Friday, April 29, 2016

Birthday Card

We have lots of birthdays coming up in the month of May, so I've been working on some birthday cards. Today I have a fun, masculine birthday card to share with you.


I needed a birthday card for my nephew, so I wanted to keep the colors masculine. I also knew I wanted to use my stitched borders die. I began by die cutting the same stitched border multiple times, but in different, coordinating colors.


Since the layered die cutting adds a lot of interest to the card, I wanted to keep the stamping simple so the card wouldn't look super busy. I chose the Altenew Halftone Happy stamp set for my stamped images. I love the look of blue and orange together, so I chose those as my focal colors for my stamps.


 I finished up with a simple enamel heart from Bella Blvd.


This birthday card has already been signed and dropped in the mail. I'll be sharing a few more birthday cards in the upcoming weeks just in case you've got a few birthdays coming up, too!

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Echo Park Dino Friends - Not Just for Little Boy Layouts

This is a personal blog. All editorial content and projects are intellectual property of Taylor Stamped. I do receive financial compensation and material product from  A Walk Down Memory Lane to develop my craft posts, but all ideas and opinions are my own.
I really love Echo Park Dino Friends, but I just didn't have any little boy photos that needed scrapping. I did, however, have a photo of my 16 year old nephew and me that needed scrapping, so I decided to make Dino Friends work...and what do you know? Echo Park Dino Friends is not just for little boy layouts!


Being an aunt is one of my very favorite jobs, so when one of my nephews wants me to take him to the opening showing of a movie because we both loved the book, I jump at the chance to spend some one on one time with him. Not only did he go to the movie with me, but he was a good sport about taking a photo with his old aunt :)


I'm sure I've mentioned more than once that I love a good plaid. I was so drawn to the plaid in Dino Friends that I knew I could find a way to use it on a non-dino themed layout. I started with the plaid as my base, and then layered up the other dino free prints from the collection on top of it. I rounded the corners on all of my layers just to give the layers a little more interest. I used some Simple Stories Snap stickers to embellish the layout, since the stickers from the collection, while cute, weren't quite what I needed.


I was pretty excited to find a way to uses this super fun collection...even if I didn't use the dino prints!

Monday, April 18, 2016

Yupo Alcohol Ink Card

This is a personal blog. All editorial content and projects are intellectual property of Taylor Stamped. I do receive financial compensation and material product from  A Walk Down Memory Lane to develop my craft posts, but all ideas and opinions are my own. Some links are affiliate links.
After seeing the card Lisa over at A Walk Down Memory Lane made with Yupo Alcohol Ink paper, I knew I had to try the stuff out...right away! Here's my first attempt at a Yupo Alcohol ink card.


 This paper is so cool! Yupo translucent alcohol ink paper is actually a plastic paper. Because it's not a traditional paper it reacts differently with alcohol ink. Creating fun backgrounds with Yupo paper and alcohol ink is so simple.  


There are a few different ways you can use these 2 things together. For this background I simply dripped the alcohol ink right from the bottle onto the paper. Give it a minute or so to spread out and travel, then choose another color and drip some more. Keep dripping until your paper has as much coverage and color as you want. 


For a little extra texture, I put some alcohol ink blending solution on a paint brush and flicked it at the paper when I was all done. This added a few "water spots" to the paper. 


I used my We R Memory Keepers Evolution Advanced and the dies that come with the Evolution to create a little spot on the card for my greeting. 


Yupo paper and alcohol ink makes a really simple and stunning background for a Mother's Day card, or any card! Have you tried out this cool paper yet?

Monday, April 11, 2016

2 Page True Stories Layout

This is a personal blog. All editorial content and projects are intellectual property of Taylor Stamped. I do receive financial compensation and material product from  A Walk Down Memory Lane to develop my craft posts, but all ideas and opinions are my own. Some links are affiliate links.
I don't usually horde paper. If I love it, I use it and I usually use it right after buying it. But True Stories from American Crafts was a different story. This is such a fun collection, and I wanted to use it for our pictures from Northern Ireland, so I held on to it for quite a while until I was ready to scrap those photos. Today I have a Bushmills 2 page True Stories layout to share.


Our trip to Old Bushmills Distillery was the beginning of one of my very favorite days of our trip to Ireland. If you're ever in Northern Ireland, I highly suggest you go, even if you're not much of a whiskey drinker. Our tour guide, Seamus, was so knowledgeable and so much fun, and the history of this distillery and the science behind making whiskey is super interesting.


I plan on using True Stories to scrap our entire day, but since this is the first layout I've made with it, I had a heck of a time deciding what papers to use. There are just too many good ones.


Plus, I wanted to use all the embellishments. I had to rein myself in so as not to make the layout too busy.


There are some pretty pops of silver in this collection, so I used my Silhouette Cameo and some Bazzill Silver Foil cardstock to mirror the silver of the collection in the title. 


There is so much to journal about on these layouts, so I created my own large journaling card with some strips of paper and stickers from the collection. 


 Scrapping these photos and finally being able to uses this True Stories paper that has been in my stash makes me so happy! Do you usually hold on to paper you love, or use it right away?

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Pie Face Layout

This is a personal blog. All editorial content and projects are intellectual property of Taylor Stamped. I do receive financial compensation and material product from  A Walk Down Memory Lane to develop my craft posts, but all ideas and opinions are my own.
In January, my kids became the owners of Pie Face. It's such a fun game...silly, sticky fun that of course we took lots of pictures that I needed to scrap. Today I've got my Pie Face layout to share with you. 


I love chipboard frames. I usually turn them into journaling tags, but for this layout they served as a great way to get lots of photos onto one page. Seriously, there are 8 photos on this single page layout! Since Simple Stories So Rad collection not only had a great pack of chipboard frames, but also the perfect colors for scrapping Pie Face, this layout came together really easily.


Since there are a lot of photos on this layout, it's pretty busy. I didn't want to overwhelm the layout by adding a lot of embellishments, too. I kept it simple with some enamel stars and arrows.


If you haven't played Pie Face yet, I highly suggest you find some kids, buy a ton of whipping cream, and have a blast plying it! Then, you can make a Pie Face layout of your own, and laugh at the silliness all over again.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

2 Page Jack and Jill Layout

This is a personal blog. All editorial content and projects are intellectual property of Taylor Stamped. I do receive financial compensation and material product from  A Walk Down Memory Lane to develop my craft posts, but all ideas and opinions are my own.
I find myself doing more 2 page layouts lately than I normally do. They just seem to be the best way to scrap all my photos and still have plenty of room to journal the story I want to tell. Today I have a 2 page Jack and Jill layout all about our final night in Ireland.


 A while back I shared a 1 page layout using Echo Park's Jack & Jill collection, but as you can see, Jack & Jill works just as well for a 2 page layout.


 The plaid paper in this collection is my absolute favorite. It's sophisticated and masculine without being heavy and dark.


The woodgrain paper is also a medium grey, which helps keep the layout light. This was important because quite a few of my photos were dark.


I used the Jack & Jill Boy cardstock stickers to create clusters of embellishments. all over the page. I like to group them around the photos to draw your eye to the photos.
 

 Jack and Jill Boy was a great fit for these last night in Ireland photos!

Friday, April 1, 2016

Doors of Dublin Layout

This is a personal blog. All editorial content and projects are intellectual property of Taylor Stamped. I do receive financial compensation and material product from  A Walk Down Memory Lane to develop my craft posts, but all ideas and opinions are my own. Some links are affiliate links.

Today I have a layout that feels nice and spring-y. I think it's the mix of bright colors that makes it feel like spring to me. Today's Doors of Dublin layout mixes some fun patterns with some minimal embellishments. 


There are these really amazing, bright, Georgian doors all over Dublin. There are parts of the city where they're a bit more concentrated, but you can really see them anywhere. I snapped a photo of these while we were just out driving around the city. 


Bright doors needed some fun, bright paper so I reached for my stash of My Mind's Eye Jubilee Tangerine paper. There are so many fun patterns in this collection, that I really had a hard time choosing just a few. I ended up using as many as I could by layering up quite a few papers on top of each other. Since there's a lot going on in this layout color and pattern wise, I kept the embellishments fairly simple. I clustered some enamel dots from my stash and a few heart enamel dots from Bella Blvd.


Bright doors and some bright My Mind's Eye paper make for a fun spring layout about the doors of Dublin.