Let´s keep our favorite moments of the year in a very special way… Since seeing the Best Year Ever Collection for the first time, I knew what I wanted to do with it. I love to choose the most special moment of every month and remember it in a very special way. Today I´m going to show you the mini album that I created to keep all of those special moments in one place. My 2020 is going to be amazing! I´m Maria Celeste and I hope you find this idea really inspiring…

The Best Year Ever Collection is full of details and the colors are so beautiful. I love the fact that every month has a wonderful and individual color palette. We can combine all of the products from the collection and add our personal touch. You are going to see that I add twine and a bit of sewing.

You can make this mini album in any size you want. I cut 5 pieces of stable cardboard : #1- 4 ½” w x 7” h, #2- 2” w x 7” h, #3- 6” w x 7” h, #4- 2 ¼” w x 7” h, #5- 2” w x 7”h. I used one of the collection papers and white textured paper to cover all the pieces plus adding more details with one of the washi tape designs. I combined both types of papers and placed a piece of washi tape at the top for the spine of the album adding beautiful detail. For the inside of your mini album, combine as many papers as you like. I love playing with all the designs!

As we have twelve months in a year I decided to make an interior structure like an accordion. I found it easy to see and really lovely. Even your kids are going to enjoy decorating and adding details to it. For my mini album I cut a piece of white cardsotck paper of 42 ½” w x 6 ¾” h. I scored it in 5 ¾” (7 times) and 3/8” in between (6 times). So you are going to score 5 3/4" + 3/8" and will repeat till you complete all of your paper width. The accordion structure is super easy to make and wonderful to create … I'm a huge fan of it!

When I have all pf the structure ready… the magic begins as I like to say! My absolute favorite part of the process is… decorating. It's time to combine all details and make magic with our hands. You are going to see that for my cover I used some of the stickers. But I must say that I transformed them into chipboards using heavyweigth paper. Practical, easy to do and they look amazing! I also prepared some paper rosettes for the background and cut some numbers of glitter paper. Keep a bit of twine always near you and use two brads for closing your mini album. Cover is ready!

I have fallin in love with The Best Year Ever Collection from Simple Stories… Stikers, chipboards, die cuts, enamels dots, brads… it is all so beautiful! So now it´s time to prepared a page for every month. Feel free to combine everything as you like. Mix textures, add rossettes, pieces of papers, sewing details… The most important thing to remember is to leave as much free space as we can for your photograps and to have room to journal about every moment.

As you can see… I love mixing chipboard, bits & pieces, twine, buttons, cardstock... everything! For me creating is an adventure and I enjoy every moment of it. Decorating is the most wonderful and happy time!

Another idea for this mini album is to prepare cards to journal on as you think about your special moments of every month and also add more photograps… So many lovely moments can be keep in this wonderful mini album! I hope you like this idea and I would love to see your own creations. Let´s make 2020 the most wonderful year! Thanks for taking the time to visit my blog post! I just love sharing what I do! See you next time!

Hi there!

Nathalie with you today bringing you a new layout all about those sweet memories of Easter Egg hunts.   I think we all have memories of our children (or younger us) enjoying all the egg hunt finds, and what better way to enjoy them than to document them with the new Simple Stories Hip Hop Hooray collection.  It is just the perfect Easter and also Spring collection.

I created a simple design for the page so that i can mix all the beautiful paper colors and cute embellishments.  First i used the Butterflies stencil and some white texture paste to create a few impressions on a piece of the 6x8 wood grain paper. 

Since both my little (niece and nephew) are wearing bunny ears, i quickly chose the Hippity Hop paper for the background of the page.  First i chose a strip of the Puddle Jumper paper as an anchor for the page.  I decided to keep add a few more paper layers behind the paper strip from the 6x8 paper pad and Hello Peeps paper.

I used the Bunny Tails and Hello Peeps paper to back the pictures, and then set them on the wood grain paper piece ( once the texture paste impression had dried).  I set the paper on the middle of the page and  then started adding embellishments around the photos and paper strips.  With so many cute and colorful embellishments it was easy to mix and match them on the page.

The cute little bunny embellishments are so adorable, and so perfect to embellish the title of the page.  I combined the sentiments from the Bits and Pieces and Combo Sticker sheet to create the title at the bottom of the page.  Here i added the bunnies and a few more embellishments in a large cluster.  To finalize the page, I used the Hip Hop Hooray stamp set to add a few sentiments to the page.

I just love all the color and cheery nature of the page.   The textures in the paste, papers and embellishments complement the picture of my littles nicely.  I am sure that you are going to love documenting your Easter/ Spring memories with the new Simple Stories HIP HOP HOORAY collection, make sure to check it out!

Til' next time.

Hi Friends, It’s Dorymar today! This is my first project as a 2020 Creative Team Designer, I’m super excited to be back on the team. This 2020 will be a very creative year! Today I share with you a Gorgeous Snap Album with the New I AM Collection; I love every piece of this collection. Over the years this is one of my favorite Simple Stories collections, what I like most about this collection is that we as scrapers are always behind the camera, looking to document every perfect moment with our loved ones, but this collection allows you create from you and set aside everyone else. LOL!!!

The collection is full of refreshing colors and patterns, but as I love bright colors I wanted to focus on the pink and bluish tones. That's why I decided to select the 6x8 Pink Snap Binder, because it is super bright and will stand out perfectly with the golden details that the collection has.

For the cover, I selected various patterned papers and snap cards to create layers.  I selected the 3x4 card as a title of my album, around the card I added a file line with a gold pen and some cutest elements from the chipboard’s sticker.  To add texture, I added one of the new brads and enamel dots. To finish my cover and give a personal touch I added a gold twine on top of the side of the album. I am in love with the result!

This collection has so many beautiful elements that I wanted to use as many as I could. Inside the cover I created a series of pockets, full of space for journaling and photos, as well as using a lot of goodies from the collection. It’s gorgeous!

One of the new products that I liked the most, are the gold words, I used them in several parts of the project, above you can see how they stand out in the dividers of the album, in the pocket pages and in the journaling cards.   They look spectacula

Who doesn't like to create your own embellishments? Here you can see how I used the die cuts and stickers to create a fun piece to the pocket page.

The new decorative brads have a great variety of pieces, among them some ephemera with built-in brads that are beautiful, on the page you can see how I added it between the pieces and it is perfect to add phrases, dates or just some sticker with a message.

I love to create a layout for my dividers, they give me the opportunity to make different designs to add photos of different sizes. Here, I added space for 2x2 pictures and used the fun 2x2 cards to decorate it.

To add more golden elements, I used a golden page from my shelves and used my digital cut machine to cut some tabs from the Simple Stories design in the Silhouette Store. This gave the project a cute touch

I hope you've enjoyed a peek inside my snap album using the I AM collection and inspired you to create your own one.

Hello Simple Stories friends! Anya here today and I would like to share with you a few cards that I created using the gorgeous “Simple Vintage Garden District” collection and a few cardmaking tips along the way. Here are all the cards we will be looking at today:

For my first two cards I used a sheet of patterned paper with 2x2” elements. I have shared a similar card idea before, but is is totally OK to repeat your favorite designs! With all the beautiful cut apart pieces Simple Stories provides in each paper lines, I feel like creating same card for every collection.

To create these cards I used six coordinating 2x2” element pieces for each card that were cut to 1.75” squares and adhered to a piece of white cardstock. I stitched around three of them with sewing machine to add texture and adhered that whole piece to a white card base. These pieces are pretty enough you don't need a whole lot of other decorations. All I did is added a few popped up stickers and a few enamel dots to finish this set of cards.

Next two card have an opening at the bottom instead of the usual side. To make them a little unique, I made the front panel a little shorter with a rounded edge. To create round edge you can use a plain desert plate as a template as I did here. I covered the bottom of the back panel with 2” strip of gingham patterned paper and decorated the front as usual.

Layers always look good in any project. I love adding layers to my cards, and sometimes I fell like adding more layers, while other times I like to leave them on a clean and simple side. Here I want to show you same cards with less and more decorations and you decide which option you like best.

This first option has enough layers and looks good just like that, but I also wanted to show you that adding a few more pieces also looks great. I found green foliage pieces and butterflies and added those on top of layered frames. Play with your choices and find the best balance that makes your eyes happy when you create.

And for my last card today I used three rolls of washi tape to create the background piece. I trimmed a piece of white cardstock and added strips of washi tape alternating colors and patterns that looked good to me.

After covering the whole piece you can either cut off edges or fold them to the back as I did here. I adhered this piece to another piece of white cardstock and then adhered everything to a card base.

From this point I treated it as a usual card with a piece of background paper. Added a piece of white die cut circle gave me a good spot to add decorations. Keep in mind, that our background is bright and colorful enough and does not require a whole lot of decorations. A few popped up elements and enamel dots finished this card.

I hope you found these tips helpful and may try applying some of them next time you create your own set of cards.

Do you always feel like you are playing "catch up" when it comes to scrapbooking?  I scrapbook a lot and I am able to tell so many stories and yet I feel like I still leave a lot left untold AND pictures left not used.  So when I laid eyes on the Best Year Ever collection, I was completely inspired.  I knew immediately that I could use this collection to capture memories from throughout the year!  I formulated a plan for how I'm going to do this and hope to have a similar approach at the end of each month.  Christine joining you today to take a look at my first layout: January!

Hi! Odessa here with some travel SN@P! pages made with one of the newest Simple Stories collections, Going Places. It’s really cold and wintery where I am still so it’s really nice to spend some time with photos and scrapbook supplies that make me think of warmer days. Travel documenting might just be my favourite kind so I always get so excited at new travel themed collections from Simple Stories.

I used a Teal SN@P! Binder because the teal goes so well with Going Places. I did some simple embellishing to the chipboard cover with one of the papers from the 6x8 Paper Pad, it fits so nicely. I added a tag from the Journal Bits & Pieces and layered on some cute stickers and the new foam stickers. Cute and simple!

I love bright colourful collections like Going Places! Here I had a full sized 6x8 photo and some smaller photos next to it. On the smaller photos I used a mix of the alpha stickers from the 4x6 Sticker Book. A good colour coordinated alpha sticker is a great thing to have and this book has two! I embellished my photos with another foam sticker, some washi disguised as photo corners and a cute camera chipboard sticker amount other things. There are so many great journalling cards in Going Places which is just what I needed to tell a silly story on this page.

Embellishment clusters always! In the corner of the large 6x8 photo of my boys I clustered together Bits & Pieces, stickers, chipboard stickers and more to tell the story using only embellishments. I love the pops of teal, yellow and red in there.

On these pages I used a lot of the teal, yellow and red elements found throughout Going Places because after working on the other page I was really into them. I used a 4x6 journal card with some Bits & Pieces along the edge to segment it. I added in phrase stickers to support my journalling. Above that I used some Here and There Bits & Pieces to support some nature photos  I wanted to include, they tied the photos into the rest of my pages well.

With this beautiful green-blue lake I went heavy on the teal and yellow to accent it. I added a yellow foam sticker along the bottom with a red foam heart to give the page a title. Foam stickers can go a long way when you have a photo you don’t want to embellish too much but tie into the rest of the page. Above it is a journal card with yellow elements along with my favourite pocket. Throughout Going Places there’s a pattern with passports and sunglasses and cameras and all things travel and I just love it! I cut down the cardstock to 3x4 and then added some embellishments on top. Simple but so fun!

I hope you enjoyed this look into my album and are inspired to try out Going Places with some travel pics of your own!

Spring is around the corner and so is Spring decorating! Shellye McDaniel here today with an easy and fun display featuring the adorable "Hip Hop Hooray" Collection.

To begin I started with a clean peanut can and lid.  I covered the can with a strip of the Bunny Tails paper.  Next, I crafted a lid FOR the lid by cutting a circle and 1" strip of paper from the Egg-stra Special paper.  I scored the strip of paper 1/4" from one edge and then cut small slits up to the scoreline so that it would easily mold to the lid. A hot glue gun was used to attach the paper strip and pom trim to the plastic lid.  The circle of paper was finally added with foam adhesive. For the bunny design, it's as easy as twisting a couple of chenille stems together and topping with the chipboard bunny head!

The bunny's dress is simply a disc of patterned paper that was pleated and then attached to the front of the chenille body with hot glue. I also added some pom trim around the bottom edge of the dress.  For the bunny's "petticoat" I folded a yellow cupcake liner into a small triangle and glued under the pleated paper.

To the side of the can I attached the "SPRING" chipboard letters using foam adhesive squares.

I finished dressing the bunny with a mix of stickers, die-cuts, a brad and enamel dots.  And doesn't she look so cute holding the basket with a carrot tucked inside!

All sizes and sorts of bunny faces can be found throughout the collection, so I look forward to trying some different looks for more bunnies!

Thanks for joining me today!

Shellye

Hello Simple Stories friends! It’s Jen today sharing my first project as a member of the 2020 Simple Stories Design Team. To say I’m excited is definitely an understatement, and I’m honestly still pinching myself to be certain it’s real.

Scrapbooking has always been a creative outlet for me and something I do to record my family’s stories so they will be remembered for years to come. However, I am really feeling a need to tell my stories . . . the ones that are hidden in my heart so that my children will really know who I was and what I went through in my youth and young adulthood. With that in mind, this year I will be on a journey to get my story written and I hope you all will accompany me and perhaps be inspired to do the same for yourself. It won’t always be pretty or fun or happy, but it needs to happen and what better way to get started than with the 2020 I Am collection?

For this specific project I am using a SN@P! Robin’s Egg Striped 6x8 Designer Album since it is one of my favorite colors. Before we look at my first spread, here is the outside cover using the I Am 6 x 6 Affirmations stencil, Flower 304904 Simple Stories cut file from the Silhouette Design Store, and title fussy cut from a 4 x 6 SNAP! Card.

Moving to the inside, I created a divider using the same Flower cut file with several I Am patterned papers. Adding dimension to my projects is an absolute must for me; so you will see cut files, paper tearing, stitching, and mixed media elements on most of my projects throughout the year.

The first spread uses a 2x2/4x4 Insta-Pocket Page with a 4x4 Photo Flip. I began by using the I Am Clear Stamp and 4x6 Sticker Book to embellish the top photo. Along the bottom I layered strips of washi tape on the photo and then stitched through them on my machine.

To give each element more texture and dimension, I machine stitched around the borders. I love, love, love stitching on projects to add that little bit of texture.

Inside the Photo Flip is a 4x6 SN@P! Card cut down to size where I added my journaling and a sticker. My second photo uses a bit of torn patterned paper and a sentiment from the I Am Journal Bits & Pieces. To the right of the photo is the other end of the SN@P! I used for journaling with the other half of the previous sticker.

On the opposite side of the spread I used two childhood photos of myself. I did not add any journaling to this side but will as I continue through the album. I decided to keep this side simple with few embellishments and a muted color scheme.

The I Am collection is a perfect beginning for this project and I can’t wait to see where it goes. I hope you are inspired to create today and get your stories recorded!