Hello everyone!  It’s Beckie here with you today bringing a little inspiration!

Before we get down to business, I just have to mention that I recently returned from a two week whirlwind trip through Asia.  I had the incredible opportunity to visit India, Thailand, Hong Kong, and China!  It was so amazing – and so very different from the Western culture here in the States.  I have a MILLION pictures to go through and scrap – so I will definitely be sharing pictures soon.  But the one thing I wanted to mention here today was something I noticed about the cultures of India and Thailand: and amazing ability to appreciate beauty and incorporate beautiful things into everyday life.  Fresh cut flowers and beautiful carvings and sculptures everywhere.  I just couldn’t do a post about inspiration without reflecting on what I experienced there and thought I would share just a few photos with you – my way of hopefully sharing something beautiful with YOU today :)

Anyhow – on to business!

Two sites I love to explore on a regular basis:  Banana Republic and Pottery Barn.  *sigh*.  So much eye candy!  If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time pining over pretty things on-line, whether through sites like the two I mentioned, or even through Pinterest or design blogs.  Well, did you know that your favorite fashion and design sites are also an incredible source of inspiration for scrapbooking as well?!  The same design aspects that draw you to a room design, a beautiful outfit, or a delicious new handbag can be appied to your scrapbooking!  The trick is knowing how to look :)

Let’s work with this beautiful room from Pottery Barn:

This beautiful room looks similar to my living room – well, minus the gorgeous furniture…and the cool decorative accents…plus my living room is drowning in Legos at the moment (my kids’ most recent obsession! which reminds me, if you have any girl lego lovers…check THESE out! FINALLY some cool girl Legos!).  OK, so it turns out this room looks NOTHING like my current living room, LOL…but it is something I would love to come home to.  To me, it is beautiful and comfortable and completely inviting.  I actually bookmarked it because I want to transform my space into something like this.

Let’s look at the building blocks that make up this room – and see how they can apply to scrapbooking along the way!

• Start with a neutral base.  If I were to describe this room, i wouldn’t say “white” – but notice that the wall color and the sofa – the two biggest elements – are actually white!  This is an excellent way to create a versatile foundation upon which you can add many types and styles of elements (which we’ll get to later).  For my scrap pages, I almost always begin with neutral paper – either white, off white, or kraft.  This lets me get started on my page without having to tackle the more significant design consideration like pattern and color.
• Consider the critical design points. In this room, the windows are very large and somewhat dominant in the space.  Notice how the colors chosen coordinate well with the earthy greens that occupy much of the window space?  The view out the windows doesn’t compete with the design of the room – in fact, the are very complementary.  In scrapbooking, your photos are like these windows.  It’s important to look at your photos and work with the colors and mood set by the images rather than selecting design elements that will compete with them.  Additionally, notice the overall “softness” to this room?  Nothing really has sharp edges (the table and the sofa are more rounded),  the chunky cushions and the delicate greenery are all very “soft” and organic feeling.  If I were creating a scrapbook page with this theme in mind, I’d use rounded edges for my photos and papers so as not to introduce any harsh corners or edges that will take away from the overall feel of comfort from this page.
• Add texture. This is a really important, yet easy to overlook aspect of designing a space as well as a scrapbook page!  Just look at how many types of textures and materials are present in this small space:  wood, fabric, metal, glass, the woven rug under the table, the foliage and greenery from the plant in the vase.  These various textures and tremendous depth and dimension to this space, and they’ll do the same for your scrap pages as well!  Sure, it’s easy and tempting to throw together a page and focus on the basics:  paper, photos, maybe an alpha for a title.  And if we’re feeling really creative, maybe a cluster of flowers.  But how about challenging yourself to add more texture?!  Think about leaves, metal elements (like bookplates, brads, photo turns, etc), ribbons and strings.  And don’t forget that you can add texture right in your title!  Remember that you can re-color things (see this awesome tut from Casharina!)…so really think about the textures you want to incorporate and seek them out for your page. Some of my favorites:
  • Gracie has that amazing canvas alpha (that I LOVE to ink the edges of, for added depth!)
  • Goose Bumps has a fab black acrylic alpha
  • An Affair to Remember has curly ribbons, plastic buttons, and felt hearts
  • Barefoot has cool rustic metal photo corners and star
• Add color. This is often something I do last on my own pages.  And if you look at this room, you can see that the color is really only introduced with the decorative elements!  The pillows are the biggest source of color and pattern, with the palette continued into the smaller decorative items placed around the space.  On my own pages, I like to get the neutral background in place, then I add the photos and even the title, then I’m ready to add in the pop of color.  Shabby Princess creates such beautiful papers in her kits that I frequently use papers to add that pop of both color and pattern.  And don’t forget that a little pattern and/or color goes a long way!  Just look at this room – you really feel the green and the blue, but there just aren’t many colored elements actually there.  A few blocks of patterned papers (think: pillows), plus a few ribbons, buttons, strings in the selected color is really all you need!

You can use this same analysis for taking inspiration from clothing and purses as well!  Pay attention to the stitching, the types of buckles and adornments, the width of straps/belts (are they delicate or chunky?)…you get the idea!  Just take a few moments to look at the parts that make up the whole and eventually seeing these inspirational details becomes second nature!

I also wanted to add that it would be an interesting exercise for you to go and pick out your favorite room (they have many different types of rooms to choose from) just to analyze it and get a better understanding of your own personal style.  For me, the comfort and casual feel to this room are 100% my style.  The same applies to my scrapbooking!  I rarely use block/geometric designs, preferring to kind of throw everything on the page and see where it lands :)  Understanding your style will make it easier for you to stay true to your style – and that means creating more things that you LOVE. :)

Thanks for stopping by today!  I hope you are all having a wonderful week!  SP will drop by tomorrow for a ProjectSCRAP check-in!

BeckieInspiration, Uncategorized 4 Comments

Hello dear Shabby Shoppe readers and a happy Tuesday to you!  Rosy here to bring you a post spotlighting one of SP’s older kits…six years old in fact!

The Eclectic Collage Coordinated Kit is ON SALE for only $4.25 for a limited time…that’s 35% off the normal Shoppe price!

This is what SP has to say about the kit “This kit is very reminiscent of days gone by. It has soft, peaceful colors and a vintage feel to the elements.  So many photos are possible companions to this eclectic kit.  There is a little bit of everything to keep your scrapping mojo flowing“…and she’s right!  Eclectic Collage has just enough vintage flair that it would be perfect for heritage pages (something I’d like to do more of) and yet the beautiful blue, aqua, green, and brown color scheme works for almost any type of photo!

With plenty of flowers and delicate swirl patterns for a feminine look, the colors also work very well for boyish pages.  Here I’ve added a few elements from the An Affair to Remember kit for a boyish birthday page!

This truly is a beautiful and versatile kit!

…and here are some more inspiring layouts from the rest of the Shabby Artists!

Why not head on over to the gallery for a closer look at all this inspiration, after you’ve picked up the kit in the Shoppe! ;o)

Thanks for stopping by and check back tomorrow for an inspiring post by Beckie!

RosyProduct Spotlight, Uncategorized 2 Comments

Hello everyone and happy Monday!  This is Kim here to start the week off in our usual way… with our next Layout of the Week!  I have to say that there are some amazing layouts in the gallery right now.  So it is with pleasure that I say congratulations to our pick for this week…

Daddy’s Home! by con01008

I love this layout for several reasons.  First, what a sweet moment to capture.  It’s one of those special things that this family will love remembering later on.  I completely get the feel of what it’s like at their house when Daddy’s home!  I also love that con01008 took some inspiration from the blog this week and used a cluster of stitched frames.  And there are just tons of other great design details here.  It’s a truly lovely layout.

Congratulations con01008!  You have been emailed a $10 gift card to the Shabby Shoppe (please check your spam folder if you don’t see it).  Hope you have fun shoppe-ing!

That’s it for today, but be sure and stop by tomorrow when Rosy will share a product spotlight with you.  Which kit is going on sale this week?  Find out tomorrow!

KimLayout of the Week, Uncategorized 4 Comments

Hi everyone! HAPPY FRIDAY SMILES to you all! :o)  Kylie here with some fun color inspiration to finish off the week!

Have you heard of ombre?  Over the last few years the ombre trend has slowly worked it’s way through many facets of fashion, beauty and design…so why not digital scrapbooking?  Ombre is a french term meaning ‘shadow’ or ‘shaded’ and in design it refers to a color effect where the color gradually changes from light to dark – either as a smooth gradient or in stripes of varying shades.  From hair color, clothing, homewares and now event styling & food…it’s really making it’s mark!  And I love, love, love it!

Here are a few pretty examples that I’ve come across in my pinterest travels!

Experimenting with new (or old) design trends is always fun.  They can breathe new life into your scrapbooking and give you the creative spark you need to get those special pics scrapped.  For the first layout, I’m sharing today, I achieved this monotone ombre look using only blue papers and elements…and even the text colors are in varying shades of blue.  I just made sure that I layered the darkest to the lightest gradually down the page.  Easy!!  Well the actual scrapping was…finding all those blue elements/papers was a little tougher – but well worth the effort, I think?! :o)

Now you don’t have to do a whole page using the ombre effect…you can just apply it to a small section.  As shown in the below layout, simply layering several different shades of paper is a cute way to add a little color graduation.  All those Gracie greens were perfect to play with!  Thanks SP – your beautiful kits make it super-simple to mix and match!  Actually, this month’s easy-as-pie template challenge {21}, with all its paper strips, would be perfect to try out a touch of ombre.  What do you think?…like to give it a go?

Other ways you could incorporate a little ombre:

• Do you love your flower clusters? (I do!!)  Well, why not try same-color clusters that gradually fade across the page, or within the cluster itself.
• How about photo editing?  Make use of your gradient tools to jazz up your photos.  You could even apply this technique to any plain or patterned paper, while I’m thinking about it!  And, see the doodled frame and “focus on ombre” title at the top of this post…well, I created a funky gradient overlay to coordinate with the set of images.  Fun, fun!!
• Make use of elements that are already ‘ombre-like’.  For example the little espresso-brown felt flower in the Gracie kit or the grass-scalloped paper in Clementine.
• Don’t forget about your hybrid projects!

Before I finish this post I just HAVE TO share my favorite ombre pic!  (sourced from here)  It couldn’t get any sweeter?!! :o)

Thank you for joining me today!  Have a beautiful (and safe!) weekend and we’ll see you on Monday for Layout of the Week!  (Have you been posting?!! – we LOOOVE seeing what you create) :o)

KylieInspiration, Uncategorized 5 Comments

Hello everyone, it’s Kim.  I’m here today to bring back a blog feature that we haven’t done in a while… a Thursday Thievery!  I have personally always enjoyed these posts, so I’m glad to share some scraplifting fun today.  You might ask, “What is Thursday Thievery?”  This is where we pick a layout from one of our lovely team members and the rest of us create our own scraplifted version of the layout.

So what layout are we going to “steal” today?  Let me tell you, it was hard to pick just one!  But the layout I chose is one I’ve had my eye on for a while… “Sweet Nothings” by Casharina!

There are many things I love about this layout, but here’s what jumped out at me for my scraplift.  Number one, the cluster of stitched frames.  I could think of a LOT of frames and stitching from the shoppe that would make a great cluster of pictures, and so this was a must for my layout.  Number two, the simple dot border.  I like its simplicity and that it is pulled a little in from the outside edges of the layout.  I think I tend to use borders along the edge of my page, so I wanted to try pulling it in a little this time.  And number three, the placement of the elements.  Casharina has placed the elements just right in her layout, and I used that as a guide for mine.

Before I show you my scraplifts (because I couldn’t stop with one… I made TWO!), I’ll share what happens a lot to me when I start to scraplift a layout.  I see something in the gallery that is oh-so-perfect and think I just have to create a layout like that.  And sometimes, my layout does resemble the one I first saw.  But quite often, my own style takes over and the resulting layout might not actually look much like the original one.  I know it’s still inspired by what I saw because I know my thought process.  But it’s also quite different.  Does that happen to you??  This is what makes the Thursday Thievery posts fun to me… seeing how each person notices different things in a layout and seeing how they interpret the inspiration.

So here goes… This is my first scraplift of Casharina’s layout.

And here is my second scraplift (I think this one is a bit more of an exact scraplift than the first).

How about the layouts from the rest of the team?  Here is Rosy‘s.  Love the stamps and the beautiful pops of red.

Kylie‘s layout is seriously too cute!  And I love that she chose to use a couple of different photo frames in her cluster.

Jenelle‘s layout is full of goodness from the Gracie kit.  And what a great “everyday moment” to capture, as we’ve been talking about on the blog recently.

I hope you’ve enjoyed a little bit of thievery today!  As always, we’d love to see your scraplifts (and all your lovely layouts) in our gallery.  Thank you, Casharina, for letting us be inspired by you today!  You can browse through her gallery for more inspiration.  Bye-bye for today, but be sure and stop by tomorrow as Kylie shares some colorful inspiration!

KimInspiration, Uncategorized 6 Comments