Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Totally Amaizing Double Layout

Dear Paper Lover,

Let's "Seize the Day" with Lisa-Marie Watling today. We are into loads and loads of butterflies over at Ivytree Studio. We had little white butterflies all over our garden recently and it has just fluttered in our hearts how God has wonderfully made nature and us. The gentleness of a butterfly is sweet and endearing, but also reminds of the way God wants us to be in life. To celebrate life, no matter how fragile it may seem. What we have and the people He gives us, are precious. 

In her layout, Lisa-Marie enables you tee experience this visually.  We love her use of grey as background and tones of red, green and turquoise. 









See her original post here


The papers I used for this piece are:
171/1 Seize The Day
171/3 Both sides – Turquoise Flutter & Fly High Script
171/5 Wordy Delights
171/12 Both sides – Schoolfrock Speckles & Pretty Washi
171/13 Blackboard Speckles
171/15 Flora Accents
171/19 Blackboard Charcoal
171/21 Apple Red

Additional materials – various adhesives, glitter glue, chippie title


Visit Ivytree Studio to see more of what we are up to: www.ivytreestudio.co.za
Buy some of our pretty paper here
Connect with the team on our Facebook page here.
Share your Ivytree Studio layouts with us here



Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Journal Pages by Wilna

Dear Paper Lovers,


A lovely little post by Wilna Cremer: Journal Pages


Journalling has finally hit South Africa in a big way and I am happy to say you can buy journals just about everywhere.  Ivytree Studio is launching Honey Planners very soon and I am sure this is going to be a winner.  Their paper range has already been designed for use in Project Life and Pocket Pals so this is a welcome addition to the range. I have used a combination of all the ranges to date and I had so much fun putting this together.

This particular journal is just a cheapy from PNA.



I am a bullet "journalizer" 😇 and this journal encompasses everything in my life, notes, diary, lists etc. 


I have to admit I am much happier making notes in the sections that I have decorated.

Read my full blog post with more images, here



The papers I used for this project

Hadeda Garden Collection (2016 version of this collection)

Friendship begins in the heart Collection

Seize the day Collection

ADDITIONAL MATERIALS USED  
  • various adhesives
  • chalks
  • washi tape
  • paper clips
  • journal

Visit Ivytree Studio to see more of what they are up to: www.ivytreestudio.co.za
Buy some of their pretty paper here
Connect with the team on their Facebook page here.
Share your Ivytree Studio layouts with us here

'til next time.....enjoy being organized



Monday, May 22, 2017

New Collections: Happy Day & all new Hadeda Garden

Dear Paper Lovers,


We are happy to announce that our TWO brand new collections are available to be ordered. Hurry up an place your order today so you don't miss out on this print run.

This is also your opportunity to print any items from our previous collections: #162, #163, #171 and @172. We have opened up all items and listed it to "unlimited" stock levels and it includes all previously "out of stock items".


Remember that if your local scrapbook store does not stock our paper, you can place your order in our store and we deliver anywhere in South Africa. 


Individual items in these collections can be viewed in the gallery of the store item. 


 Our Happy Day collection:

In celebration of our birthday we created this little collections to help you celebrate any little occasion. It can be great for boy or girl layouts, for baby showers, kids birthdays, any girly layout, sweet sixteen. Once again something for everyone from planner girls, art journallers, cardmakers and any paper crafter. Oh, and we so love our little bouquets and cuppycakes. 




Click here to view & order this collection.


ALL NEW HADEDA GARDEN COLLECTION:


To celebrate our paper brand's first birthday, we decided to apply all we have learned over the past year and bring you an all new Hadeda Garden collection. This collection matches all the elements you have come accustomed to in our other collections from Pretty Pocket Cards and Cute cut pages, a flower cut page and card squares and a lovely base element too. 

A little background on this collection:
The inspiration for this collection is very much local. As we grew up in Pretoria and have lived here all our lives, the painfully loud noise of the Hadeda bird frequented our garden and has been a prominent feature throughout. We have joked about them, chased them off as their sound polluted exam times, we have seen them constantly graze our lawn like sheep and we have even rescued them when they needed it. So very fitting that they would play a main character in our first Proudly South African and locally designed collection. 

Also a very constant feature in our lives is the Agapanthus flower that have graced our family garden over the years. A firm favorite of our gardener/landscaper mom, it would just not be the same if we did not place it at the top of our design list. 

Another inspiration to this collection would be our mother and so you would find that center stage there are polka-dots, florals as well as the garden theme. 

The REVAMPED & IMPROVED Collection is available in store now!  

14 Double Sided Sheets with 28 Designs. We reduced, reshuffled and added new designs to make this a Collection a dream to use in your Arts&Crafts and Scrapbooking projects. 

Click here to view & order this collection 





Also new to Ivytree Studio: Bible Journaling


We are not shy to say that we are Christians and we love God. Everything we do, comes from Him anyway so we also love bringing our art and creativity into our study of God's Word an our worship to Him and we would like to share our experience. 

Ansu has something special happening as she has a special story to tell of God's promises to her, His journey with her in her prayer life. She is starting a unique workshop series and product line called "GraceLilly Expressive Bible & Prayer Journaling - Making God's Word your Home"



The first workshop will be held this Saturday, 27 May 2017 in Pretoria at the Botanical Gardens.




https://ivytree.eshop.co.za/Bible-Journaling-Workshop-27-May-2017-p82007811

Click here to book your seat.


In our next posts: Read about Wilna's journaling and cardmaking experiences. 



Visit Ivytree Studio to see more of what we are up to: www.ivytreestudio.co.za
Buy some of our pretty paper here
Connect with the team on our Facebook page here.
Share your Ivytree Studio layouts with us here 



Thursday, May 18, 2017

Time Spent Single Layout



Dear Paper lovers,

We would like to share with you the latest layout Lisa-Marie created for us, using our, as she calls it, “rather dreamy LOVE range”. 

Remember to scroll down to find out what papers she used in this collection, as well as all links to engage with us, to visit the shop and where to share your creations in Ivytree Studio Friends.

 IMG_7122_edited-1

IMG_7124_edited-1

 IMG_7127_edited-1
See the full post on her blog 
The papers from Ivytree Studio which Lisa-Marie used for this project:
172/4 Rosy Wood Candy Stripes
172/5 Flower Accents
172/8 Pretty Pocket Cards
172/8 Hugs & Kisses
172/10 Dotty Blackboard
172/11 Candy Ombre
172/11 Hearts & Filligree

Additional materials: glitter glue, enamel dots, tombow glue, foam tape / dots


Visit Ivytree Studio to see more of what we are up to: www.ivytreestudio.co.za
Buy some of our pretty paper here
Connect with the team on our Facebook page here.
Share your Ivytree Studio layouts with us here 




Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Flying High, Butterflies and Planner fun

Dear Paper Lovers and Planner girls,

In this post we would like to share with you about our new digital bundel we designed for our local "Planner Girls"-community, called "Fly High".  What would the words "Fly High" mean to you? To me it is an encouragement and helps me realise that God has given each of us wings and He intends for us to soar like eagles with it. So, let this sentiment inspire you to give those wings a flutter and test-drive in the higher places of His will for you.

A little background: 

I have always been a planner. It is just part of my personality, but as a teacher I had to multitask to such an extent that it drove me nuts, so I have tried to leave the diary and planning addiction behind me. I have owned many a diary and owned a planner for many years too. Your usual black leather variety you get from CNA that you can refill each year. I use to put everything in it and as I am also an absolute memory keeper, I keep every little thing. Cards, receipts, tickets to movies and so on. It's a bad habit and with camera phones I am now trying to curb this "condition" a bit by rather taking a photo and chucking those little bits of paper.  Just trying to contain the "hoarding" habit that comes with being creative. As I have been trying to retire from teaching for about a decade, but keep on returning to some sort of teaching, I realised that the planning habits I formed, could once again assist me well in my current position. As a creative person, I love playing with ideas but I also am very concrete. I am able to bring those ideas into reality, but I need to prioritise and plan ahead to make it happen, so those planning habits from my teaching years, are coming in handy again. I have committed to not overdo it, as you can spend hours in your planner and never get anything done. You have to balance your time planning and actually doing the things you plan. What suits me more, is to live my life, experience things/moments and then take it to my memory planner, but more on memory planners in another post perhaps.

What I love about the "Planner Girl"-community is to find others who have the same tendencies to creatively apply what we have learned from our other hobbies to our planners. We share similar interests and we love paper and stationery.  My family and husband believe I should own a stationery store. I go nuts over stationery like other women go nuts over diamonds and pearls.  Just absolutely love it. Always have. If you know me, you will know this about me. :)

We have a couple of projects in the pipeline and as design takes time and precision, you will just have to be patient, but to test the waters, I designed the "Fly High" bundel that includes a variety of goodies and you may have read about it in our previous post here.

For some or other reason, I have had butterflies on my mind since end of last year and recently we have also had loads of little butterflies in our garden. So, as I am inspired by my environment, I went crazy with the butterflies.  I included the butterfly theme in my Seize the Day collection launched earlier this year and thought about doing a digi stamp with it.

What is a digi stamp, you may ask. It is a digital stamp that you can print. What I have done is to create a full page of various size butterflies.  I then added a second page with a solid butterfly in the same colour and then gave you 14 colours to choose from. There are so many things you can do with the butterfly stamps. I did a full single page layout celebrating mother's day, that I will post about soon.



The Poster available in English and Afrikaans in the same bundel.

Sample of the butterfly stamp. 


Sample of the Planner tab page


Introducing our first Guest Designer:



To get you excited about what you can do with this digital bundel, we asked Sharon Keanly if she would like to be a quest designer from time to time. She is one of the admins of the Planner Girls group on Facebook and she is also a blogger and card maker. We love her work and wanted her to review our digital products. 

You can read about her full experience with this bundel here on her personal blog but here are some images to get you going. You can mix and match this with any of your other stash and even print the digital stamp on any pattern paper you have available. (Hopefully some Ivytree Studio paper in there too!)












To purchase this bundel, click here
(Please be advised that the promotional price of this bundel may soon change, so get yours while it is still running)


Visit Ivytree Studio to see more of what we are up to: www.ivytreestudio.co.za
Buy some of our pretty paper here
Connect with the team on our Facebook page here.
Share your Ivytree Studio layouts with us here



Our first birthday!

Dear Paper Lovers,


A sweet little garden shindig to celebrate 

One year of Pretty Paper and 17 years of Design:


We would like to give you a look at our online event held on the 22nd of April 2017. The venue for this event was our online Facebook "Ivytree Studio Friends" group. 


We only recently started this group and we are already close to 500 members.
Thanks to all our "Friends" here, this group is growing steadily. 
We hope that it brings you loads of inspiration and encouragement!

Now for some images on the Garden Shindig:






The artist & her Tikva original artwork

  




Tikva - Hebrew word meaning "Hope"












 Best friends, real life sisters, soulmates, partners.


We are blessed that God forms the foundation of all we do and all we
will still do. He is the reason behind it, the Cornerstone and CEO of our business, 
but most of all He is our Savior, our Healer, our Provider and Source. 
We depend on Him and we inquire from Him all we need to know.

His Spirit guides us and we are nothing without HIM!
Thank you Jesus, for a sister, a friend and the Love You give us.

You inspire everything we do. You own the copyright of us and the work of our hands.

To God be the glory & praise!





 What is a party without a hat!




Without this man, we would also not be where we are! Henry, you are our hero
and God uses you everyday to bless us! We love you!






We had a lovely time in our pretty garden with our family who stands by us
everyday, supports us in all we do. We had a photo-shoot that included them, but we 
want to add those photos to a layout before we share it. 



The Online event:


A little warmer challenge to get the ladies started:
They had 10 minutes to make a quick tag with anything they had as long as it had
Ivytree Elements in it. 



Tag entries:




The challenges:

Our April challenge was a cupcake paper box with a topper of your choice. We created a template with step by step instructions, gave you some inspirational examples of what you could do and a free video tutorial. 

The Prize: An original artwork from Surita Brink, called "Tikva" (Hebrew name meaning 'Hope')











 Here are some entries to our cupcake challenge
 and also some yummyness from our DT attending the event:












Attendee entries: 



(Note the typo on the "Back to School" cupcake to the right. If you can't spell school, you need to go "back to school" :) Thank you Charlotte for sharing our typo so boldly. We were joking about it during the event that even after proofreading again and again, little typos can slip through. Designing these collections are very detailed work but every designer and typesetter will tell you that typos are part of the process. Mistakes are something we all need to embrace in ourselves, that striving for perfection cannot be reached in this life and that we all learn through making mistakes. As a teacher I always train my students not to fear making mistakes and embracing them. It is a tool God uses to enforce life lessons and to keep us humble. None of us have arrived, right. You can always correct and reprint. It is not the end of the world as you know it. It happens to the best of us, so just smile and wave)




SKETCH 1: FLORA FLOURISH


For the online live event we provided these sketches free in the Party Paper Packs and delivered it to all the attendees in advance of the event. The sketches are still available
in the store to be purchased separately. They include templates for all the pieces. 

Flora Flourish Sketch with printable templates
(We provided a full video tutorial on this sketch)









DT INSPIRATION:



Attendee Entries:








SKETCH 2: LOLLIPOP PARADE 

Lollipop Parade Sketch with printable templates
(This sketch was part of the live videos we shared on the day still available in our
Ivytree Studio Friends group on Facebook. Would love for you to join us there!






Our Attendee entries: 

Work in progress


Final product by Charlotte Smeda



SKETCH 3: BUTTERFLY WREATH


Butterfly wreath sketch with printable templates
This was the final sketch we provided and we also did a live walk through during the event.




Our DT's work:


  









Attendee entries:




Charlotte's final layout! We just love it!





CHALLENGE WINNERS:







Tikva went home with Christelle Hartzer! Congrats Christelle on
winning the April  Cupcake challenge. We hope she brings you joy!


Let's round off:

This was a first time for us, but we learned alot and enjoyed every minute.

We had around 30 ladies attending and a core group that had the courage to actually 
take part in the challenges. We hope next time more ladies will venture out of their
comfort zones to join in the fun by sharing their work.

It can be a scary thing to put yourself out there, but we want you to know you are 
always welcome and appreciated. 

No paper-snobs or art critics here. We believe that everybody is created uniquely by God and therefore your thumbprint is unique and what you have to offer is special. 

Memory keeping and scrapbooking and paper-crafting is for EVERYONE! Not just the rich and famous. Creativity does not belong to any one person either, but creativity ultimately originates with God, the Creator of everything. God is the only One that can create something out of nothing. We humans need "stuff" to create with so we all source our creativity and ideas from the world around us. Einstein said: "The secret to creativity is not to reveal your sources."  

We believe that if you don't honor God as the Source to your creative ideas, you cannot claim 
copyright either. He holds it, not you. 

We also believe that when you just duplicate what others are doing, your are missing out on 
the richness of creativity God can offer you. You are missing out on personal growth and surprising yourself with new ideas when you just blindly follow or copy others. You also cannot truly add value to any situation if you just duplicate another person's work. 

So, share your love for paper freely, but remember never to compare yourself with 
what others are doing. Their journey is different from yours and so is your progress.
Always measure what you do with where YOU started out. You will always be amazed.

Never give up and keep on creating!

Strive for new ideas and originality. That is how we add value to the world around us.


This was our basic program:
Jam packed with lots for you to do. So, we hope next time even more ladies
join in. 
 We loved the inter-activeness of this process. The ladies shared their spaces and what their desks looked like during the event. 




 Next time we would like to see all of your faces!!

Lisa-Marie

Charlotte Smeda


Surita Brink

Bernadette Groenewald

Llynne Matthews
Nicola Meyer - No-Make-up selfie! Beautiful!

Da Ivytree Party Girls


Thank you everyone who joined us on the day and for all your support 
throughout our first year. We look forward to the coming one and to 
many more pretty paper collections. 


To top the cake with all of this, we are taking orders for our brand new
Happy Day collection!


This collection is to celebrate our Paper Brand, Ivytree Elements' very first birthday. Yipee!!
To celebrate this first birthday, we decided to use the colours of our Branding in this brand new collection.

Happy Day lends itself to layouts about birthdays, happy events, little girl moments, boy moments with two pretty pinks, turquoise and green, a little golden orange and a lovely chocolaty brown. Any layout really can be fit into these colours and patterns with a local feel.

As usual, we have a pretty bouquet of floras and a cute cut page for you to make your own 3D layered pretty blooms.

All your favourite elements and cute cut pages with Pretty Pocket cards, tiny text, alfas, tags, flags and so much more can once again be found in this collection.

For the card makers we also have two lovely card square pages.


PRE-ORDERS OPEN:
17 MAY 2017
PRE-ORDERS CLOSE:
25 MAY 2017
Don't miss out! Order today!

Read about it in our store news here.
Order yours today here.




In our next post: Read about Sharon Keanly and our Fly High Digital bundel.