Simple Stories

Howdy!  Layle here with you for Day 5 of the Simple Stories & A Flair for Buttons Product Swap! 

Both design teams have swapped products and will be sharing on our blogs all week long.  Join us for some great inspiration as well as a chance to win a prize package from both A Flair for Buttons & Simple Stories! 

Even better, A Flair for Buttons has created these custom flair to coordinate with our Summer Vibes collection for both teams to use this week!

You can pick up your own FUN custom Summer Vibes Flair here!

Today design team member Nancy Damiano joins us with this super fun layout - 
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Hi there Simple fans and welcome to the A Flair for Buttons blog hop!   Today I'm using the Summer Vibes collection to highlight one of my favorite vacation photos. Plain white card stock is the perfect backdrop for big doses of color in this collection. 

​To frame out the coordinating flair, I created little nests of machine stitching to add texture and draw attention to the design. 

​Sprinkles of tiny circle punches draw attention to the embellishment clusters and add a little pop of color to the background.

​Surrounding the photo with a chipboard frame, die cuts and a transparency from the Summer Vibes collection is a great way to highlight a favorite photo. I like how the text in the custom flair adds words to the center of the design without distracting from the overall look. Using flair is one of my favorite ways to embellish a page. I placed them in a visual triangle so that they could lead the eye through the page. The custom match made it a snap to use!

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Now for even more fun!!  Enter via the Rafflecopter widget below and we'll draw one lucky winner on Sunday to win a Summer Vibes prize pack!  

Howdy!  Layle here with you for Day 4 of the Simple Stories & A Flair for Buttons Product Swap! 

Both design teams have swapped products and will be sharing on our blogs all week long.  Join us for some great inspiration as well as a chance to win a prize package from both A Flair for Buttons & Simple Stories! 

Even better, A Flair for Buttons has created these custom flair to coordinate with our Summer Vibes collection for both teams to use this week!

You can pick up your own FUN custom Summer Vibes Flair here!

Today design team member Kristine Davidson joins us with this summery pocket page spread - 
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It's Kristine Davidson here today and I'm happy to share a pocket page spread featuring Summer Vibes.  These are photos of my nieces and nephew from a beach vacation last summer. Our summer here on the East Coast is a bit slow this year!!

The colors in the Summer Vibe collection are perfect for beach and summer photos. Since most of my pictures were brown .. of sand it was great to mix in some fun colors in this spread.

I used the Flair Buttons on top of my pocket pages - i like that better than inside my pockets - it just gives me less clump in my pages ;-)

Here are a few close up pictures of my pages.

I added chipboard pieces and also diecuts on my cards for a bit of extra decorating. I love doing that -- it's always so easy to make a spread when you have coordinating pieces of a collection.

This is the right side of my spread. I carried over the theme of adding diecuts, and chipboard pieces as well as flair on top of my pockets again.

and a few close ups again.  Don't you love the colors in this collection? Perfect for Summer !!

Thanks for coming to visit today, and I hope you feel inspired to scrapbook those beach pictures you've been hoarding!  Enjoy creating with your Simple Stories collections ;) For more of my work you can visit my blog kristinedavidson.com or on instragram @KristineDavidson .

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Now for even more fun!!  Enter via the Rafflecopter widget below and we'll draw one lucky winner on Sunday to win a Summer Vibes prize pack!  

Howdy!  Layle here with you for Day 3 of the Simple Stories & A Flair for Buttons Product Swap! 

Both design teams have swapped products and will be sharing on our blogs all week long.  Join us for some great inspiration as well as a chance to win a prize package from both A Flair for Buttons & Simple Stories! 

Even better, A Flair for Buttons has created these custom flair to coordinate with our Summer Vibes collection for both teams to use this week!

You can pick up your own FUN custom Summer Vibes Flair here!

Today design team member Cari Locken joins us with two - 
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Howdy!  Layle here with you for Day 2 of the Simple Stories & A Flair for Buttons Product Swap! 

Both design teams have swapped products and will be sharing on our blogs all week long.  Join us for some great inspiration as well as a chance to win a prize package from both A Flair for Buttons & Simple Stories! 

Even better, A Flair for Buttons has created these custom flair to coordinate with our Summer Vibes collection for both teams to use this week!

You can pick up your own FUN custom Summer Vibes Flair here!

Today design team member Marie Lottermoser joins us with a sunny, summery SN@P! Binder - 
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Hi Everyone!  Marie here today to share the beginning of my summer album. As the weather warms up I can't wait to include all my favorite summer things from popsicles to beach trips in my album.

I started off by using a die cut from the SN@P! Journal Pages to create a divider page to separate out the season and year from the rest of my album.  I punched out a 2" circle of striped paper and layered a flair button right on top.  I love these flair buttons, and am using several of them throughout my pages.

I followed that up with a 2x2 grid page of my favorite summer things. I added in several small chipboard frames which fit perfectly in the pocket pages and make great accents for stickers and another flair badge.

Summer just isn't summer without a trip to the fair.  On this page I layered a transparency (which is included in the Summer Vibes collection) over my photo.  It's a simple way to add a pop of color to a photograph.

Next I used a foldover Journal Page and punched a 2 inch circle on one side.

Now when the Journal Page is folded over, a flair badge peeks through the opening.  One tip, punch out your circle before you glue down your flair badge to make sure you have proper placement.

So that's a look at how my summer album is coming together.  I hope you'll join me this summer in documenting all of your favorite memories!
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Now for even more fun!!  Enter via the Rafflecopter widget below and we'll draw one lucky winner on Sunday to win a Summer Vibes prize pack!  

a Rafflecopter giveaway

After you enter, head on over to the A Flair for Buttons blog to see what their team has created.  Make sure to enter there as well - they're giving away $50 worth of flair both here & on their blog!

Want to follow A Flair for Buttons and keep up with all of their great projects & products?  Here you go!

Join us again here tomorrow for more inspiring projects!

Howdy!  Layle here with you today.  We've got a fun week planned for you - a Simple Stories & A Flair for Buttons Product Swap! 

Both design teams have swapped products and will be sharing on our blogs all week long.  Join us for some great inspiration as well as a chance to win a prize package from both A Flair for Buttons & Simple Stories! 

Even better, A Flair for Buttons has created these custom flair to coordinate with our Summer Vibes collection for both teams to use this week!

You can pick up your own FUN custom Summer Vibes Flair here!

Today design team member Allison Davis joins us with this super, summery layout -
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Happy Summer! Finally! I don’t know about you but I have been counting down the days until Summer time. We always try to find a beach to visit during our family summer vacations and I can’t wait for this year. I had never been to a beach until I was in my thirties (crazy, right!?) and let me tell you, I’m hooked. So is my 10-year-old, Drew. He’s like a natural born beach bum. We can’t get him out of the water whenever we go. He’ll spend hours running into the crashing waves and laughing when they knock him over. It’s always fun to watch!

 

Just like I look forward to our beach time every year, I always find myself looking forward to seeing what summer collection Simple Stories puts together. Summer Vibes will go down as one of my favorites and paired with A Flair For Buttons, it’s a recipe for fun! 

 

Here’s a look at my layout using both of these fun products:

 

 

I used A Flair For Buttons in combination with the Simple Stories Bradz, enamel dots, and small circle stickers to create a spray of circles across the whole layout.

 

 

 

For the title of my layout I couldn’t resist using the die cut “beach” arrow.

 

 

Here’s a closer look at some of the details:

 

 

 

Now for even more fun!!  Enter via the Rafflecopter widget below and we'll draw one lucky winner on Sunday to win a Summer Vibes prize pack!  

a Rafflecopter giveaway

After you enter, head on over to the A Flair for Buttons blog to see what their team has created.  Make sure to enter there as well - they're giving away $50 worth of flair both here & on their blog!

Want to follow A Flair for Buttons  and keep up with all of their great projects & products?  Here you go!

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/a-flair-for-buttons/206543772766342

Instagram: @aflairforbuttons

Blog: http://scrappergirl.typepad.com/aflairforbuttons/

Join us again here tomorrow for more inspiring projects!

Hi!  It's Chantalle back with you again today, sharing one last layout -  Summertime Selfie using the Summer Vibes collection. This is a way to demonstrate how one can use embellishments to help tell a story.

The photo was taken in the early summer weeks. My son rode his first roller coaster with me and I took a quick snap to mark the occasion. I loved the lens flair in the shot. I couldn’t believe my eyes when it matched up perfectly with the flair in the gorgeous bokeh print on the sheet of ‘Shine On’. I’ve made the text on the chipboard frame part of my title by setting it close to the ’Summertime’ die cut shape from the Summer Vibes ‘Bits & Pieces’ pack.

The camera print photo overlay sparked the use of lots of camera shapes. I cut them out of a 12x12 sheet of ’Selfie’ as well as the smaller version from the 6x6 Pad.

When using lots of similar shaped embellishments, vary the size if possible and raise individuals at different heights to keep interest.

Thank you so much for stopping by the last 2 days! If you would like to see more of what I get up to, feel free to pop in to my blog (copasetique.blogspot.com) or you can find me on FB and Instagram @chantallemcdaniel.

Hi!  It's Chantalle, back again today with another layout, this time featuring the So Rad collection.  I have been itching to use this picture of my DS against a painted mural, which was taken on a recent trip to Bondi Beach in Sydney. I just love how these two hot dogs coordinate with their cool sunglasses! ‘So Rad' could not be a more perfect fit for capturing this moment on paper.

I was inspired by the artistic print on this So Rad ‘Chillin’. I wanted to build on the theme by adding a Gesso base. Simply applied with an old loyalty card, it adds to the painted elements and also provides a more focused area on which to build up my photo layers.

Once the gesso was dry, I added an ‘extreme awesome’ 12 inch sticker from the So Rad  Fundamentals sticker sheet. I really love that these stickers are a full 12 inches in length. It can be annoying when one goes to use a sticker like this and it doesn’t fit all the way across the page. By placing it diagonally. I am creating continuation with this awesome ‘extreme awesome’ photo overlay, which comes as a bonus in the So Rad collection kit!

Add a touch of grunge by distressing chipboard stickers with a sanding block. Under my photo I have adhered a pocket horizontally. You will find a couple of these handy guys, as well as some super cute die cut shapes in the So Rad Sn@p Cards pack. I’ve journalled on a 3x4 card from the pack and ever so slightly trimmed it and tucked it into the pocket.

Girl, why fit it?

 

 

The 4x6 SN@P! card and its statement was a perfect match for this image of my little girl, working her usual sass! I often find myself amazed by her outgoing personality and sense of humour. She’s definitely a force to be reckoned with! I need to remember that she has her own path to follow and I must encourage her to be the beautiful rainbow that she is.

 

 

The feather shapes were also a big drawcard for me. I’ve taken the various sizes from the chipboard stickers and the die cut elements and added a couple more in the form of some stamping as well as some die cut shapes which I created with a metal die and gold foil paper in my Cuttlebug.

 

I then had some fun layering all these elements and adding a few details like machine stitching, enamel dots and tiny pops of inky splatters.

Check back later today for the layout I created using to the So Rad collection!

Hi everyone, it's Audrey, with a couple of patriotic projects to share with you today. So, the Fourth of July is almost here, and that means it's time for long lazy days, summer barbeques, and the good ol' red, white, and blue. Perfect time for Simple Stories' new 12x12 Simple Set - Stars & Stripes. Now I am absolutely crazy over patriotic colors and theme, so this new collection is right up my alley. Of course they are perfect for the Fourth of July, but I think they work really well all summer long, or all year long, for that matter. I think my favorite thing from this collection has got to be that adorable VW Buggy, so that's right what I've went for in my projects today. First up, a quick and easy home decor frame. This frame uses one of the larger 4x6 journaling cards, which is absolutely perfect for slipping into a standard 5x7 frame. I had just enough room for a couple of layers of papers underneath, and because I removed the glass, I could build up layers on top, too. I simply added a twine tie, and a few Stars & Stripes stickers. Thought the scalloped border made an awesome "road" for my buggy to cruise on. Super simple, and fun. And because I love that little Buggy so much, I made a matching card using the smaller VW cardstock sticker. A 3x4 journaling card is the perfect size for my little arrangement, and I love that the cards do half of the design work for me with all the fun printed details. I simply added stickers for the image, as well as a pair for the greeting. I popped some of them up with foam dots for definition and depth. Have a problem adhering stickers with foam tape without catching every stray fuzzy floating around? Place your foam adhesive onto the back of the sticker, and then try patting the remaining sticky spots with an embossing powder tool, baby powder, or even cornstarch. The powder will stick to the sticker, so the fuzzies can't. Happy Summer! 

Hello, again!   This is Amber, founder and creative director of Simple Stories.  I'm here for another installment of my monthly Document IT blog feature; however, this month I'm taking a break from my regular series to talk about documenting life in a different way based on a recent experience that deeply affected our family, and particularly our teenage daughter.

At Simple Stories, we produce product that help you capture your story.  Sometimes our stories are full of love, happiness and goodness – but sometimes there’s loss, heartache and sadness.   It’s important we document ALL of our stories from the happiness to the heartache, as evidenced earlier this month.  

On Monday, June 1 our 13 year old daughter received a message that 4 of her friends were missing.  They were part of a group of 7 that were boating in a local lake when a sudden storm hit the area and they were thrown into the cold waters when their boat capsized.  Although everyone inside the boat was wearing a life jacket, the water temperature was 53 degrees.

I can’t put into words how devastating this news was, especially for our daughter.  These were our friends and neighbors; girls our daughter went to school with, hung out with and were just at our house for an end-of-year school party.   We stayed up late with her that night to wait for news.  Tuesday morning the final report was heartbreaking - 4 of the 7 boaters did not survive, including two of her friends, as well as the father and sister of one of the girls.  One of the hardest things was telling our daughter the news that her friends were gone.

Our hearts were broken and we couldn’t imagine what their families were going through.  As a mother, my heart ached for these families that had lost their girls.  I thought a lot about what I could do to help. I knew others felt the same way, especially the girls' group of friends that were struggling with the news as well.

As a memory keeper,  I know two of the most precious gifts can be memories and photos.  I felt it was important for us to share this with the families that had lost so much. We wanted to do something special to remember these special girls, so we gathered our daughter's friends together to create a keepsake album for each family.   I had the kids send me photos of the girls that they'd like to share in the album.  

This gave our daughter and her friends a chance to talk about their feelings and unite together to support and share their love for the girls that had died - an extremely therapeutic process for these teenagers.

This grew from having a group of teenagers in our family room sharing their memories and writing special messages for the girls to having the albums available at the candlelight vigil for the community to also write messages to put in the albums.

It was a very humbling experience for me to put together the final albums, combining photographs of the girls along with messages from their friends and members of the community.  I'm so thankful for the opportunity to give something to the girls' families to help remember their daugthers and to know just how much they are loved and will be missed.  

We created some special sentiments specifically for these albums that I wanted to share with you this month for the free printables.  As I mentioned earlier, It’s important we document ALL of our stories from the happiness to the heartache.  It is my hope that these printables may help you document any heartache in your life that you may have experienced.

Click here to download June's Free Life Documented Printables.

Hey everyone, Amy here to share 2 layouts I created with the some of the new lines Simple Stories has just released.  I'm sure you've already checked them out, but if you haven't, head on over to the website to see them.

First, I grabbed the Summer Vibes line to work with. Oh my word, I adore this line.  The papers, the embellishments, they are all fabulous!  I couldn't wait to use it on this layout of my daughter and her brother. Here's the layout I created.

Here are some closeups.  The photo sticker was the perfect addition to the picture.

If you've followed my work, you know I usually use the frames for my journaling, but this time I cut out the cute geo tag from one of the sn@p! cards to put inside.

I mean, it this not the cutest line ever?  

Hello Simple Stories fans! Nancy here with a colorful and happy layout using the Summer Vibes collection. My favorite season to scrapbook is summer and this collection does not disappoint. I love the playful icons and pretty patterns.

I started with a list in mind about all the things we love to do (big and small) during the summer.

A few swipes of acrylic paint in an ombre shade created a shelf to ground the rows and rows of die cuts, chipboard and enamel dots from the Summer Vibes collection.

The title is completed neutral and almost fades into the background. I added a row of machine stitching and a date stamp to call just a little bit of attention to it.

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​Have you tried using leftover bits and pieces from your Simple Stories collections to decorate your planner? That’s just what I did with what was left on my desk after completing this layout.

I got a head start with my August calendar this month. I kept the decoration simple on the calendar with just a few stickers and grey number stickers in random days. 

I added most of my décor in the center of the calendar with a large flag die cut from the Summer Vibes Journal Pages pack.

I trimmed down another of the Journal Pages with a favorite poem and added to the banner with some machine stitching to highlight the words.

The pockets are filled with a summer photo and pretty patterns.

​The opposite side includes a picture from last summer and a fun confetti pocket and chipboard camera.

I’d rather add the décor in pocket pages than right on to the calendar – I need that space for writing and planning!

Hi Simple Stories fans!  It's Ashley Horton and I'm stopping in today, to share two new layouts with you for June!  How is it June already??!!  Time flies when you're having fun!  And I must admit, that I am having tons of fun with the new collections from Simple Stories.  On today's layouts, I worked with the Summer Vibes collection and the So Fancy collection.  
 

I'll start off with my layout, using Summer Vibes, since summer is now upon us!  There is a little touch of a vintage vibe to this collection and I really love it!  I started my layout by choosing one of my favorite patterns to work with...wood grain!  The wood grain paper from the Summer Vibes Simple Basics Kit made a perfect background for my layout, and worked great with the large title I had in mind.
 

 

I chose the "You Can Never Have Too Much Happy" phrase from the Simple Stories images in the Silhouette Store.  Before cutting the phrase, I created an offset image in Silhouette Studio and used a Black sketch pen to draw out the phrase on my paper.  Then I deleted the offset lines and went back and cut the phrase by placing my blade back in the machine.  Once the cutting finished, I backed each of the words with a different patterned paper from the Summer Vibes 6x6 Patterned Paper Pad.
 

 

I enlarged the title to fill up my background, but created a space in between the last two lines of the phrase.  This gave me the perfect spot for adding my photos and a mix of embellishments from the Summer Vibes collection.  I created dimension by layering the Chipboard Frames, Chipboard Stickers, Bradz, Bits & Pieces and stickers.
 

 

If you're looking for fun ways to incorporate cut files and large titles in your layouts, then make sure you check out the Simple Stories portfolio in the Silhouette Store.  There are tons of great cut files that coordinate with each of the Simple Stories collections!
 

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Now, it's time to go girly with the new So Fancy collection!  I have two daughters and the So Fancy papers and embellishments are perfect for your girly layouts.  I snapped a photo of our oldest daughter on a recent family vacation, and I wanted to pair it with this collection.
 

 

The idea for the design of this layout, started with the cards from the So Fancy SN@P pack.  I chose three that I wanted to use to create a grid design on my layout, along with my photo.  Before I placed the cards and photo on the background paper, I added a messy stitched circle with my sewing machine.  Then I started layering the cards and my photo.
 

 

I also did something on this layout that's a little different for me.  I didn't create a separate title for the layout.  A lot of the cards in the SN@P packs have great phrases on them, so I decided to use "You Make My World Sparkle" from the top card, as the title for my layout.  And the bottom two cards worked great as supporting sentiments for the layout.
 

 

Since I had the stitched circle in the background, I thought it would be fun to contrast the grid shape, by adding my embellishments in a circle around the grid.  I went through the Bits & Pieces pack, stickers, enamel dots and Bradz to pull out embellishments that would work well around the circle.  And I even pulled out a couple of wood veneer pieces from the I AM collection, to add a different texture to the layout!
 

So next time you're looking for a different design element on your layout, take out your SN@P! pack and build your page off of some of your favorite cards from the pack!