My Mind's Eye Blog

Mix and Match with Karen | February 2015

Hi everyone! This is Karen, back with another episode of Mix and Match!

For this month, I was thinking about how quickly time is passing and I wanted to focus on an update for my kids and how much they've grown and who they are right now in their lives.

I also wanted to use more silver since I liked using that last month. I often hear people worry about using pinks on boy pages so I also wanted to show you how I use lots and lots of pink on my pages even though I have two boys.

As far as I am concerned, nothing is unacceptable on any kind of page as long as you like it.

Here's the layout I came up with:




Since this layout is two pages in one, I always think about how to balance the two pages out so it's clear that they go together. In this layout, I used the narrow pink washi tape to join the two sides together.

I love how something so simple can give the feeling of uniformity. Also, since the top right was so embellishment heavy, I added a small cluster to the bottom of the right side page and one to the left bottom of the left page.

To me, these form a triangle that focuses your attention back to the photos and allows your eyes to stay on the page and not wander off.

Here's the top right cluster:




I want to mention a few important things about this cluster. This comes from three different MME product lines and I pulled embellishments apart and layered them to make them fit with my vision and goal for the page.

This is something I cannot mention enough times. You do not have to use the embellishments as they come. All of the MME lines play really well together and you can combine embellishments across lines old and new and come up with exactly what you want.

Here's the bottom left page:




For those of you who are like me and do a lot of journaling, you can still add small, lovely bits of embellishment to your page. These little bits can add personality and color to your page.

And here's the bottom right side:



I have noticed that I use the MME chipboard pieces more and more in my titles. I love coupling them with the small alphabets which then means my title can be super long or pretty short.

I also wanted to mention the stitching. I often love to stitch on my pages because it keeps the embellishments firmly down and it adds texture to my pages. It's also a great reminder not to focus on perfection since I can't stitch straight to save my life.

That's it from me for this month! I hope you've enjoyed this layout and if you have any questions or have or anything you'd like to see more of, make sure to leave me a comment. Have a great February.

Mix and Match with Karen | January 2015

Hi everyone!

Happy 2015. I am Karen and I am back with a new Mix and Match layout.

This month, I decided I wanted to celebrate my oldest son, David. He has recently started taking guitar lessons and I absolutely adore listening to him practice. I can't play any instruments so it brings me a lot of
joy to see him learn.

I asked him whether he wanted gold or silver on his page and he chose silver. Since my instinct is to always go with gold, it was a fun challenge to accommodate his request.

Here's what I ended up with:


I love how wonderfully the chipboard from Jubilee - Sherbert integrated into my title seamlessly.


and it's so shiny (so is the paper behind the photo):


Since the guitar is made out of wood, I decided to primarily focus on brown, yellow/orange, and silver for this page. I used the wood flair from Jubilee Tangerine on top of the whitespace in my photo:


and then a little wood paper on the opposite page:


To unite the pages. I also used these small white enamel dots all over.

I also created two small clusters. One on the top left:


and one on the bottom right


And that was it.

Here's the long journaling from this page.

In the end, I loved the silver page. Sometimes, it's fun to ask others to pick a main color for your page, or some embellishment that they definitely want you to use. It helps you get outside your comfort zone and try new things.

I hope you try something new this month, too!

Mix and Match with Karen | December 2014

This is Karen, back with another Mix and Match for the month of December. If you're anything like me, December is a very busy month for you, too. Between work and the holidays and working on my December
Daily, I rarely find time to do anything else during this time of year.

However, this time of year is also a very reflective time for me. I like to look back and the year I'm saying goodbye to and look forward to the year I'm welcoming. I like to come up with my word of the year and some
specific projects and goals for the year. And another tradition I started last year is to think about my desired feelings for the year.

This is how I want to be feeling throughout the year. Here, you can see my layout on this from last year.

So, instead of doing nothing, I wanted to challenge myself to see how quickly I could make a layout. I wrote my journaling, which was the important part for reflection. I grabbed a recent photo of myself, which was a core goal for 2014 (get in the photos more) and then I sat down at my desk.

I put the photo down somewhere on the page that felt pleasing to me. Then I took out all the My Mind's Eye tape that I love and makes me happy and just put it down on my page line by line. I let it seep into my other page a small amount to create the feeling of connectedness between the two pages.

I added one big 2015 and spelled "here i come" in little alphas and stitched all around my two pages. And I was done:



I know it looks simple but it also makes me really, really happy.

See, I even look happy in the photo:



You can read the full journaling here.

I like playing with product as much as the next scrapbooker and sometimes I love tinkering with my pages forever or coming up with something creative. And then, other times, I love being able to create a page that makes me happy in minutes.

It's good to have both in my box of tricks.

If you've got some tricks to make super-fast pages, I'd love to see them!

Mix and Match with Karen | November 2014

Hi everyone! This is Karen and I am delighted to be back with a Mix and Match for November.

In my ten years of scrapbooking, there have been some trends I really wasn't crazy about. I'd see the embellishments everywhere and I couldn't wait for the trend to pass.

But then there's gold.

I am perfectly happy if this gold trend stays here forever. I just can never seem to get enough of it and I love love love the way it shines on my pages. It's not messy like glitter and requires no drying time like Stickles but it's shiny and makes me happy.

So when I was making this month's page, I knew I was going back to my happy gold. Instead of using the tape this time, I cut off the wide gold strip from the awesome Garden Party paper from the Just Sayin' line.  Once I had that down, I was feeling so much happier that it almost didn't matter what else I put on my page.

I like pairing gold with black and since my photos had so much blue in them, I didn't want to add a lot more blue. So I decided to use pink, black, gold and a little blue on my page. I pulled out some Chalk Studio II chipboard pieces and stickers. Some heart enamels and tape with blues and pinks in it. I used hearts all over because why not.

I had already decided on my journaling which was about how my boys pout before they go to swim class and how I've always worried that they were having a horrible time but for this one week, I ended up being the one
to take them to class and I could see with my own eyes how very much they actually love it. So I pulled out the perfect "Just Sayin'" diecut from the Mixed Bag  and decided to couple it with some alphabet stickers for my title. I had my journaling, photos, paper,  tape, stickers, and hearts. I was all set to go.

Here's what I ended up with:


You can read the full journaling here.

People sometimes reach out to me to ask how I feel about using pink or hearts or flowers on my boy pages. I feel like these pages are mine and I do them for myself. I also feel like hearts, pinks and flowers are not  reserved for girls only. All shapes, colors and patterns are for all of us. So I do whatever I want to do and haven't had a complaint from my boys yet. This page has so many hearts, it's almost ridiculous. But they are all a little different. I have it on the tapes, the enamel, and the rubon.

I tried to put my hearts on three corners of my page and in threes (or ones) to have them visually interesting. I started with the upper left where I only had a bit of space:


And then to the lower left where I had even less space. I made one of these a rubon just to have the rubon and the gold in one more place on the page:


And then the lower right. I had two hearts on the title right by there already so, here, I decided to do just one and then added an arrow to go with the arrows on the tape below and added some more gold and made my
heart blue to add some color.


I just love love love how shiny that is.

As I was rubbing on my hearts on the photo, one of them got slightly messed up. After I was done being frustrated, I decided to 'mess up' the other two as well so they could look like they were distressed hearts.


I don't know if it worked but three messed up hearts bothers me a lot less.

And then I pulled out my sewing machine and stitched around the photos, the tape, the little letters and I felt like I was done. I stared and stared at the page and found myself wondering what it would look like if I stitched around the diecut. I am not the smoothest stitcher so I was chiding myself for coming up with an idea that would surely ruin the page.

I considered using a pen instead. But it doesn't have the same texture. A small voice kept saying "Just walk away, you're done, don't ruin it!" but then another one was saying "But what if it's really neat looking?" And my motto is that if you're finding yourself wondering, you should try it.

So what if you "ruin" the page? You can make many more. And if you try and it's indeed cool, now you know one more trick.

So I grabbed a pencil, drew some guidelines and went at it. The result was crooked indeed but I still loved it. I think it added just the right texture to my page.


Now that I'd tried my crazy idea, I was done. One more page done, one more story told. Here's to many more!

See you next month.

Mix and Match with Karen | September 2014

 

Hi everyone,

This is Karen. I am back with another Mix and Match layout. For this month, I wanted to experiment with leaving a little more room on the bottom of my journaling page to see if I could find a slightly different
way to unite my two pages without doing a border. So I left some empty space on the bottom and then used washi tape to make strips that go across both pages. Here's a look at my full page:


Even though this page has no border to unite the two 6x12s, the tape going across the bottom and top makes it feel like one 12x12 page. You can read the full journaling here.

Since the Mix and Match posts are all about how you can match your older products with the new ones, I wanted to show you a trick I used on this page. My Mind's Eye uses several differing shades of pink and blue in their products.

Most of the time, I love combining these and it doesn't bother me if they don't match perfectly. But once in a while, I find myself annoyed at a particular shade. In this layout, I wanted to use the joy chipboard piece from the Market Street line and the blue glittered tape from the Necessities line.

The chipboard piece was more of a green/teal blue whereas the tape was more baby blue and I didn't like the way the two sat near each other. So once I finished my whole layout, I covered the chipboard piece with some Stickles that matched my tape.


To many of you, this may not matter at all. But, for me, the end result was closer to what I wanted for this particular layout. I wanted to point this out as an option when you find yourself wanting to use a product but don't like the particular shade of the color.

You can also cover it with clear glitter which will make it shiny enough that the shade won't matter as much. You can also paint it, of course.

To give the layout a bit of balance, I then added two more small bits of glitter. One on the left side, on the chevron and one on the top right on the little heart.


One of the reasons I love washi tape is for its flexibility. After I made my strips going along the bottom of the page, I knew I wanted one on top, too, but I hadn't left enough room on top to allow for that. I knew I wanted to leave a strip of white on top so I was stuck with having to go around the journaling.

To make this look more purposeful, I picked a tape with the Chevron pattern and cut out the edges and taped
it around my journaling.


This way I got the stripe I wanted and having to cut a piece out even added a bit of extra interest.

I created several little and big triangles in this layout. One is with the three little hearts on the right page and the other one is the chipboard flag piece on the top right, the right side towards the bottom and the chevrons on the bottom of the left page. These help keep your eyes focused inside the page instead of wandering out of the layout.

And finally, I added little word tidbits here and there:


To remind myself that one can never achieve perfection and to adhere my pieces with my favorite adhesive, I then stitched all over my page. I like stitching in black because it adds texture and contrast.

Here's the layout once more:


And that's it for September, thank you for letting me share my page and I'd love to see some of yours in the comments!

Mix and Match with Karen | August 2014

Hi everyone!

This is Karen and I am back with August's Mix and Match with Karen page. This month's page is a celebration of my older son's love of science. He's been in love with physics since first grade and his knowledge has grown so much over the last two years that I am in awe of him.

This month, I wanted to see if I could use the big heart from the Record It! Just Splendid art pack. I loved that heart and decided it was time to use it, so I cut it out and put it right behind my photo and pretty much designed my page around it.


You can find the whole journaling here.

Once I put the thin strip of washi to tie my two pages together, I decided to use some more fun washi tape on the bottom to anchor my photo. I added a few more layers but kept it pretty simple.


On the top right, I put some chipboard pieces, I like how they make your eye travel back to the middle of the page.


To tie the pages together and to force your eye back inward, I put some arrows and chipboard to the bottom left, as well.


I then used all the awesome MME alphabets to have fun with my title. I incorporated the love on the heart to be a part of my title so it reads: i love you and i am so proud of you.


The first thought I have when I look at this page is how colorful and happy it makes me feel. That's one of my favorite things about My Mind's Eye products. Their colors always make me happy. I hope you take some
time to play with the bright yellows, blues and greens this month, too!

Mix and Match with Karen | July 2014

Hi everyone!

This is Karen and I am back with a Mix and Match page for July.

A few months ago, my kids were playing with chalk in the front yard and asked me to take their picture hugging. They didn't have to ask me twice. I then used the photos as fodder for my next page, of course. The
photos have green, black and red in them so I wanted to see if I could make a page that had only those three colors. I thought using Chalk Studio to document a day of sidewalk chalk would be fun.

Here's what I ended up with:




You can find the whole journaling here.

To tie the two pages in, I kept things to a minimum.  I added a line of tape to the top and the bottom and then a little black text and a heart to the bottom left:


On the right side, I created a visual triangle with the two black stars and the one gray one next to the final photo. I like how stark the black is and how much contrast it adds to the page.


I loved using the Tiny Words/Alphas to weave into my title. They are my absolute favorite:


And here are my sweet little boys:


Just to prove that no MME line can be too old to use, the red fleece behind the photos comes from the Kraft Funday line! My challenge to you this month is to use one of your oldest MME lines on a layout. And if
you do, link me up in the comments, I'd love to see it!

Mix and Match with Karen | May 2014 Edition

Hi everyone!

This is Karen, back with a Mix and Match for May. This month, I decided I really wanted to use the wood 4x6 piece from the Just Splendid line of Record It! I just love those pieces and I wanted to see if I could make a layout around one.

Lately, I've been having a love affair with washi tapes. I like the ease and variety, so I grabbed some and just lay it on my page vertically instead of the usual horizontal layouts I make:


Once I had the washi tape, I decided to cut the bottom off the Celebrate wood piece and attach it to the side and the rest of the layout came together much more quickly:


You can find the journaling here.

Here's a closeup of the title section. I can't remember the last time I wrote my title sideways. It was unusual for me and I thought about it for a long time, but I think I like it in the end:

For the bottom section, I grabbed my second favorite cards from the Record It! line, the transparencies. I grabbed the heart one and cut around the white section so it was in the shape of a heart and not rectangular. I then attached it to my photo. The sticker from the Now and Then line gave me a non-transparent spot so I could put the glue under there. I also stitched on top of it to make sure it wasn't going anywhere.

On the opposite page, I wanted to do a little tie-in. Usually I use washi tape to connect my two pages, but I wanted to see how little I could do while still maintaining the feeling that the two were part of a whole. So I added some wood pieces, some of the same colors and some of the glittery silver.  And then stitched around the whole layout as if it were a 12x12.


And there we go. That's my page for May. Some wood, some transparency, some glitter and a lot of moments to celebrate.

Have you used the wood 4x6s yet? If so, I'd love to see some of your pages!

Mix and Match with Karen | April 2013 Edition

Hi everyone,

This is Karen, back with another Mix and Match with Karen. As I continue on my journey of two-6x12 page layouts, I've been thinking about this new style and pondering how I feel about it. I've received some thoughts
and questions about this style and wanted to share some of what I think with you.

1. I love having the room to write longer journaling. When I switched to creating layouts with hand-journaling a few years ago, one of the things I missed was the ability to tell much longer stories. I know that, for me, handwriting my journaling means writing more randomly and naturally. But not always going as deep. I seem to be able to collect my thoughts better on the computer. So I love having this mechanism for telling my
longer stories. Making deeper connections on my layout.

2. I've been asked a few times, why I like the 2 6x12 over the 12x12. On a purely mechanical level, I don't have a large-sized printer and would not be able to print my journaling if I did a 12x12 page.  But, even more significantly, with this system when I sit to scrap, I am still designing a 6x12 page. I always put the two blank pages side by side but, with the exception of the photos, I don't think of any overlap until I've fully designed the right side. So my brain is thinking of a narrow rectangle (6x12) and not of a square (12x12) and different ideas come to me that wouldn't if I started with a square. This month's layout is a perfect example. I'd never have put an arrow in the middle of a square page, but with the split design, the arrow that splits across the  pages makes it visually interesting.

3. More than anything, I like the process of doing something different than I usually would. Doing the same thing over and over again can get you into a rut. It might put you on auto-pilot and fewer creative ideas bubble up. Changing your perspective, changing your fundamentals (like the size and shape of the paper you design on) can really shake things up and help you see new possibilities.

So if you've been doing the same thing for a while, I encourage you to try something new this month. You never know what surprises you might get.

With that, here's my page for April:


I noticed that my last few pages were really full so I challenged myself to keep the page more bare this time. One of the products I've been really enjoying from the new release is the cards in the Record It! line.

For this page, I cut up the little saying below from one of the cards in pretty things line and the hearts behind come from another card in the follow your heart line. The little hearts are from the awesome Cupid's Arrow.


You don't have to use the cards as 3x4s. You can cut them up, cut parts of them apart, etc. In the photo below, I used the other half of the hearts card and then I cut the big gold heart from the Record It!  Charmed line and then the "you have my whole heart" part comes from one  of the cards in the Record It! Follow Your Heart.

I just cut things apart and put them back together in a way that speaks to me. I added an enamel heart right on top of there, too. I can't get enough of those.


I then grabbed a bunch more cards that I liked and lined them up against the right edge and then cut what came off the page. I layered them with gold bits from the Lost and Found 3 line and an embellishment from Find Your Wings and Fly. Some of the wonderful word stickers from the Now & Then life and a few more heart enamels and I had a mini collage I liked.


Even though it was a bit challenging, I even cut the enamel embellishment to fit my needs.


I wanted to try something different to unify the two pages this time, so I put the enamel embellishment you see above on one side, and then did a cluster of  embellishments on the top left. I included gold just to match the gold heart and embellishments on the right side.


I then painted the edges with a happy yellow color and added some more painted hearts all over the page to unify. And finally stitched everything together to make it look even more coherent.

so here it is again:


You can read the whole journaling here.

Thank you for letting me share my page and I hope you choose to try something new this month, too. If you do, please come share so I can see it!

Mix and Match with Karen | March 2013 Edition

 

Hi everyone!

It's Karen, back with another Mix and Match. This month, I decided to just have fun with the wide range of decorative tape My Mind's Eye has come out with in the last few years. I love this tape and I decided to
challenge myself this month to only use tape and no paper on my layout.

Here's the end result:


This whole page has nothing but tape for its background. Since I am continuing with the theme of 2 6x12 pages with a full page journaling, it was really easy to continue the washi tape on to the next page to create a more seamless and unified effect.

The other nice thing about the decorative tape is that it can be cut very easily.  For the left side, where I have a lot of journaling, I wanted to layer some extra tape to give it color and have the two pages go together better. But I didn't have that much room due to all the journaling, so I took my take and cut it into a third to make it really narrow. Below that one, I put an even thinner layer of the green one. I topped them with a blue heart and a pink enamel and that was all the left side needed to feel whole.


On the top right, I decided to add some stickers, enamels, and chipboard pieces just to give my page a bit more depth and texture. I also put some twine through the chipboard piece to give it a more whimsical feel.


And then, finally, I added my title. I loved pulling all the colors from all the different decorative tapes and just having fun with my long title. It says: This is a moment of deep joy and gratitude for me.


If you'd like to read the full journaling on this page, you can do so, here.

And here we are. If you haven't done a washi-only page yet, I highly recommend it. These tapes go wonderfully together regardless of how old or new your My Mind's Eye products are. They are really easy to adhere, cut, manipulate,  layer, and tear. And, as my son would say, they are super-fun!

Thanks for letting me share my page, see you next month with another Mix and Match!