Audrey's Reflection: Guest Designer for AMERICAN CRAFTS!

I am so thrilled and just EXCITED to have been asked to be a guest designer again for American Crafts! (I was a GD back in 2011...I look at my old stuff and cringe a little! Ha!). If you know me or have been following my blog, you know that I have always LOVED AC products.

I was assigned the theme of scrapping in 30 minutes or less.

EXCUSE ME????? Um, are you KIDDING? I usually spend 2-3 hours on a page, easy. I'm a slow scrapper. Although it probably doesn't help that I procrastinate a lot while scrapping...checking FB and Pinterest, etc.

Since I have been in a little bit of a rut lately, I decided that this was the perfect thing to get me out. So my approach was this: spend time PLANNING so when I actually sat down to scrap, then I only worked 30 minutes. To do this, I thought first about the photos I wanted to work with to go along with the LOVELY Shimelle and Amy Tan Plus One papers.

Once I had those picked out, I thought a few days about how I would use the products I was given and how to layout my page. I spent a lot of time just *thinking* during the day. I drew a simple sketch in my notebook when I had a vision in mind. Then, I finally sat down to scrap. I quickly picked out papers, and mostly focused on using the Die Cuts and Stickers for embellishments.

For my first page, I simply took out the number die cuts (and few others from the pack) and placed them in rows. There was also a "3" sticker in the sticker book, so I just popped that off a punched piece of paper to emphasize it. Then just a cluster of embellies on the bottom left, and some fussy cut circles on the top right.

The key to this page was using a background paper that already had somewhat of a layout design on it...the blue strip on the left is already on the background.

For my 2nd page, again I focused on using die cuts and minimal papers. I just added a few strips of paper to the bottom and layered some die cuts behind the photos. Also, I find that using a grid design is a great time saver and is easily embellished.

Finally, my last page was heavy on the planning, and when I sat down to do it, it went really quickly! My photo was about my quilts that I've made, so I knew I wanted to use a "quilted" background. I cut squares from several papers, and then cut some of them on the diagonal to create my background stars.

Then I tried something that I have never done before: free motion stitching on paper!! If you don't know what free motion stitching is, basically, you lower your feed dogs and have to move the paper around under your needle. Think of your needle as a pen and you "draw" with the thread.

After that, I just added the photo with some vellum and again a few stickers and die cuts. Easy peasy!

My card was also pretty quick to make. Just some strips of paper cut into long, thin triangles, stitched down the middle, and then the center covered with a die cut.

Finally, an altered project. In 30 minutes. This was a tough one, so I decided to just keep it simple. I had a package of the Shimelle wood veneers right in front of me, and I knew I wanted to use them. So I came up with the simple plan of adding some paper to the back, coloring in the fronts with some markers and gel pens, and covering with Mod Podge.

Once dry, I punched a hole and added them to my keychain!! A simple keychain charm! I was thinking that adding some initials to the heart piece would be so cute!