June's Kits From MCS!! and a Yummy Blog Candy Giveaway!!

First off I just want to say although I know my 'reveal' day posts are long ones, hang on to the end of the post because I've got some fun blog candy to give away!! Also I wanted to let you all know that I've posted a lot of the tutorials I've shared at a side post to the right of my blog to make it easy to find them again as you need them. ...I was so delighted when I saw the new papers and embellishments in the June Limited Edition kit from My Creative Scrapbook!! Such beautiful soft and feminine papers, sweet florals and with a shabby-chic element to them....and loads of coordinating blooms, trims and embellishments! The papers featured in this kit are from Girls Paperie, I cut out some of the floral designs on one of the patterned paper for this l/o and dressed up a cut little die cut dress form with some of the velvet and pearl trim in the kit. Here are some close up details ....


A second l/o I made with this kit I used the cooler pinks (there are some seriously cute die cut papers in this collection!).....I took this picture of my oldest daughter Chloe picking some of the tulips in our garden a couple of weeks ago. When we first moved into our house I planted a whole lotta tulip bulbs so that every Spring we have a nice little cutting gardent to pick from....


I've got to say the hot glue gun is my newest best friend! It worked quick and fast to apply the pearl strand to my layout and the hold is extra strong. Here are some close-up details....


Included in the kit there were some really beautiful Prima blooms and a couple of them had some smokey plum colours in them. So I changed up the look of the kit a bit by using the blooms and some plum colour cardstock along with some of the more 'neutral' papers in the kit to make this l/o....

I find myself doing a lot of machine stitching lately on my photo's and papers, I think it's because I really like a fabric look to my pages, so the more stitching, ribbons and trims, the happier I am! Here are a few close-ups...


And finally I made a 4th l/o with this kit using the lovely feminine floral and polka-dot papers in this kit, I thought they would go nicely with this pic I recently took of my oldest daughter....

TIP: How do you get a nice even and smooth curvy line when cutting out patterned paper? I like to use the Bo Bunny Flex Ruler, it's a long 20" strip that is bendable, you can smooth it out the the exact shape you want (see the floral paper cut above) use it to draw a pencil line on the patterned paper and cut it out....and it even comes in a pretty pink! Here are some close-up shots of this l/o.....


After making 4 l/o's with this kit I still have loads of papers and embellishments left, I know I'm going to be using more of these goodies in future l/o's, love this collection! Now moving on to the Main kit for June from My Creative Scrapbook. This kit had beautiful grass greens and summery reds in it. The collection featured in this kit is the Sophie (Savvy) collection from My Minds Eye.

For this l/o I wanted to use the grass greens and creamy whites to compliment the photo's I took of my youngest daughter holding a bouquet of Lily of the Valley she picked for her teacher. I did some machine stitching with a fancy stitch on my machine around the outside edges and some masking with a cut-out of a butterfly (I just inked around the edges with some green chalk ink and then added some dots with green Stickles). I hand-cut some butterfly shapes out of the 7 Gypsies script paper (included in the kit). And finally I had some fun with the Prima clear crystal flourishes included in the kit.
TIP: To change up some clear crystal flourishes to better match your page you can use Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks and a Q-tip. Here I used Meadow Green ink and lightly dabbed the tips of the flourishes working inward. I added extra ink to the outside edges to deepen the colour there so that the flourish has multiple layers of color tint. If you are not happy with the results you can use the alcohol blending solution to remove what you've done and retry again (I believe you can remove the ink with nail polish remover too). Here are some close-up pic's....



For a second l/o I made with this kit I went with the reds. There are some really beautiful die-cut papers in this kit, the one I used here is 2 sided, I chose the red polka-dot side for this page....

I had some fun with my circle punch by cutting out a bunch of circles from the red polka dot paper (from behind the photo area) and sprayed a larger circle of cream/white colour paper with some Candy Apple Glimmer mist (also included in the kit) I layed out the circle cuts on the cream colour paper to create a large polka dot design. For the blooms I used a paint brush with some deep rose red Pearlex powder and tinted the centers of the white Prima blooms. The butterflies are a little stamp set included in the kit! Here are some close-up pic's....


And finally a 3rd page I made using the main kit, I used the blues and greens in the kit. I wanted to play up the the pretty floral design in the patterned paper, so I used a small flower punch on some of the green and aqua paper and layered them over the flower image on the page to give a 3D look to the blooms, and finished them off with some pearl 3D paint on the centers of the bloom images.

I was trying to get a 'gathered fabric' look in the ruffle I added at the top of the page. The MME paper is very thick and pulpy and works well for this. I just soaked a piece of the paper in some water and gathered one edge in kind of a fan shape. I then used the blow dryer to quickly dry the piece. It holds it's shape nicely once it's dry. Here are some close-up pic's....


There are 2 more kits available for the month of June, the Creative and Album kits and you can see the beautiful work done by the Design Team this month by checking out the Design team gallery at this link June Design Team Gallery ... We also had the priviledge of having the amazing Lucy Edson as Guest Designer for the Main kit!! Many of you know her from the Webster's Pages Design Team. She really wowed us with her beautiful creations with this kit! And we had the wonderful Jackie Anderson doing some Guest DT work for us using the LE kit for this month, Jackie always does such a beautiful job with the shabby-chic kits!

And now for some Blog Candy fun!! It was my turn to answer the 20 Questions posed to the MCS Design Team this month. Julie Howard (our blog girl at MCS) told me if I didn't send her a fun and different photo for the blog she would 'play' with my avatar photo....words like 'clown hair' and 'arrows' were mentioned! LOL! So I had an idea. Julie always says she hates working with a lot of blooms on her pages and I always joke that when I get all those pretty Prima blooms in the kits I scatter them on my bed and roll in them naked! Well, I spared you the naked part **shudder!** but I came up with a fun photo!! Come check out the link HERE and then post a comment in this blog thread with the answer I gave to the question 'What is my guilty pleasure?' .....If you do you can win a selection of some of my favourite embellishments pictured here....


~ 1 pkg. of Prima Blooms (Pink/red/white)

~ 1 pkg. of Flower Market Velvet Blooms by The Girls Paperie

~ 1 pkg. of Paper Girl Market Trims by The Girls Paperie

~ 1 pkg. of Making Memories Stitched Felt Dimensional stickers 'Flutter'

~ 1 pkg. of Imaginisce Glitter Flowers from the Lucy Bird collection

~ 1 pkg. of Zva Creative Pearl heart flourish

~ 1 pkg. of Petaloo Mulberry Street blooms

~ 1 pkg. of Queen & Co. adhesive pink pearls


You will have until the 15th of this month to post your answer, then I will use Random.org to choose a winner from the people who commented at this thread and post the winner on the 16th.
You can find the blog post for the answer HERE. Thanks for taking the time to read to the end of this very long thread :)


~Gabrielle xxx