Paper Made Bakery: June Kit Reveal + Blog Hop + Giveaway

The Hop:
Konnichiwa and welcome to Paper Made Bakery's June release blog hop! If you've just arrived from Ryann's site, then you've come to the right place. If you would like to start from the beginning, please hop on over to Paper Made Bakery's blog. If you are lost, this the blog hop order:

Paper Made Bakery

Stephanie

Savannah

Ryann

Michelle (←you are here)

Lisa

Ashley

The Kit:

June's Fresh Baked Kit entitled Cherry Blossoms features an exclusive stamp set by Sweet Stamp Shop made especially for our kit this month. The kit also contains Basic Grey's Konnichiwa paper pack, as well as some of their coordinating die-cut paper and canvas flowers and stitched brads. In addition to the Konnichiwa embellishments, there are also various buttons, May Arts ribbons, and some unique findings like a tiny bunch of red paper flowers, a butterfly and an Asian coin. 

June's Fresh Baked Kit

The Reveal:

I was inspired by the love stamp from the Cherry Blossom stamp set above to make an Asian themed layout. Luckily I was just in Taiwan last month so I had a few photos of visiting my Dad there.  

I Love Taiwan Layout

The Details:
Even though this is a Japanese themed collection, the character for love is written in Kanji, which is the same character for love in Chinese. I decided to write my layout title in Chinese to match the stamp. I went to an online Chinese dictionary and printed out three more characters, so my title reads, "I Love Taiwan". 

Vertical Title: I Love Taiwan

In terms of the layout design, I was imagining a smattering of small Polaroids. I used my design program, QuarkXpress and made some rectangles for the Polaroid film. I made smaller rectangles for the photos in the middle. I typed a description below the photo in a handwriting font to simulate writing captions on the Polaroid photo. I was looking around online and I saw lots of free downloads of Polaroid frames, like this one. 

Making my own Polaroids

I checked in the Silhouette Store and they did have an image of Taiwan which I purchased. I cut it in a 2" size and adhered the butterfly embellishment from the kit on top. 

Taiwan Die Cut with Butterfly

The cardstock background looked a bit plain to me so I made my own patterned paper by adhering the flower die cuts plus a few more punched flowers in the background. I anchored the Polaroids by placing them over three strips of the May Arts ribbon, so it continues the vertical look of the title. 

String of Polaroid Photos

The only thing I added to this month's Cherry Blossom kit, were my photos and a piece of 12 x 12" cardstock for the background. I encourage you to also try making a layout using 6 x 6" papers. It is kind of fun to try to think of ways to fill the larger page with smaller papers. 

The Giveaway:

As a way to say thank you for participating in today's blog hop, Paper Made Bakery is giving  a sumo sized goodie bag to one lucky participant. You can enter by using the Rafflecopter widget or by leaving a comment below. 

You have until midnight of Sunday, June 3rd to enter and a winner will be announced on PMB's blog on Monday, June 4th, 2012.

Good luck to all! Your next stop is Lisa's blog. Remember there are daily inspiration projects and tutorials on the PMB's blog all month long. 

Thanks for hoppin' by,

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Paper Made Bakery: May Roundup

The Reveal
This is my sixth and final project for Paper Made Bakery's May kit entitled Portobello Road. I loved the pastel colors, shabby chic designs and feminine feel of the kit. For today's reveal, I wanted to use the stamp set in an unintentioned way. So instead of using the stamp themed stamp on a letter, I turned it into a quilt block.

For more info on this card, please go to today's post on Paper Made Bakery.

May's Summary of Projects
Here are the rest of my May projects. For more info on any project, please look on Paper Made Bakery's blog.

One in a million shaker card

Hello Kitty Cafe Layout (can't show the whole thing as it will be published in Scrapbook Trends Magazine)

Oh Happy Day pop out card

Muffin Basket Topper

Apron Gift Card Holder

As you can see, a lot of fun things can be made from the same kit. Be sure to come back on Friday for the June kit's reveal and a blog hop with fun prizes!

Thanks so much for stoppin' by,

Engagement Album

The Beginning

I can't believe my lil' cousin is getting married in just a week and a half! At Christmas I received this save the date magnet from her. 

Save the Date magnet

Since it was so cute, I had to feature it on a layout using some of her engagement photos I downloaded from Facebook. I wrote about this in a former post here. 

Save the Date layout

After seeing my layout, she asked me to make a whole album of her photos which will be displayed at the wedding. Kevin, my hysband, will be playing the guitar and Vic, my sister, will be singing, so I guess I'll contribue where my talents lie. I just realized scrappy skills can be of use to others.

The Prep

I finished 19 of the 20 pages in three weeks without too much stress. Completing an entire album is usually a major ordeal for me. When completing a large project within a short period of time, organization and planning is key. Here are some of the things I did beforehand that really helped. 

• Choose a theme and stick to it. I looked at the photos and they had a soft, romantic feel to them so I wanted that to reflect in the pages. I didn't know her style so I chose a clean and simple style with straight lines that seemed neutral.
• Get some layout designs ready. I didn't want to spend time designing 20 layouts and wondering where to place photos and what size to print them. So I used sketches from one artist so they would be streamlined. I used some Allison Davis designs from Sketch Support and her books. 
• Make a kit of materials. My cousin wanted her wedding colors used, which were Tiffany blue and orange. I couldn't find one collection in those colors that matched my theme, so I assembled the papers in those colors using 4 different collections and chose matching embellishments in yet another collection. I placed all the materials on my desk and tried to mainly use those, so I wouldn't be spending time searching my stash for an elusive embellishment that would be perfect. This is what it looked like in the middle of a layout. 

Mid-process

The Results

I have 9 of the pages out to show you today, and I'll share the second half in another post. 

This is the title page, aren't they a cute couple? 

I placed their names using alpha stickers on punched circles, popped them up and used some Glossy Accent on top. I placed some twine behind the names to simulate a banner look. 

I went with a circular banner to mimic the one they had in one of the engagement photos. 

The other pages are featured below.

Three of the photos were in black in white (above), so I altered the colored photos below to match, since these two pages would be opposite each other in the album. I hope the photographer won't mind me playing with her photos. 

Since I didn't have titles or journaling for each page, I used some pre-made tags and stickers.

To make the album seem cohesive, I repeated several elements. I utilized the same color scheme, used a lot of straight lines in the design and used the similar embellishments like ribbons and flowers. But I also wanted each page to be unique so I placed at least one element that was different from the other pages. In this one I used a negative spaced heart with a dangling tag next to the title. 

I wanted to have sunflowers on these pages to match what she is holding in the picture, but I didn't have any nor wanted to go out and try to find some. My sister, Jenn, suggested making some so I did. I colored some Prima flowers with an orange ink pad and filled the center with a black Pearl Pen. 

The two layouts above actually go together as a double paged layout. 

It was really easy to scrap as the photos themselves were so lovely. If you need a photographer in the Los Angeles area, these were taken by Anna May Lam. If you want to look at just the photos of Marrina and John, you can go here. I hope you enjoyed taking a look at my cousin's engagement album. Please come back soon to see the rest after I finish the final page and photograph the layouts. I even have some of their candid photos, like the actual engagement at Disneyland.

Thanks so much for stoppin' by,