

 

Paper Kit Week with Tonya

Hi My Mind's Eye fans! Tonya here to share another layout for kit week.

As you know this week is all about grabbing those packaged kits that My Mind's Eye produces and putting them to use. In each kit is a sheet of all of the patterned papers and a 12x12 sheet of coordinating card stock stickers. It's really all one needs to make some great projects!

For my layout I am using the kit from Kate & Co.- Oxford Lane

Supplies: Kate & Co. Oxford Lane- Tartan Paper, From Me Paper, Enjoy Paper, Triples Paper, Sticker Accessory sheet

I used my Silhoutte to cut the title out of that large diagonal strip of plaid paper. It was also used for the 'dudes'.

I'm going to confess to a little designer error here :), the extra dark lines on the 'H' were not what I had planned. Unfortunately when I had the layout all done I decided that I wanted the title to pop a little more so I outlined them with a dark blue pen. I ended with two major unstraight/goopy areas on that letter and had to come up with some way to amend my errors!

The striped frame behind the photo is one of the journaling cards on the back side of the Enjoy paper.

I really wanted to stick to using NOTHING but what came in the kit and I ALMOST succeeded. However, that little camera needed just a little extra something so I added a small button with twine. 

Hope we have inspired you all a bit to pull out your kits and to start creating with them!

Tonya

Paper Kit Week with Tina

Happy Monday, MME fans! Welcome to Paper Kit week! This week we are going to show you a variety of projects you can make using only our Papercrafting Kits!

Hi!  Tina here today!  Do you like easy?  Do you like quick? My Mind's Eye Paper Kits are the perfect solution! 

Each paper kit includes: 12 12x12 double sides papers and a coordinating sticker accessory sheet.  Just think about how many projects just one kit could make!

Supplies:Kate&Co-Cambridge Court:papercrafting kit;Misc:Cardstock:  American Crafts,Twine:  American Crafts,Flair:  A Flair for Buttons,Clip:  Tim Holtz,Hanger:  Tim Holtz,Stamp:  American Crafts,Ink:  Staz On,Adhesive:  American Crafts (tape runner), Imaginisce (foam tape)

Today I'm sharing layout created with one of the newest Kate & Co collections, Cambridge Court.  I'm not the typical 'pink' scrapbooker, but I LOVE this collection.  I might even go as far as saying it is in my top MME collections.  :)

This is one of those, 'make and go' projects.  I digitally cut the circles with my Silhouette and layered small pieces of the FABBO patterned paper behind each cut out.  Such a fun and easy technique that I never grow tired of.  I layered several stickers around my photos, added a couple of embellishments from my stash, and viola!  It was done.  The Paper kits are great to take to crops and for crafting on the go.  They are portable and full of product!

What can you create with the Paper Kits?  We would love to see your creations!

Thanks for stopping by!  Have a wonderful day!

New Collection Winners!!!

Chalk Studio-

13 kristin greenwood said...this line is FANTASTIC!!!! I must have every single piece in this collection!!

Reply July 08, 2013 at 10:11 AM

 Vintage Christmas-

174 Mary Ann Jenkins said...It's beautiful!! Perfect to use with old black & whites of Christmases past as well as pics of Christmas 2012!

Reply July 09, 2013 at 11:05 PM

Cut and  Paste Presh-

199 KimberlyRae said...I Adore 'Presh', has all my fav colors. Just 'Cut & Paste' every Awesome Enamel bits, stamp, tapes and papers [oh! and brads and those buttons...sigh] right over here to Me Please! I want them All :)

Reply July 10, 2013 at 10:23 PM

Cut and Paste Adorbs-

 

300 fonda rush said...i like the ime greens, purples, aquas, reds, greens, grays, and pinks in the adsorbs collection.

Reply July 11, 2013 at 06:50 PM

Cut and Paste Charm-

25 Lacey Igo said...Wow these color combinations are FANTASTIC!!! I can't wait to get my hands on both these lines! yipppeee

Reply July 11, 2013 at 11:15 AM

Cut and Paste Flair-

79 Chocogrl18 said...These are both great collections I can't decide if I like charm or flair more!

Reply July 11, 2013 at 12:42 PM

Happy Haunting-

403 LisaSoares said...I love the Happy Hauntings papers!

Reply July 19, 2013 at 02:11 AM

Mistletoe Magic-

269 Jennifer Wymore said...Love the washi tapes and Mistletoe Magic is so cute!

Reply July 15, 2013 at 09:52 PM

Decorative Tapes-

61 Annette Hindes said...Love Love Love the new tapes!!!Love the colors, patterns, sizes and coordination!

Reply July 12, 2013 at 11:39 AM

Congratulations ladies! Please email stephanie(at)mymindseye(dot)com with your address!