Shimelle and her Goldilocks Washi Technique

I am delighted that Jenni has added washi tape to her line of scrapbooking products, and of course her tapes are patterned with classic designs that will mix and match with ease.  I wouldn't expect anything less!  But this is extra brilliant considering a roll of washi tape - even used frequently - can last a long while.  All of the JBS tapes are great designs for that long-term use, and you'll never have to worry that they will go out of style.

If you're starting to collect washi more than you use it, try a trick for letting it help you embellish a page design.  Pick two tapes that work together for your page, and use three strips of each: one long, one short, and one in between.  Perhaps we should call this the Goldilocks Washi Technique!

Placing these three pairs of tapes on your layout then makes it easy to embellish things for a design that will always work.  I used the blue grid and whitewashed woodgrain tapes, and my smallest set is up at the top right corner, the longest across the middle of the page, and the middle set at the bottom.  Then it's just a case of choosing some embellishments you can repeat in those three locations, so I used a heart punch with the lovely blueprint paper from the Wren collection and a red doily.  Placing those three groups of embellishments and my photo first made it easy to finish the rest of the page because the placement was obvious: all that space to the left of the photo!  So that became a great place for journaling and some tags.  Of course, for a multi-photo page, you could easily replace some of the tags with additional pictures.  By keeping the three sets of tapes all on the horizontal and using them to anchor those repeated embellishments, the rest of the page comes together without worry.  Give it a try!

If you fancy more inspiration for your JBS washi tapes (and more red, white, and blue JBS goodness!), I have another project to share with you on my blog.  You can find this project here, designed as the facing page in my album.  These two pages aren't a double page spread in the strictest sense, but they have enough in common to certainly coordinate side by side.  

Thank you Shimelle!  Jenni's selection of Paper Tape can be found in the wholesale store with the links below!

Paper Tape - Bleached Woodgrain

Paper Tape - Double Chevron

Paper Tape - Houndstooth

Paper Tape - Notebook Grid

Paper Tape - Sage Lace

Paper Tape - Sideways Chevron

Halloween Tags

Halloween is right around the corner and we have some wonderful ideas of using your supplies for this fun holiday.  Take a look at these gorgeous Halloween tags from Shimelle Laine.

Oh, Halloween! I haven’t had a trick or treater at my door in years… but I do love a bit of Halloween crafting and any excuse for pumpkins and sweets is completely up my street. Today Jenni Bowlin Studio brings you an entire treat bag full of Halloween goodies with a blog hop – and a chance to win some JBScraftery at each stop.

This little Halloween treat project is so quick and easy and perfect to do with scraps of paper. Start with the die-cut papers in kraft, add netting and ribbons and some of Jenni’s Halloween paper cut to two inch wide pennants. Staple all the layers in place. Attach it to a gift bag or card or use as an embellishment on a scrapbook page. And of course you can dress it up even more with your favourite orange embellishments: buttons, pearls or butterflies.

Thank you Shimelle for this great idea!

JBS Summer Games - Scrapbooking the Closing Ceremony

Of course, all those games can't just fizzle out into nothing - we need a big party to bring everything to a close!  So today, something quite literal for the JBS Summer Games: scrapbooking the closing ceremonies of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

The Olympics are all about bringing everyone together, so I took a little inspiration from that and tried to bring all sorts of different JBS products - new and old - together for this page. Turquoise butterfly-embossed Coredinations cardstock, the classic JBS label paper in pink, pink embellished butterflies and the JBS acrylic paint in Chewing Gum meet new products like the black letter stickers, kraft tag, text print patterned paper and the perforated die-cut paper in kraft. After all the pink in London's branding of the summer games, it seems only right to include a fair amount of it on my Olympic-themed scrapbook pages!

Seriously, I will never tire of Jenni butterflies.  If she tires of making them, I am in so much trouble.  I'm hoping she will tell me first, and then I'll pull my best impression of an Olympic athlete as I quickly sprint into the warehouse and grab all the butterflies I can find.  I'll need a lifetime supply!  Anyway... I'm off topic here.

While the JBS Summer Games are winding to a close, there is still a chance to join in the fun and have a chance at winning some fabulous prizes!  Look back over the blog for all sorts of different things you can try, and see if your crafting will find you standing atop the medal podium by the end of the weekend!

Valentine Envelopes by Shimelle

I may have gotten a bit carried away dressing up some envelopes for Valentines for some friends, but there are so many pretty red embellishments from JBS that it seems a shame to hide them all away!

I stamped the envelopes with the Butterfly Stamp in white ink, then started layering up the embossed tag.  The bottom layers are netting and red ribbon, then all sorts of JBS embellishments.  A scallop circle from red floral School Dress paper, a smaller tag stamped with the Receipt Stamp, label and flag stickers, butterflies in sticker and paper + gem formats, Red Doilies and a Rhinestone button.  A Shadow Alpha Sticker monogram labels each of the envelopes too.

So obviously not the sort of envelopes that will make it anywhere in the mail, but perfect for a hand-delivered valentine, especially if it's for a crafty girl who might take it apart and add that tag to a scrapbook page!

Happy crafting!

Love and glitter,

Shimelle

Christmas Cards by Shimelle

There is still plenty of time to make some Christmas cards - or so I'm telling myself as I haven't made nearly enough yet! But good news: today you can make three cards in a flash, with your JBS stash!

Gather a mix of materials: I used the accessory and mini paper sheets from the Vintage Holidays collection, plus label stickers, buttons, star stickers and doily flowers. (I started with the big bingo cards too but didn't use them in the end.) You'll also need some card blanks.

You may also want some numbers or letters at the end. I just used numbers and mixed and matched various sizes and colours.

Start by selecting one 4x4 mini pattern and one large accent card for each card you will make. I inked all the edges with brown ink.

Arrange the paper and accent card side by side to create a landscape card and adhere to the background. You may want to trim a bit from the sides of the card so it will still fit in the envelope after more bulky layers are added.

Then assemble a group of small embellishments for each card. I cut the Season's Greetings sentiment from a border on the accessory sheet, then added a rectangle and circle label, a doily and a button to start, but this design will work with any collection of small embellishments you have to hand.

All those little things get layered onto a plain tag to dress up the card. I covered each tag with a layer of green tulle netting to soften the look, or you could add ribbon or fabric scraps. Then layer the embellishments, scraps of paper and number stickers until you're happy with the amount of embellishment and adhere the tag to the background when everything is secure.

By the placement of the embellishments, choice of papers and the mix of stickers, each card will look unique, but they all come together quickly by following the same process. For this day on the calendar, I think that's a win!

Have a very merry Christmas!

Love and glitter,

Shimelle.~*

Red/Black Extension IV - layout and tutorial!

Shimelle has created a lovely layout and tutorial using Jenni Bowlin's newest release.  The Red/Black Extension IV uses Jenni's classic color combination to create a product line that can be used for so many themes and types of projects.

Here's Shimelle's beautiful layout:

and here's her ever so lovely video tutorial!

Back to School with Shimelle Laine!

Today we have a charming retro page from Shimelle Laine featuring an exceedingly clever and whimsical use of the Be Our Guest "Home Sweet Home" patterned paper.

Shimelle writes, "I love living in a big city and the great London area has a population between 7 and 10 million, depending on where you draw the lines in suburbia. But there was no difficulty drawing the line in the small town where I grew up, and every morning the school bus passed the 'Welcome to...' sign with the population labelled as 2002 for many years... something I remember because we use to debate which two residents would be the 2 in 2002! So in such a small town, I went to a very small school. Everyone there knew everyone else, and although the town has since grown, everyone who lived there during my school years can tell you all about the teachers, the students and the four-page local newspaper. This photo is so very unattractive but it makes me laugh and remember the days in this particular class - 7th grade science. The girl to the right may kill me for scrapbooking this image as she's a scrapbooker too! But we sat at the same table for science and according to my wobbly script on the back of the photo, I was trying to convince my classmates not to use a flash on the camera, lest we get in trouble with Mr. Vopat. Also, I had just *part* of my hair permed. Serious dawn-of-the-nineties-mall-hair. I have to laugh otherwise I'll cry!"

And here is a little background information about her process, "I had been a bit stumped with the house print on this paper from the Be our Guest collection at first until I looked at it as a school house rather than just a country house. My elementary school wasn't much bigger than that! I hoped to scrapbook something about that, but neither my shoebox of old pictures nor the internet was very helpful with that! So this photo was the next best option and I love how you can see the look of a standard classroom from the simple background in the picture.

The blue ledger paper is one of my favourites from JBS ever - I use it all the time and it works so well as a background. I think I have made four layouts with this page as the background and they all look very different, so it's definitely versatile. To dress it up, I added a frame of malted milk paint and three layered embellishments, each with a a label, a punched circle and a star. I had tried to include the years of my middle school (5th to 8th grade) in the punched circles but the 5 ended up off the page. Close enough, I suppose! I love finding funny little ways for numbers or letters to have significance when selectively cut from a patterned paper."

Supplies:

Be Our Guest papers (blue ledger, house scene - it works as a school house, right?)

Haven labels (from the accent sheet)

Red/Black ruler paper

Mini chalkboard letter stickers

Large letter stickers in two colours (red/black and red/white)

Red star stickers

Blue adhesive pearls

JB for Ranger paint dabber (painted on with a brush) in malted milk

The Butterfly Stamp + Embroidery

For today's installment of "Stamping and Beyond," we bring you Shimelle Laine and her gorgeous embroidery skills . . .

The butterfly stamp is my very favourite - of course - and it's a perfect size for baby gifts. Of course, you could also adapt this idea to a larger garment, perhaps with a flock of butterflies! But for this project, I stamped the butterfly just once on a newborn sized onesie.

I stamped in pink then used three strands of embroidery floss to outline the full butterfly. I find it easiest to stitch on knit fabrics with a hoop, but it's best to stamp without the hoop so the design will be in the right place and not distorted. I just pop a piece of scrap cardboard inside the item so it's easy to stamp on the knit. Once you add the hoop, pull it taut but not tight - you don't really want to stretch the design.

The butterfly is a quite detailed stamp, so you could spend a long time following all the lines with your stitches! I opted to just add a bit of the detail in the top and bottom of the wings, then some wording across the middle. For the lettering, I just wrote in pencil and stitched over my letters. If that's too hard to judge, you could use letter stamps as a guide or print it out on paper and hold it up to the window and trace through the fabric.

The stamp ink will fade with several washes (unless you use special fabric inks) but I like this design both with the ink and with just the outline, so I don't mind if it fades. (Of course it's not for me so really I should just hope that baby and her mama don't mind!)

In progress . . .

Beautiful! Thanks for the inspiration Shimelle!