New Year - new PageMaps Calendar

We hope everyone had a safe and joyous Christmas and New Year.  We have a brand new PageMaps calendar available in the store.  We can't speak highly enough about this calendar. There is so much inspiration and the sketches are so easy to follow and interpret whatever way you desire.

We worked with the 'Snowed In' collection from Carta Bella. Here is how the Design Team has interpreted this sketch:

Lorena's Take:

I create a Reverse Negative with my title. What that means is: using a die cutter, I cut my title and used the base sheet or negative as your title and put scraps of paper underneath to give dimension and interest.





















Sarah's Take:
I used the new Tim Holtz snowflake die that I picked up at Aunt Em's just before Christmas (Merry Christmas to ME!). It's super easy to use and add a great embellishment to any winter themed page!

Come check out the 2013 PageMaps calendar and these layouts and many more in person at Auntie Em's!

Paper bag cards - Winter Fun style

I was watching an episode of Live With Prima the other night, and Frank made some cards out of paper lunch bags, yes you read that right! I had so many little pieces left over from the Winter Fun line from Carta Bella that I had to try making some of those paper bag cards.

The method is simple, fold the paper bag in half, glue down the flap and decorate the front, center and back of the card, leaving the opening so that you can tuck gift cards or photos inside to give to your loved one - genius!

You can check out Frank's video tutorial here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/27546829

Here are four cards I did using the same technique.

I hope you enjoyed my little paper bag cards, leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Winter Fun at the Cobourg Santa Claus parade!

I took the kids to see the Cobourg Santa Claus parade. The parade started at 3:00 (at the other end of town) we arrived at 1:00. Yeah, I was early - did you hear that Emma?? I was early for something in my life! We waited close to 3 hours just for the parade to start, needless to say the kids got very BORED and COLD.

Santa? Is that you playing bagpipes for the Port Hope Pipe & Drums band???



For my layout I used a photo of the kids huddled under a blanket. I used the Winter Fun collection from Carta Bella. I got so much out of this collection, it was so easy to work with

I used some Molding paste through the negative of a die cut from my Cricut on a previous layout, I then added some glitter to the molding paste before it dried - turned out pretty good, I was a little worried that the paper wouldn't hold up to the molding paste, but it did, but I wouldn't use it for more than about 2 or 3 uses. And the perfect thing is, no clean up - it's waste anyway, just toss it out!

Journaling read "All bundled together to keep warm, waiting for Santa to arrive, Cobourg Santa Claus Parade, November 18 2012"

Nat Noted -- Oct. 15/12

There wasn't much to do on a rainy weekend so I put the finishing touches on a few layouts I started at Crop & Create Ottawa.

I came out of that event with a ton of ideas in my head. I've been thinking about colours and patterns and scrapbooking in a different way. And it got me excited about scrapbooking.

With all of this creative energy, I was inspired by a ton of different I found online. I hope you like these as I do!

1. Basic Grey just released two new collections Fact and Fiction. I like both of these releases because the papers look like they would work with any other collection both as basics and as accents.

2. The very talented Andrea Budjack created a beautiful shaker gift tag.

Photo credit: Andrea Budjack (Creative Paper Trail)

 3. Donna Downey is travelling through Europe teaching her wonderful techniques to some very lucky scrapbookers/art journallers/artists/creatives. While away, she posted some old favourites for Inspiration Wednesday. This caught my eye because of the purple (to say I love purple is an undertatement). Using strings as flower stems is genius! And oh so beautiful!!

Photo credit: Donna Downey (simply me)

4. Debbie Hodge from Get It Scrapped! has a great post on scrapbooking with the colour blue.

Photo credit: Amanda Jones (Get It Scrapped!)

6. Echo Park and Carta Bella have just released a free eBook called Season's Greetings. You have to create an account to download the book, but it's free. There are ton of great ideas here. Did I mention it was free? ;-)

7. Nicole altered a few tins for her niece's birthday. Her niece wanted cash (which teen doesn't?) and she thought this was a great way to give her the money. I couldn't agree more! These are so awesome they make me wish I was related to Nicole. LOL!

Photo credit: Canadian Nickel Srapn

8. Jess made a mini-album on my favourite subject: coffee. This is brilliant! Note to self: Must make an album dedicated to coffee before Christmas.

Photo credit: Jess (Life on Lee Avenue)

9. This candy dish by Thienly Azim is just too stinkin' cute not to share with you.


Photo credit: Thienly Azim (mod paperie)

10. My Mind's Eye has a ton of ideas for Hallowe'en treat bags.

Photo credit: Monika Wright (My Mind's Eye)

11. I want this phone.

Photo credit: Kaz Hall (This Little Shabby Shed)

Wishing you a week full of good surprises!