I'm the Guest Designer at American Crafts this week!!!!!

Holy cow!!!!  I can't believe that I was asked to be a guest designer for American Crafts this week!  I am so so thrilled and honored to be able to work for such an amazing company!!  You can read my post on the AC blog HERE.  I would love for you to comment!

Expecting the baby late July or early August really limited our travel plans for the summer.  We had to find some creative, yet cool things to do to beat the Houston heat!!  So this page is about our summer “Staycation”. We go to The Little Gym and library weekly, and it helps that we have a pool in our backyard to help us stay cool!

This photo was taken on the dock of my parents cottage in central New York.  The wood of the deck inspired me to use the woodgrain paper as my background.  I wanted to mimic the feel of small drops of water splashing from the waves, so I used some bits of white paint on the background.  There are also some tiny sequins scattered on the page from the “Delights” stickers.  I hand cut out the waves and added a 2^nd layer that was popped up on top of the first.

Every summer we travel back “home” to central New York to enjoy the Finger Lakes and the St. Lawrence River.  I always do a page about our summer trip (which we took very early this year).  I printed a few small photos of some highlights of the trip and used them on this page.  I wanted to keep the design a bit more simple since the photos were smaller and had a lot of detail.  The Macaw Thickers were actually white, but I wanted a bit more colors, so I misted them with some spray mists.  

When I think of the Margarita collection and the Campy Trails collection, I think of vacation!  So I decided to make some simple, fun luggage tags that would be durable enough to withstand travel conditions.  I started with an 8x8” page protector, folded it in half and creased it.  Then I machine stitched on both sides of the crease, along the bottom, and up the side, leaving the top open as a pocket.  I then cut the page protector down the crease to create two, 4”x8” pockets (which I ended up trimming down) to about 4”x5” pockets).  I simply cut some patterned paper to fit inside the pocket and decorated one side with paper and phrases.  I did not add anything bulky because I wanted it to be flat.  On the back side of the paper I added a sticker where I can write my contact information.  I punched some holes in the page protector and threaded some ribbon through to tie it to the bag!  Wouldn’t this make a great, simple project to do with kids right before you go on vacation?  Or maybe you could customize a tag and give it as a gift to surprise someone with a trip!

The Campy Trails Just Write cards have some great phrases on them!  I used two of the same Just Write card and cut out the mountains on the 2^nd one and popped them on top of the first card to give it dimension.  The chipboard tree border is also popped off a bit.  I had cut the little stars and added some glitter glue here and there for some sparkle.

When I saw the Cha-Cha paper, it reminded me of umbrellas at the beach.  I wanted to make them a bit 3-D, so I scored them and folded them to make them pleat and stand off the card a little.  I misted the sand and sky with spray inks, and used some toothpicks for the umbrella poles!  The beach towels are one of the barcode patterned paper strips.

I have been meaning to make a mini album of our trip from last fall for some time, and when I first saw the Campy Trails line, I knew it was perfect!  I used an acrylic and chipboard calendar kit with a stand for this album.  I painted the edges of the acrylic covers with a mossy green paint, and then inked with a brown Stazon ink.  I really wanted the photo of the brightly colored tree over the water to stand out, so I used it behind the acrylic.  The inside pages have a fairly simple format: each open set of pages is covered with patterned paper and I used a contrasting paper for a border on the left side, which I punched.  On some of the pages I used a chipboard border instead.  In between each set of pages I added a tag where I did my journaling on the back. The tabs on the bottom of each page were covered with some of the barcode patterned paper strips.

As always, I just love American Crafts stuff, and had a fantastic time creating these projects!  Maybe NEXT YEAR I can make the team!  :)