It's almost here!

National Scrapbooking Day!

Does anyone have any big plans? One year I went to a crop at the LSS, but since then, I've usually been home. I try to sneak in a few layouts for online crops or challenges if I can. You just feel like you should at least ATTEMPT to get a little scrapbooking in if at all possible ... right?
I'm not going to try to organize anything big this year. That will be next year when I've got the store up and running ;)
But I can't let the day go by without some sort of recognition.
Soooo ...
here are a few little challenges for you if you're looking for something to do.

#1 ... Use paint, mist AND glitter on a layout.
I just schmeared on some red paint on my background. I don't pull out my paint all that often, so it was fun to play :)
Ranger Distress Stickles (Fired Brick) on my plain chipboard letters.

More Ranger Distress Stickles (in Mustard Seed) to highlight the centre of the flower.

I misted the Jillibean Soup patterned paper with Creme de Chocolat Glimmer Mist and used Red Maya Mist on the cream ric rac. This ric rac absorbs the mist so well and is just so vibrant afterwards. Leslie turned me on to this technique and I'll be doing it a LOT in the future :)

All of the supplies for the above layout came from the April kit and add-ons.

#2 ... Use the provided sketch as the inspiration for your layout.

I seem to have a thing for stacking my photos. Hmmm.

This was just a quick layout of the queer little habit Molly has of eating the face off all the stuffed animals. She actually will sleep with the stuffy face in her mouth like a soother. And generally, the rest of the animal is left along. We just have all of these stuffed "things" laying around with no faces. So strange.

I truly cannot get enough of those Sassafras border stickers. I'm using them on e-ver-y-thing.

And just a quick tip on getting more mileage out of the Sassafras chipboard letters included in the April kit ... rip the top layer off and colour them however you like. I gave mine a spritz of Jenni B Blu Vibez and then decided they needed to be a little more intense so I covered them in Ranger Distress Stickles (in Broken China).

The Distress Stickles have sure been getting a workout lately :)

This layout uses mostly the main kit from April, as well as one of the banners from the Salad Bar add-on. And some embroidery floss from my stash.

So if you'd like to participate in my NSD challenges, please leave a comment on this post with a link to your layout. Enter as many times as you like and I'll do a drawing on Monday morning for the winner.

If you're looking for incentive to play along, the winner will receive her choice of one the new Sassafras collection kits.

The 30% off sale (excluding main kit/add-on bundles) is still running in the store today and tomorrow. I only have a few of the April add-ons left, so if you've been wavering on them, I wouldn't wait to order.

A few more ...

... pages from Lisa Wilkinson.
I love all of the hand stitching on this one ...

And this one really pulls all of the colours in the kit together by using strips of different patterned papers.

Lisa misted circles on her background with a stencil and also "hit" the venise butterfly with the Sea Monkey Shimmerz Vibez. Great effect.

A sweet little grouping in the top corner ...

All of the items Lisa used on her layouts are from the March Main Kit (Every Which Way). There are still some available and are 30% off until Saturday.

National Scrapbooking Day Sale!

Hi everyone!
National Scrapbooking Day is coming up this Saturday and I'm using it as an excuse to discount everything in the store.
For all orders this week (up to, and including, May 1st), take 30% off your total order.
If you've been waiting for an opportunity to try out one of the Up The Street kits ... this is your chance. At 30% off, all main kits will be available for $24.15!
Please e-mail upthestreet@isp.ca with your order directly to take advantage of this NSD Sale!
Note ... this discount cannot be applied to kit bundles.

Fabric Leaf Tutorial from Lesley Langdon

Leslie used the fabric and ink from the Sunday Brunch kit to make these unique leaves for her 3 Little Kids layout.

The perfect little embellishment ... simple yet stunning!

I'd love to see what you can do with this fabric. Remember to upload your projects to our Flickr Group so that we can all ooooh and aaaah over your creations :)

Scissor Quirk

I have been following Michelle Clement ever since I found her through a kit club called The Dozens. I don't think they're around anymore, but Michelle is :)

Visit her blog for some fun sponsor giveaways. The Up The Street Sunday Brunch kit is one of the items up for grabs.

Have a great day!

You Ride

I sent my new friend, Lisa Wilkinson, one of the March kits to play with and I'm so glad I did :) She sent me this adorable layout today and it has me itching to pull out what's left of my March kit again. I just love the soft yellow and turquoise together.
All torn and distressed with lots of little bits. Lisa is definately a girl after my heart. You can click on the images to see all of the wonderful details.

Beautiful silver chenile fabric peeking out ...

And what an adorable little face! I miss this stage so much. You know ... the stage when they're still not talking back all of the time?

She even made use of some of the Studio Calico packaging. Waste not, want not!

Thanks Lisa! I'm looking forward to seeing what else you do with this kit :)

"Happy" card

I usually don't get around to making cards until I need them. Like ... 20 minutes before I need one, I get a bee in my bonnet.

My Will had a birthday party on Saturday for his friend Willow (cute ... right?), so of course, I didn't get to the card until about 5 minutes before we should have been leaving.

For whatever reason, I tend to grab Sassafras to make cards when I'm in a hurry. This one uses bits that I had laying out from my Sunday Brunch kit, a few scraps of cardstock and a Jenni Bowlin Bingo card that I've had for awhile now. I thought the colours of the Bingo card matched perfectly with the adorable sheet music patterned paper from Sassafras. Too perfectly though. So I matted it with a contrasting cardstock and mounted it using adhesive foam. A quick "7" cut from the Jillibean Soup paper (again mounted with more foam adhesive) and some buttons glued here and there and we're done.

Please notice the wet glue popping out from the button holes. I told you ... I was in a rush!

As is pretty standard with my cards, this one is a crazy size ... 6x6. If I'm just shoving it in a gift bag, I don't bother with an envelope and just use whatever size cardstock scrap I have for a base.

Color Misting Tips from Jing-Jing Nickel

Color misting is all the rage in scrapbooking and paper crafting right now. Look no further than Up the Street to find a bottle of Shimmerz included in the Feburary kit! It's a fun and easy technique for those of us who are not artsy! Nothing says "Je suis une artiste" like a few speckles of colored mist on my layouts, lol!!
For my "Holding on" layout, I misted the text background paper with yellow mist. The text paper is in April's first add-on kit by Jillibean Soup. Here's a trend that is pretty easy to spot, patterned papers with text tend to get a lot of love from misters, inkers, and painters in the scrapping world. It makes sense, there's not much pattern, just text, so it's versatility waiting to happen! You can see in this picture, the mask I used to create my polka dots. No doubt you will want to rush to Up the Street online store to get this mask, but alas you will not find it there. This set of mask came from Walt Disney DVD Bingo! Once my kids punched out the bingo pieces, Mama is left with this fantastic misting mask! So here's another tip, once you get into misting, you will find yourself seeing the world through masking eyes. Before you throw out anything, you will be asking yourself this question, "Can I use this as a mask?" Oh the possibilities this opens up...

Napkins

I wanted to share a few of the ways I have included napkins on my layouts. Using the Cabbage Soup add-on for this layout, I layered strips of the napkin above and below my matted photo. I seperated the layers of the napkin so that I was only using the top layer. In order to create the decorative border edge, I sandwiched the napkin layer between two scrap pieces of paper before punching it in a Fiskars border punch. Because the napkin is so thin, it still doesn't punch very cleanly, so I ended up having to trim up the messy edges with scissors.

To attach the strips to my layout, I applied a thin strip of glue and gathered the napkin as I glued it down to the paper. Once I finished applying all of the strips, I wrapped the ends around to the back of the paper and glued them to the back.

I should mention that the green Prima and corrugated alphas are available in the store. Also, the branch is die cut using the Silhouette.

This is a layout I did almost three years ago. For my background, I applied a layer of Mod Podge to the cardstock, laid the top layer of a napkin down and added another layer of Mod Podge on top ... creating creases and wrinkles as I went to mimic the look of a beach towel.

Hope these give you a few ideas on how to include those gorgeous napkins you see into your layouts :)

Merry Christmas?

I wanted to share the last layout Leslie sent me using the main kit and the Cabbage Soup add-on. I stuck a few napkins in with this one and was so curious to see what people would do with them.
Leslie used one as a backdrop for her photo and embellishments. Sooooo cute! I love how she pulled green and red elements from the embellishments to create a seasonal layout from a kit that, to me, screamed summer. Talk about thinking outside the box ;)

Edited to add ... Leslie's layout has been Removed for Publication :)

Well ... I'm off to town to get some groceries, hit the library and mail some kits. Have a great weekend!

May Contest

Sorry! I meant to post this earlier but got busy doing other things and completely forgot!
I think I'm going to switch things up a bit this month for the contest.
As in the past, you will have several options available to participate
... complete your layout using an Up The Street kit
... complete your layout using a paper napkin as some sort of embellishment (like the ones in the Cabbage Soup add-on)
... use the bright, summery colours from the April kit as your inspiration
Please leave a comment on this post with a link to your layout (you can post it on your blog or another online gallery).
Submit as many layouts as you like. Each one will be entered into the random drawing. Submissions will be accepted until midnight May 14, 2010 (EST) and the drawing will be done May 15, 2010.
The winner will be posted here on the blog and will receive a $30.00 credit to the Up The Street store.
* No purchase required to enter the contest ... using an Up The Street kit is just ONE of the options available :)
Happy Scrapping!

April Winner!

Good Morning Everyone!
I'm still getting the sleepies out of my eyes and working on my first cuppa.
But I thought you might be wondering who was the winner of the April kit, so I thought I better do that before I tackled anything else.

In this case, it certainly paid to be the early bird because the number chosen was #1.
Rebecca VanDyke!
Congrats!
Please e-mail me your address so I can get your kit off to you :)
upthestreet@isp.ca

Thanks to everyone who played along and I'll have new contest info up later this morning.

April Kit Reveal!

Hi all! I'm a little early posting this, but I'm attending the Bellies, Babies and Beyond Baby Expo in Strathroy tonight and I thought I might as well get this done before I left.
Lots of colour in these kits ... Sassafras, Cosmo Cricket and Jillibean Soup. Lesley and Jing-Jing did a fantastic job showcasing this kit. Both also worked with the Cabbage Soup add-on. Visit the Gallery to see their beautiful work :)
The main kit ... Sunday Brunch ...
Front of papers ...

Backs of double-sided papers ...

Vintage playing cards and journaling spots from Elle's Studio. Also, my favorite ink ... Charcoal Chalk Ink ...

Beautiful trims, Maya Road pins and Fancy Pants buttons ...

Add-on Kit #1 ... Cabbage Soup ...

Jillibean Soup papers & stickers ... a little taste of Cosmo Cricket Material Girl, Maya Road envelopes, Elle's Studio vintage flashcards ...

Add-on kit #2 ... Salad Bar ...

Cosmo Cricket Garden Variety, Jillibean Soup and a little Sassafras ...

Visit the store to order the kits. Also in stock ... coordinating Jillibean Soup alphabets.

April Special .... order the main kit and both add-ons for $65.00! That's a 20% savings on retail prices! E-mail upthestreet@isp.ca to order this bundle.

I'll be back tomorrow with the winner of the April kit.

More Entries

A few more entries for the April Contest to share...

Nancy Giles ...

Melissa Buhler ...

Ashley Hamman ...

Celeste Brodnick ...

You have until midnight tomorrow night to finish them up if you'd like to enter. If you've sent something to me, and haven't seen it listed yet, please let me know. I keep checking my junk mail to make sure I haven't missed any, but just in case!

Jing-Jing's Sneaks

Another bright, sunny day. I've got laundry on the line and a whole list of things to get accomplished this week.
I thought I'd start out the week by passing along some peeks of the project Jing-Jing sent to me this weekend. Love them all :)

I'm kind of at that point where I don't know what to tackle first. I want to get the April kits packaged so they're ready to go. I'm going to be taking them to the Babies, Bellies and Beyond Baby Expo on Wednesday night at the Strathroy Senior's Centre and then posting them for Thursday. Once again, there will be a discount for purchasing the main kit with both add-ons. There's a lot of paper in the add-ons this time. I loved all of the bright colours and couldn't narrow it down.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you'll come back Thursday! I can't wait to share the layouts Jing-Jing and Lesley have done :)

Moving forward and more April sneaks ...

Finally! The sun came out today! It's still quite cool, but it's supposed to warm up yet today.

Thank you for all of your encouraging comments last week. I think I was feeling a little unsure of myself ... wondering if I should be moving ahead with this business ... wondering if the kits I'm putting together will catch on ... wondering if I'm going to be able to get everything done with a business and a family ... just wondering. But if I don't try, I'll always regret not taking the chance. I'm feeling much better this week after having a few trips to the new retail space I have lined up. I still won't be in until the end of the summer, but it's a little bigger and a great location. Right now, it's completely gutted and there's no ceiling and lots of puddles. I really need to go take some photos so that I have "before" and "after" shots to share. I've seen the architect drawings and am excited again. For you Strathroy gals, I'll be moving into the old Derby. Don't turn up your noses just yet! Your jaws will drop once you see the renovation. The owner of this building is the same woman I was to rent from before, so once she's through with this building, I'm sure the space will still have a "vintage" feel.

I also have some more sneaks of the April kit and add-ons to share!

Leslie sent me some photos of the projects she's been working on and I was blown away with what she's done!

And a few from me ...

Jing-Jing was going to be taking her kit to a crop this weekend. I can't wait to see what she does :)

This past week, I've also been doing a lot of thinking about what else we can do with our little club. Should we start a message board? Hold on online crop? I'd love to hear what you think about it.

The other area that I've been considering is subscriptions. I really don't want to get into subscriptions at this time, but I DO want to reward regular customers. What I'm going to introduce with the April kit is an incentive to purchase regularly ... purchase 3 monthly kits for the price of $88.50. This amounts to a $5 savings per kit. If you've already purchased one or more of the months, you would still receive the discount. For example, if you've purchased Feburary for $34.50 ... you can now buy the March and April kits for only $54.00 (plus any applicable taxes).

I think that's it for today. If you have any questions or suggestions, I'm happy to listen. I want this to be a fun place for all of us, so your imput is important :)