Magenta Giveaway

Magenta is having a followers giveaway to celebrate the new spring collection release.  There is a chances to win one of two pretty sweet prizes.

It is an easy one to enter, just follow the Magenta blog or FaceBook page and then link your name here to enter.

TTFN,

Magenta New Spring 2014 Catalogue

Check out the new release catalogue.  Gorgeous variety of stamps and other products for many different style of crafters can be found within its pages.

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Bright Happy Colours with Chic Tags

Happy Ground Hog Day!  Here in Ontario, Canada... Wiarton Willie saw his shadow so ... six more weeks of winter.  Personally, given the 20 more centimetres of snow that we got yesterday, I am ready to say adios to the blustery season and bring on Spring.

With bright happy colours and warmer times in mind, today I am sharing a layout that warms me up and just makes me happy or should I say... takes me to my "Happy Place" (pun intended).

While I did not get to participate in the actual Chic Tags blog sketch challenge, I really liked this sketch and wanted to make the layout that I had in mind for it when I had a chance.  I used papers from their Happy Place collection and a freebie Circles printable from their store site.

For my take, I turned the sketch side ways, used two photos and stitched chevrons connecting many of the circles in the grid pattern.

Here is the sketch:

Supplies: patterned papers and printable pdf (Chic Tags), chipboard letters (Fancy Pants), inks, pen and wood veneers (CTMH), metal bike (Michaels), marker (Sharpie), thread


TTFN,

Magenta Christmas Mini Album

Today, I am sharing my Christmas Mini Album that I made for Magenta in January.

While I used the cute bracket December Daily Album,  my mini however is not a December Daily.  I like to look at them out in the blogosphere and kudos to those that complete the entire month; especially those who do it year after year. For me, I just have a few photos of some of those key events that surround the big day and so a mini album is just the thing. The upside too is that I have enough chipboard pages leftover to make another mini at another time.

 For the cover, I coloured the chipboard title and number that comes with the album using gelatos then added glitter glue and clustered them up with the beautiful wood veneer tree.  I also added some gesso sponging to my base paper.



Pages 1 & 2

 A little stenciling of trees on the left using gelatos, gel, gesso and glitter glue.  On the right side page, I did some ornament stamping, coloured with watercolour pencils, fussy cut them out and finished with some glitter.



Pages 3 & 4

Love this pretty tree patterned paper!  While it is a bit busier, it is subtle enough for my bright photos to pop especially with using black and red. Then I couldn't resist the bright red bling for embellishments.

Page 5 & 6

To change it up a bit, I doodle outlined around the trees in black, added glitter glue to three of them to create a visual triangle and blinged up the tops of all treetops showing with bitty jems.  I paired it with the top half of the North Pole patterned paper that I planned for the subsequent page.  I added some extra sponged-on red ink to match up with that which was already there but only in one section due to where I cut the paper.

Pages 7 & 8

These are my favourite pages for two reasons:

- The photos and the story behind the facial expressions....

and...

- I love the added glitter and sequins to the sweeps and swirls of snow on the patterned North Pole paper .  I added a few fabric snowflakes and the stars are part of the chipboard pieces that came with the bracket album.  I coloured them, added black glitter and topped them with jewels.

Pages 9 & 10

And as you can see on these next pages, she was one happy girl after finding and opening her gift. Though it is hard to see, on the bottom, I masked stamped in white ink with the "Christmas Wishes Seal" stamp and added some trim.  I also used the "Here comes Santa Claus" stamp along with the "I am in love with this day!" stamp.

Pages 11 & 12

Here I got a little more messy.  I gessoed the red mesh paper onto the chipboard before adding the striped patterned paper.

Pages 13 & 14

  

On this last double page, I used all scrap pieces of the patterned papers that I had used on the prior pages.  Cutting them into rectangular pieces, I glued and gessoed them onto the chipboard for my background.  Again, I embellished the pages with some chipboard pieces that come with the album after colouring and glittering them.

You might have noticed that I carry over the patterned paper and/or colour from one double page spread to another. I also handwrote, creating a stylized font, for most of my titles and subtitles on the pages.  This, along with the patterned papers and faux stitching brought a cohesiveness to the entire album.

Lastly is the back cover.

I used a piece of Ingrid patterned paper along with a black piece of cardstock to give it the look of book binding.

Hope you enjoyed this mini.  To learn more about the story behind the coal from Santa, check out the Part 2 on the Magenta blog.

TTFN,