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. 

Mother's Day Inspiration

[ Description of a Worthy Woman ] An excellent woman [one who is spiritual, capable, intelligent, and virtuous], who is he who can find her? Her value is more precious than jewels and her worth is far above rubies or pearls. She looks well to how things go in her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed (happy, prosperous, to be admired); Her husband also, and he praises her...

- Proverbs 31:10, 27-28 AMP -

The loveliest masterpiece of the heart of God is the heart of a mother.

So said St. Therese of Lisieux and I agree.

My mom inspired me to create a printable Mother's Day Bundle that would let her know how much I appreciate her for all that she is and all that she does.

All you need to do with this bundle is to print the elements on A4 sized white cardstock (160 gsm), cut everything out and use it to make Mother's Day awesome for Mom. 

If you think this is a great gift idea to spoil your Mom with on Mother's Day,

hop on over to our online store and get yours...there is still time :)

The Ivytree Shop

(The printable is available in English & Afrikaans.)

SUGGESTIONS:

1. The Printable Art: fits in a standard 20 cm x 25 cm frame.

2. The Petal Box: is just the right size for a gift of jewelry or Mom's favorite sweeties.

3. There are enough Gift Tags for a few prezzies and maybe to prettify a bouquet of flowers.

4. Gather everything from the Gift Set, the Party Set and some yummy eats and throw Mom a sweet & feminine party to celebrate the wonderfulness that is her! 

Happy Mother's Day this Sunday to all the Moms out there...

may your kids appreciate you all year round!

"Precious Moments" Digital Ezee Scrap Kit - Double Layout.

Dear Paper Lovers,

As you may have by now have picked up from our posts and advertising, we believe that creativity is meant for all and should be affordable and accessible. We also believe you don't need a lot of expensive product to make pretty things.

Apart from our Paper collections which we created to specifically meet the local market's need for affordability and quality, we also now launched our Digital Products in our online store. We have various sub-sections under our Digital Products and the first of these we would like to share with you today.

It is a fully printable digital double layout kit called "Precious Moments".

This kit does not include any physical products. You can however be anywhere in the world and still have access to Ivytree Studio designs and products without paying for expensive shipping.

This kit was created with elements from our Wild&Free collection.

Your printable pack includes A4 size printable pages and these elements can be used to create this sketch, but you can also use your imagination and re-use the elements in other ways on cards, OTP's, single layouts, Project Life, your journal pages or in your planner.

The basic sketch included to help you get started:

We gave this kit to our DT member, Wilna Cremer and she has created the most special

layout adapting the sketch to suit her photos and own thumbprint. We just love it. 

Her layout celebrates her late mother whom she has lost to cancer. Her layout has a 1960's vintage feel to it and we just love her use of flowers. 

Here is a sneak preview:

You can visit Wilna's blog this Sunday on Mother's Day or our visit our blog directly to read the full post and 

see the full layout. 

In the meantime, you can download the kit from the store here and start to play with it.

We would like to challenge you to use this kit to celebrate this coming Mother's Day. 

From layouts, cards, decor, gifts and so on, let's see what can do with it. 

As the ideas roll in, we will share it with you. You can also post your projects to our Ivytree Studio Friends group on Facebook. Join here. 

About our Digital Products:

1. All our printable products are A4 size so you can print it easily on your home printer or ask your local printers to print it for you. 

2. We provide you with an easy to download quality PDF.

3. The standard licence included in all our digital products are "Personal Use only", but once

you have purchased it, you can use it over and over again. All we ask is that you never email any of the digital products or items to any one under any circumstances. You are however welcome to print it out, make something with it and give the finished product (not the digital products) as a gift to someone. This is an honor system but it has legal ramifications if you do not adhere to the Licence of use (Licence included in each product. Please give it a once over when you download the products.)

In some of our digital products, you may find the option for a teacher/retail licence. Please inquire first before you choose this option. This is a more expensive licence and also has its own limitations and guidelines to it. 

4. Our digital products, as is the rule of thumb all over the world, is non-refundable, so make sure you purchase what you want. Inquire from us via email or Facebook or a contact form, if you are unsure or need assistance. We will always make sure you get what you paid for. 

5. Add on items: We also aim to make it easy for all the various types of crafters: 

• Our digital goodies can be used by scrapbookers, cardmakers, mixed media artists, journallers and planner girls. 
• Those who do not have a fancy cutting machine, can easily fussy cut the elements from printed pages. For those who do have the Silhouette, we have Jpeg images that can easily be imported into the Silhouette software and traced. 
• We are working on adding SVG images as well. 

6. Payment options: 

• Payfast or EFT. 
• If you are unsure about using Payfast, please manually select the second payment option "EFT offline basic". This is the normal EFT method. You place your order and make your payment via your usual online banking. 
• Please just note that you have only 24 hours to make the EFT payment before your order is deleted from the store system. 

7. Delivery & Downloads: 

• Once your order is updated to "Paid", the store automatically sends you an email with the download links. 
• There is a time limit on the link, so please download as soon as you receive your email. 
• Just note that you will find it easier to download the files using your PC or laptop instead of your mobile device like phone or tablet. Some of the files are large in size and your mobile device may not have sufficient storage and then won't download and you may think the problem is with the link we provide and it is not. 
• If there should arise a technical glitch on our end we will rectify it immediately, so always contact us if you get stuck. 

What about international customers who want to purchase our digital goodies?

• You may use your credit card via Payfast to purchase your item. 
• There is a transaction limit of R5000 or plus minus $350 (US) when using your credit card to pay for digital items, so just keep this in mind. 
• We just had a customer form Namibia this week who successfully purchased, paid for and received her item and she is quite happy with it. 

Types of Digital Products we currently have in our store:

• Double layout printable kit with colour elements
• Double layout sketches with templates
• Single layout sketch with templates
• Cupcake box template & instructions (free video tutorial available)
• Digistamp for cardmakers
• Printable greeting card with original artwork by Fine Art Artist, Surita Brink.
• Printable tag set with original artwork by Fine Art Artist, Surita Brink.
• Planner and journal printalbes

New products to be added this week:

1. Mother's day bundel that includes a printable card, gift tags, place cards, bunting, gift box and bow, cupcake toppers...all the things you need to make this Mother's day special for your Mom.

2. Fly High poster, Butterfly set and Planner Printable bundel. This one will include over 40 pages of re-usable resources to be used in all the various crafts you dabble in. 

Fly High Sneak preview:

A4 Poster in English and Afrikaans

A4 Butterfly stamp set with double up Matt on separate page in 14 different colors.

 

This is just one of three planner printables. All three in English and Afrikaans. 

You print the Language you need. 

Some ideas on how to utilize this printable bundel:

I am currently working on a layout for Mother's day using the butterfly stamp set. I used the dark plum grey coloured butterfly page and printed it onto a Wild&Free floral pattern sheet that I trimmed down to A4 size. It doesn't take a lot of printer ink.  It didn't take me long to fussy cut the full set of butterflies. I love the effect that it looks like a stamped image on to the pattern paper. 

My next test was to print it onto white card stock, spray it with fixative/ clear spray and use it as a colour page or to add paint or inks or even sprays to it. The fixative helps that the printer ink doesn't bleed when you use other art mediums on it. 

Finally, I will also use the Silhouette to create sticker pages and cut the elements.

Printing tips

A suggestions for the A4 poster page is to set your printer to multiple pages (here you will have to select if you want it to print 2, 4, 6, 9, 16 cards on one page), select the page number and repeat it the amount of times you selected it to print on your page. If you don't repeat the page number it will only print the specific size once, sou you will only get one card on your page and you want multiple copies of it. You can use your various size cards in your planners, journals or give as bookmarks or little encouragements. 

What type of paper will my printer be able to print?

That depends on the type of printer you own. 

HP printers generally takes up to 160gsm weight cardstock well. 

Our Ivytree Elements cardstock goes easily through a printer. 

Just note that our 240gsm heavy white and also the black toner cardstock won't probably go through that easy.  

Check your own printer manual or ask help online for further help on printing. 

Thought of the Day:

"Remember that your thumbprint is unique. God intended it that way. Never compare your work or progress with someone else's. Just compare it to where you started out, where you currently find yourself and where you would like to go with it. Don't give up. Keep moving forward in your art." 

 - Ansu Badenhorst -

 Educator, Artist, Creative Designer and Entrepreneur

Final DT brag post, Wonderlust, Happy Memories, Birthday cards and Mixed Media

Dear Paper friends,

This is the last in the series of posts about our Design Team to showcase their work.  They are still working up a storm and in our next posts we will showcase one DT project per post.  Some great stuff ahead.

Next up:

Lisa-Marie is our third member from the lovely Western Cape. 

Lisa-Marie is your typical artist and you can quickly see her artistic approach and style in each and 

every project she does. One thing that stands out for us is the talent she has in mixing colours so well.

A sign of a great artist with a good eye.  We love her single layouts and how she layers 

various designs, but also the fact that she makes it look so effortless. 

Apart from al her DT work for Ivytree Studio, she is also involved in doing DT work for various other companies. 

See her blog here for more info.

And if that is not enough, she is the proud and devoted mommy of a lovely little girl called Isabella. 

You can clearly see her love for her and the special relationship they share, reflected in her work.  

It is something that really inspires because isn't that what memory keeping is all about? 

These are some of her projects we love, but don't forget to hop over to her blog to see all 

she is up to. 

Click here for Lisa-Marie's blog. 

Project 1:   

Wonderlust - Mixed Media Single Layout using Wild&Free

We just love all the yummy-ness and textures in this layout. 

Project 2: 

Happy Memories - Single Layout using Hadeda Garden

We are still so in love with our Hadeda Garden collection. It has so much to offer.  

From generic patterns to all the shades of pink and blue together with the little cut elements and cards, 

you can play hours with this collection. 

We love how Lisa-Marie used the blues in this one.  Once again she makes it look so easy. 

Visit Lisa-Marie's blog here to view her full post and list of items used.

Project 3:  

Happy Birthday  - card with stitching

As it was our first birthday recently, we felt we wanted to share this card to 

celebrate one year of design and paper love. 

Simple yet popping in colour to show you just easy it is to be creative. 

Remember, just some pretty paper, adhesives, your scissors is all you need to be creative.

It is such an enjoyable experience and it is not called "creative therapy" for nothing. 

Take note how Lisa-Marie always uses pen on our paper to outline and accent some of her layers. 

Our paper is acid free and an un-coated matt print and therefor you can write on it. 

See the full post on her blog 

here

In our next post:

Read about our online Birthday Paper Party held on Facebook on the 22nd of April 2017. 

Who won the prize?

Read the next post to find out.

For a video tutorial on how to make a paper cupcake, go to our previous post here.

To purchase the template and instructions, click here.

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