My Mind's Eye Blog

Anatomy of a Double Page Layout | March 2015

Hey everyone! This is Shelly with this month’s dose of the makings of a double page layout. This month, I am showing y’all how I pull together a second layout of the same batch of pictures all the while keeping it fresh with a new look.

I was shuffling through my stack of envelopes each containing a different group of pictures that I plan on scrapbooking. I stumbled upon an envelope labeled “Sam – Spring 2012.”PERFECT! Spring is just around the corner, at least I hope so. I had a game plan of the layout that I wanted to create for this month’s double layout.

Supplies: Jubilee: Mint Julep – “Wild” Tribal Foiled Paper, “Journey” Adventure Paper, “Beautiful” Mixed Bag; Tangerine – “Adventure” Bed Daring Paper, “Story” Wonderful Paper, “Honor” Traveler Paper, “Awesome” Enamel Dots; Wild Berry – “Sketch” Inked Paper, “Life” Tribal Paper, “Hey You” Rub-ons, “Hey You” 3x4 Journal Cards, “Life” Enamel Dots; Necessities: Wood “Light Wood” Paper; Other: foam sticker alphabet, typewriter.

I peeked inside the envelope, and I knew I had already documented these same pictures for my daughter’s album. You can check that page out RIGHT HERE. I pulled her album off of the shelf for reference. I was still inspired by the rainbow of patterned papers, so I shuffled through Jubilee to create another beautiful rainbow.

I didn’t want to just re-create the same exact page, but the rainbow was definitely calling to me again. I started pushing papers around. I really loved the look of a diagonal rainbow.

I knew it was going to be tricky getting the full length of the diagonal with just strips of paper. I only had this partial sheet of orange to play with. Lucky for me, it was a fun patterned stripe which just happened to be perfect for piecing together.

Now, you could easily use the orange (or whatever color will be the longest) as the background to solve this problem. I also had to piece together the yellow. I knew once I had the pictures on the page, no one would be the wiser.

After I had the background pulled together, I placed the pictures down exactly how my daughter’s page was. That is when I decided to move just a few pictures around because my thought was to place the title over the red dot strip and journaling down in the lower right-hand corner.

I did a little stitching to hold down my rainbow and add some texture. I had a couple different sheets of black and white patterns standing by to add that little extra pop. A one-inch strip on both the top and bottom of the layout did the trick.

I freshened up the title with the “hashtag” and a heart. That was definitely inspired by the many hours of scrolling through Instagram. I can’t be the only one out there admitting to the numerous hours lost gazing at other peoples’ lives. Yikes.

The right side of the layout has plenty of the neutral wood grain to give the on-looking eye some rest. I like how this soft wood grain really lets the pictures and rainbow take center stage and really pop.

I used a couple of 3x4 journaling cards for some layering and to hold the journaling. My printer is on the fritz right now, so I pulled out the old typewriter. I really need a little more practice with typing. I have gotten way too comfortable with auto correct. My fingers like to get ahead of my brain. Oops!

So what do you think? Do you scrapbook the same pictures more than once? Do you keep the same design, or switch it up a touch? I know a lot of you out there only do family albums. Sometimes I think I am a nut for attempting to do albums for each of my children. BUT as for now, I still enjoy it! Lucky for me, the second page always goes much quicker than the first time around.

Thank you for stopping by on this fun Monday. I hope you all have a fabulous week!

Shelly

Add a Little Something

Happy Friday everyone! Tonya here today to show you how I took a couple of the Ready to Frames 8x10’s and added just a little extra something to them. I loved the sayings on both of these and thought that they would be perfect for my daughter’s room.

 

Both of these prints are from the Market Street Nob Hill collection.

 

I really wanted to repurpose these  gold frames that I already had. Once I inserted the prints into the frames I just felt like they needed a little something extra to help break up all of the gold. So, instead of placing the prints under the glass of the frame I adhered them to the top of the glass. This made it so that I could add some dimensional embellishments to the prints without the frame getting in the way.

 

Supplies: Market Streeet (Nob Hill)- Ready to Frame 8x10’s Jubilee (Wild Berry)- 6x6 Decorative Paper Pad Necessities (Metallics)- Metallics “Striped” Foiled Vellum, Metallics “Triangle” Foiled Vellum Market Street (Ashbury Heights)- Decorative Brads

 

For this first one I cut out some flowers and a banner out of paper from the Jubilee Wild Berry collection and some of the foiled gold vellum in the Necessities line. Then I remembered that a long while ago I had purchased some gold metallic thread for my sewing machine.

 

One problem that I had though was that it I was never able to get it threaded into my machine because it would unravel before I could get the darn stuff through the eye of the needle, so it’s been neglected. I pulled that out and placed a messy “artistic” bundle of it behind the flower. Then topped it all off with some brads.

 

 

 

For this next one I opted to go with some butterflies. Once again they were cut from the same papers as the other frame.

 

Supplies: Market Streeet (Nob Hill)- Ready to Frame 8x10’s Jubilee (Wild Berry)- 6x6 Decorative Paper Pad Necessities (Metallics)- Metallics “Striped” Foiled Vellum, Metallics “Triangle” Foiled Vellum Market Street (Ashbury Heights)- Decorative Brads

 

This time I chose to use that gold thread again as a little butterfly trail. I also add some enamel dots directly to the print to help draw the eye to those very important words we all need to hear.

 

 

 

Don’t be afraid to add your own little touch to these fabulous prints! It’s so easy to do and you end up with just an extra little something that is unique to you!

 

Hope you all have a great weekend!

 

Tonya

 

Simple Cards in Bulk

Hi everyone! This is Shelly with something a little different from me. I love creating simple card sets, either to gift to a special someone or just to have a stack of general cards on hand for a quick note. I thought I would share how I like to go about creating cards in bulk fashion.

Supplies: Just Sayin’ – Garden Party Paper, Enamel Dots, 6x6 Designer Paper Pad; Other: The Sweetest Thing stamp sets, ink.

I gathered a few of my supplies I thought I would use. I had the idea to keep things very simple and easy to reproduce with out too much waste. I flipped through the 6x6 paper pad and the large stripe patterns jumped right out at me.

I knew I could “glam” those stripes right up with a small strip of that fabulous gold from the Garden Party patterned paper. I also grabbed the brads and enamel dots knowing a card just isn’t finished without a circle or two, and stamps are always a go-to when it comes to mass production. They are easy to use, and you can never run out of them. So, dig into that stash of classic MME stamp sets and put them to good use!

I trimmed all of the 6x6 sheets of paper down to the hight of the card at 5.5 inches. To get the biggest bang from my 6x6 sheets of paper, I cut them all in half. The final dimension of the patterned paper strip is 5.5-inches x 3-inches. There was only a small ½-inch strip of waste. Not to bad! I then trimmed one strip of the gold in half and cut 3-inch strips to fit the width of each patterned paper piece.

The gold strips fit nicely over the first white stripe. As you can see after trimming down the gold strips of paper, I decided not to toss the last (two) 3-inch strips but opted to just add another color striped patterned paper into the mix creating a total of 8 cards.

Next step was to get messy with some ink and stamps. I kept the base of the cards all the same with the same colors and location of the stamps, but got a little crazy by choosing different sentiments for each of the four color cards.

I finished the card off with one enamel dot that coordinated with the color of the patterned stripe placed on each gold strip. It was a nice finishing touch to add that little something extra.

Clean, simple, and easy.  Just how I like it when it comes to creating in bulk. Think of how many card sets you could create with your pretty 6x6 paper pads that you have stashed away?! It’s been awhile since I shared one of my simple cards sets here on the blog, but if you want to see my last set you can look HERE.

Thank you for stopping by today, I hope you have an amazing day!

Shelly

Watercolor Cards

Hey there, MME friends!!  Lea here today with a couple of cards featuring the Jubilee "Sherbet" collection.  I love the current trend of using watercolor on your projects, and this collection blends perfectly with the technique!

I cut out a couple of the blocks from the "Pretty" Quotes paper to use as the sentiments on my cards.  I chose quotes that are love themed, and can be given at anytime of the year for any reason! 

After figuring out where I wanted to place them on the card front, I then created my watercolor backgrounds.  I used distress inks as my watercolor paints because the colors are extremely vivid.  Once they backgrounds were dry, I splattered them with black paint. 

After adhering each watercolor background to a white card base, I layered the quote blocks to each one.  The first one was popped off the background with dimensional adhesive, and the second one was layered with two other blocks of hand trimmed paper. 

After that, I embellished each card with some chipboard accents, diecut shapes & enamel dots to finish.  While watercolor takes a little extra time to dry, it is a great artistic addition to using the amazing My Mind's Eye products!  I hope that you will break out your watercolor paints then next time you create!

Have a wonderful day!
 

Lea

Supplies: Jubilee "Sherbet" - "Pretty" Quotes 12x12 paper, 6x6 designer paper pad, chipboard elements, mixed bag, & enamel dots.  Other: art paper, white cadstock, distress inks, watercolor paints.

Customer Spotlight

We just LOVE these sweet photographs by Katherine Chambers. How sweet is this baby girl? So glad our party fans could make her special day even more magical!

For more photos and information you can go to Katherine's website, blog, or Facebook.

Thank you for sending us these adorable photos Katherine!

 

Foil

Hi My Mind’s Eye fans, this is Tonya here with you today. Have you all noticed how hot the whole foil/metallic trend is? It’s everywhere and lucky for us My Mind’s Eye has  quite a few collections that are very vogue and ahead of the latest paper crafting trend.  There’s metallic tapes, stickers, chipboard, enamel dots and shapes, die cuts, rub ons and vellum. I have three cards to share with you today and they all feature more than one form of the foil/metallic look.

 

 

This first card features a couple of different paper tapes that are from the Necessities collections. While making this I had a small “a-ha” moment when I felt that the large glitter ‘U’ needed a little something extra. My eyes landed on the gold metallic rub ons from the Jubilee collection, and I thought hmmmm??? Could the rub ons be applied on top of the glitter? Yep! It sure can and quite effectively might I add!

 

Supplies: Necessities (Red)- Decorative Tapes, Monogram Alphas, Tiny Word/Alpha Stickers Necessities (Teal)- Decorative Tapes, Enamel Shapes Jubilee (Mint Julep)- Rub Ons

 

This second card features the teal foiled vellum for the background. The gold metallic frame was back with a light teal piece of paper that was embellished with some gold rub on hearts, and little chipboard sentiment and some enamel hearts. I topped it all off with a gold metallic chipboard heart.

 

Supplies: Necessities (Teal)- Striped Foiled Vellum Paper, Enamel Shapes, Decorative Paper Pad Market Street (Nob Hill)- Chipboard Elements

Jubilee (Mint Julep)- Chipboard Elements, Rub Ons

 

For this last card I used the little gold metallic photo corners and created my own little butterflies. They were super easy. I just used two of the corners for the wings, an enamel dot for the body and then I hand drew in the antennae. To embellish the wheels of the bike I simply used two decorative brads. Love that little gold bucket on the bike, makes it such a happy chipboard piece!

 

Supplies: Necessities (Red)- Decorative Paper Pad, Decorative Tapes, Decorative Brads, Tiny Alphas/Words, Enamel Shapes Jubilee (Mint Julep)- Chipboard Elements

 

For those of you wanting to join in on the foil trend it is super easy to do with all of the options that My Mind’s Eye has for you to choose from. Hope I gave you some great ideas to start with.

 

Tonya

 

Project LifeⓇ with Shelly | March 2015

Hello everyone! This is Shelly with some Project LifeⓇ inspiration. I am jumping back into my stash to play with some of the Record It! Just Splendid Collection. It is such a soft versatile collection!  

Supplies: Record It! Just Splendid: Journaling Kit, Ready to Frame Word Art Prints; Record It! Charmed: Journaling Kit; Cut & Paste Flair “Today” Tiny Word Stickers; Other: Becky Higgins Design A Page Protector, We R Memory Keepers 4-6x4, 1-8x6 pocket design page protector, Date Stamp, Ink, Marker, Bohemian Typewriter Font.

This wasn’t just a normal week for me… well, it was normal. It was just that this week wasn’t going to be documented in my normal fashion. I chose to follow along with Week in the Life for this particular week. Even though I am working on documenting this week in depth with a mini album, I didn’t just want to leave an empty hole in my Project LifeⓇ album.

 

I decided to do something a little different and fun for me. Each night my husband reads a story (or part of one) to our kids before bedtime. I captured this each night and it just looked like the perfect time to showcase this special time in my yearly family album.

I loved the 2014 card from the time I laid eyes on it. I had already completed the title page for my 2014 album, but I knew there would be a fun use for this design along the way. This week was the perfect time to pull it out. I just added the “Week in the Life” along with the date; a great title to document this week with. I included a journal card for what this week was all about, and a journaling card sharing the story of how bedtime stories go each night.

 

I really love this page protector design. The 6x8 pocket has lots of fun potential. I pulled out the ever-so-fun Ready to Frame Word Art Prints. These are totally not just for frames. I trimmed down this one, and I slid it right into the pocket. Simple, cute, and done. I love that.

 

Between the different pocket page orientation and all black & white photos, it was a lot of fun to do something different in my Project LifeⓇ album this time around. Have you changed up your album lately? Sometimes it is nice to just get out of a rut and try something new. Please feel free to link us up, so that we can see! Thanks for stopping by. I hope you all have a wonderful day!

Shelly

 

You Are My Sparkle and Love

 

 Supplies: Just Sayin': Belong glittered patterned paper, Believe glittered paterned paper, alpha/word stickers, chipboard, decorative brads; Jubilee - Wildberry: Garden paper (blue); Jubilee - Mint Julep: gold transparent frames; Mics: Ranger - brown ink, brown Sharpie pen, blue thread, Tombow liquid mono adhesive, foam tape.

 

I was looking through my old photos and found this great picture of my kids from 10 years ago when we were playing at the park on a warm, golden autumn day. It was taken from above, as they lay down in the soft grass. It is fun to look back at those sweet round faces and remember the joy I felt being their mommy. 

These fabulous gold transparencies and the "You are my Sparkle" title - reflect our happiness and love. 

 

 

 I love the beautiful blue paper from the Jubilee - Mint Julep collection, it almost looks like a watercolor. I cut a 9.5" square of white cardstock and sewed around the edges. I cut a striped piece of paper from Rhonna Farrer's Just Sayin' collection to 4x6 and placed the "You are my Sparkle" transparency over it. 

 

 

Tip: use little dabs of the liquid Tombow mono adhesive behind the printed areas of the transparency. 

 

I cut a 3x4 piece of the dark blush paper and placed the "&" transparency over it. I adhered the gold frame transparency over the 4x6 photo and cut a 3x4 piece of the triangle paper with gold glittered accents. I cut a thin strip of the blue and gold glittered stars to complete the square. 

 

 

I embellished the page with a chipboard title and circles, sticker words, mixed bag die cuts, and decorative brads.  

 

I finished off the layout with journaling around the page. 

 

 

It is fun how the glittered elements from Just Sayin' work so perfectly with the beautiful gold transparencies from Jubilee - Mint Julep. 

 

I challenge you to look through your old photos from 10 years ago (or longer) and document a memory through a layout. 😄

It's fun to take a trip down memory lane.

 

Tamara

25 Weeks

 

Hello! Valerie here. I dusted off my acrylic paint and have a mixed media layout to share today. I’ve missed my paint a bit, so it was good to get a little messy again. This layout made me want to throw out my to-do list and spend the whole day creating and painting instead.

SUPPLIESMy Mind’s Eye Just Sayin’ chipboard elements and mixed bag. My Mind’s Eye Jubilee Mint Julep 6x6 designer pad and Sherbet “Peace” sticky notes. Other: White cardstock, Silhouette Cameo (font: Alek & Verry Berry), acrylic paint.

After gathering some embellishments from the Just Sayin’ collection, I picked four coordinating paint colors: white, aqua, pink, and a lighter pink. I grabbed a sheet of white cardstock and started covering it with a large messy square of white paint. I immediately started brushing on the three other colors without giving the white any drying time because I wanted them to blend with the white. After letting these first two layers of paint dry, I went over it again with white paint to mute it down a bit.



I found a rose shape in the Silhouette store that I thought would go well with the Just Sayin’ florals and cut out a few onto white cardstock and then layered it over the painted white base. My title was cut from a 6x6 sheet from the Jubilee Mint Julep designer paper pad and layered over my largest photo.



I used a series of three of the same Jubilee sticky note to add my journaling to the page. I’m in love with all the layers! And doesn’t my boy look so sweet? He hopped right in these photos—no whining or sulking. That never happens!

So what is waiting in your craft space to be dusted off and used again?!

Valerie

Happy Life

Greetings everyone! Tonya here with you today. I have had this photo of my daughter and I for a little over a year and it is part of the photo stream that comes across my computer screen. Every time that I see it, I think of the Jubilee Sherbet collection. It’s the colors and that purple background that do it! I decided that it was finally time to put these two together on a layout.

Supplies: Jubilee-Sherbet: “Enjoy” Pizazz paper, “Happy” Mixed Bag, “Peace” 12x12 chipboard elements, “You” rub ons, “Pretty” enamel shapes, “Happy” enamel dots

 

I wanted to break up the purple background a bit so I used a partial cut file from Silhouette that I manipulated and changed a bit by adding the hearts around the perimeter.

 

Then I just went to work adding little bits and pieces. Most of the items are from the mixed bag die cuts and the decorative chip board.

 

 

I’ve been loving the little bits of silver metallic in this photo below I snuck in a metallic heart. You can see on the title the metallic “life” and then I also snuck in two little rub on butterflies.

 

This collection has such a fun color scheme! It evokes feelings of happiness, joy, and sensations of a glorious spring morning! Thanks for letting me share a little piece of it with you today!

 

Tonya