Dear Paperlovers,
Winter is in full swing in Pretoria and it is a chilly one at that. The best way of overcoming the winter "blues" is to paper project your way through it. I don't know about you, but paper just makes me smile. It really makes me happy and I forget about all my woes and the cold, when I am playing with my paper. The new Henry Collection has given me so much thus far and I have a couple of projects that may inspire your heart.
This collection is not really a Travel collection. We do have some travel elements in it, but for the most it is just a lovely playful collection with a lot of versatile elements that can be used in just about any project you may have in mind.
The first project I created with this collection took me less than 3 hours to complete. This double layout is called "Memory Lane". About 3 years ago, after a difficult work trip abroad, we had enough saved up to take trip, long overdue honeymoon to the lovely island of Mauritius. I have traveled to Mauritius when I was still at university. It was for an outreach and we visited various little churches around the island and stayed in a large beach house right on the beach. It made quite an impression on me then. I still have to scrap that trip. This trip however was very special as it was with my hubby and he has never been to this island before even though he is quite the traveler. Thus, this is no travel layout. It is more about the lovely holiday experience and the moments shared with my hubby and the freedom after the tough time we had just before it. We love road tripping and we love ice-scream...OK, I love ice-scream (Henry does too as seen in the layout ;)) and it is also about the freedom that holidays and lazy days bring. I wanted to capture that in this layout.
I used the butterflies and the large sentiment to the left "Don't you just love blue skies, fluffy clouds and butterflies?" to set the mood for this one. This day on our roadtrip through the island, gave me a little bit of a "pick-nick" feel. I wanted to capture that so I used the card square minis in the background like scattered paper napkins.
I like the randomness of this layout and all the little details. I didn't have a sketch to work from. I normally don't. I like to do my own thing. I may be inspired by layouts and gather ideas, but when I sit down to work, I like to work from the heart. Isn't that what it is about? Your own art.
I know a lot of ladies say: "I don't want to think out the plan. I just want someone to give it to me", but as an educator I like to inspire people to learn from others, but then apply what you have learned and in the process develop your own style. Doing your own thing, will, in the end, give you more creative satisfaction.
We loaded this layout as a kit in the store. So if you don't want to "think out the plan", you can purchase the elements to this kit and the sketch is included in the kit. I do want to encourage you to do your own thing even when you purchase a kit. What is the fun in just following what someone else did? You may come up with an even greater layout, but you won't know if you don't try, right.
We design elements...the creative elements that will inspire you to create. So be creative with it!
The next project was to celebrate our dad. We took these lovely photos last year with our first birthday anniversary of Ivytree Studio. We actually need to do another birthday "something" this year as we have past our second birthday already. We have just been so busy designing, that we haven't gotten round to it.
I basically used some Anita's 3D glue and doubled up some of the elements on white cardstock with foam squares. I don't feel that Scrapbooking should be about a ton of products. It is after all about the memories that you want to preserve in your scrapbook.
In this layout I am showing you that you don't have to use flowers if that is not your thing. Instead of flowers, I used the foilage, the berries and some feathers to add a little softer touch to my layout.
The fact that our dad is the head of our family and he is our Faith Warrior, a Priestly King, I used the crown elements from the Creative Elements Cute Cuts pack. He is our "Once in a lifetime, smart dad FOREVER!" and we love him so! I feel this layout captures that family moment perfectly. We also took similar photos of our mom with us and I am planning to scrap that with this collection too.
I haven't done cards in a while, but this collection has inspired me to get going again. I even made some quick tags. They are just so simple.
You can use these tags in your Bible Journaling, give them away as bookmarks to friends and family, use them as a gift tag or even use them on a scrapbook layout.
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Next up....
Creative Team Competition (May/June 2018)
Thank you so much to all who entered this competition. Interesting to see that most of the entries focused on the Happy Day, Love and Seize the Day collection from 2017 and a lot of the colours where focused on pinks and reds.
The entries varied from double and single scrapbook layouts, cards, a junk journal project and a couple Bible journaling entries. That is what we like to see. A little bit of everything.
We loved all these projects and the hearts behind it so much that we are giving each entry a little Henry Collection digital kit as a gift. We will load the item in the store and you can order your free gift from there. We will share the link to the kit as soon as we have loaded it in store.
Everyone else can purchase it, but these 5 girls will receive it FREE of charge!
We hope to see you create with it soon.
We are happy to announce the WINNER of this Creative Team Competition, is
Valerie Ann Thorpe.
We have followed her work for a while now and we are so happy that she entered this round. We love her quirky style and her single layouts are just so fun!
We will be sending you a batch of the Henry collection to play with together with a couple of challenges and we can't wait to see what you do with it. So get those creative juices flowing and start collecting ideas and photos.
If you are excited about the Henry Collection and missed the first run of it, you can keep our next order cycle in mind to place your order for this collection and some new items launching soon.
Until next time.
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