Like a Basket of Fresh Berries! {Maja Design ~ Life in the Country}

That's what I think of when I see the gorgeous selection of red patterned papers in the Life in the Country Collection ! I LOVE the dotty red paper and the beautiful scripted floral design paper, ... and the pretty gingham....it all makes me think of picking a basket of fresh strawberries in Summer! And I thought it would be the perfect collection of papers to compliment this happy picture of my little niece Jade, as she's splashing around in a creek.

This would be my version of a more 'Clean & Simple' style of layout. My pages can often get very fussy and busy, but this time I thought I'd pair the pretty patterned papers with simple white card stock so that they really pop. Here are a few close-up details of the page...

I used some store bought Prima flowers and mixed them with a handmade bloom I made from the plaid paper called 'Porch', I used a Spellbinders die cut called 'Spiral Blossom #1' to make the bloom. I thought it gave the page a more home-spun appeal adding this flower.

I added chipboard swirls from Dusty Attic and I finished them with a dark red paint and Glossy Accents to give them a deep rich shine. I also did a wee bit of background stamping and light inking with Prima's Moulin Rouge stamp and Versa Mark Dew Drops Ink. To complete the 'country' look I added just a touch of paper lace doilies and a bit of burlap (I love adding burlap for some nice texture!). Here are the supplies I used to create this page....

Supplies: Patterned Paper: Life in the Country (Summer Kitchen, Summer Kitchen-bs, Porch, Berries with Ice, In the Hammock-bs....don't you just love the names of the papers!!!), Dusty Attic Chipboard, Flowers: Prima (Primrose Sangria), Spellbinders die cut (Spiral Blossom #1), White blooms: Petaloo, Stamp: Prima (Moulin Rouge), Title rub-on: Daisy D's, Adhesive Pearls: Queen & Co. Ink: Versa Mark (Pretty Pastels Dew Drops).

Thanks for stopping by today and don't forget, I have a nice give-away going at my blog of the new Maja Design Spring collection called 'Vintage Spring Basics'. You can now view the full collection in the products section HERE (these papers are sooooo very beautiful!!!) If you want to have a chance of winning this gorgeous collection, check out this link before March 31st!  Gabrielles Blog

Here are just a few of my favourites from this new collection! So excited to start scrapping with these beauties!....

Autumn Splendor with Maja's "Walking In the Forest" Collection!

A little while back my nephew Jared sent me a bunch of photos of my sweet great-nieces Jade and Kiera, among the photos was this adorable pic of the two of them playing in some fall leaves.  As soon as I saw the gorgeous collection "Walking in the Forest" from Maja Designs, I knew I'd found the exact papers I'd been looking for to scrap this photo! 

I love the deep rich and warm colors in this collection, accented with the pretty cornflower blue.  Have you ever taken a paper collection pack and fanned out the papers and thought, 'ohhh, I just want to scrap them all together'?  That's how I felt about this page.  The papers all look so pretty lined up beside one another.  Well, I obviously couldn't scrap with all of them so I finally had to narrow them down to a few of my favourites (no easy task! ha!).  Because my background paper had the hints of blue in it, I thought it would be cool to rip little sections out of it and have the dark blue denim color paper peeking out from behind it.  I didn't want to cut up a whole sheet of 12x12 paper for this so I simply took the blue paper from the 6x6 paper pack and snipped off some of the edges and tucked them behind the rips.  Here are a few close-up details of the page... 





There is a cute little sheet in the 6x6 paper pad that has these adorable little stamp designs with birds and butterflies on it, cutting these out is a quick and easy way to add an embellishment to your page.



The soft denim color of the blue paper put me in mind of fabric so I couldn't resist doing this zipper peek at the top of the page. I often cut the zippers out of old pairs of jeans for my scrap pages but in this case I used a fun new chipboard piece from Dusty Attic to create the zipper opening.

I wanted to stay in keeping with the autumn/forest look of the page so I embellished with with more of my favourite Dusty Attic goodies, the NEW 'Flower Buds' as well as the 'Grass Clusters #1' and I chose a floral/viney frame by Dusty Attic called 'Filigree Frames'.  I also wanted to use natural accents like bird feathers, twine and burlap to decorate the page with.  The big fabric bloom above is one of the beautiful blooms from Bo Bunny from the Buttercup Dahlia pack. The lock and key is another cute little mini from Dusty Attic. 

Supplies:

Patterned Paper: Maja Designs, Walk In the Forest (Autumn in the Air, Flannel Shirt, Fresh Air, Fresh Air backside, Jeans), Plus Walk In the Forest 6x6 paper pad (Die Cut Sheet)

Chipboard: Dusty Attic Designs (Flower Bud, Grass Clusters #1, Filigree Frame, Mini Keys & Locks, Zippers)

Flowers: Bo Bunny, Prima

Nest/eggs: Recollections

 

I hope you enjoyed my little stroll through the Autumn Forest!  For those of you who have been asking about Maja products, here's a little secret!  Starting in February Maja designs will be providing some of their beautiful collection packs as give aways on their design team members blogs!  I will try and keep you up to date as to who is giving away which collection as the posts come out!  And don't forget to mark the Maja Blog as a favourite place to visit, they have daily inspiration there from their design team members and guests! You won't be disappointed! :)

Making Paper Ruffles with Maja Designs!!

I'm so very excited to share with you a project today that I made with one of my favourite Maja collections "Vintage Summer Basics". I'm just crazy about the softly distressed designs and muted tones in this collection, and the sweet mini-florals put me in mind of a little girls ruffle dress! So I thought I would play with paper ruffles to decorate this layout that I made of my little great-niece Kiera.

To make the ruffles I chose 3 of the Vintage Summer patterned papers in shades starting from light to medium to dark and cut 2 x 12" strips of each (the strips were about 1.25" thick). I then glued together each of the pairs of strips to make 3 x 24" strips.
  TIP: I like to tear the two edges that I'm gluing together rather than attaching two cut edges, it helps give a more seamless look.

I then took each of the strips and lightly spritzed them with water and then began taking one edge and gathering them with my fingers. Be careful not to gather too deeply into the ruffle, you want the other edge to have a nice curvey edge. I then let the gathered paper dry thoroughly. Then I took some good strong two-sided sticky tape, opened out my ruffle again so it's flat and ran the sticky tape along the backside of the pleated edge. Now bring the ruffle back together, the tape will hold the ruffle together and will also create the adhesive to attach your ruffle to the page. Layer your ruffles from light to dark for a pretty effect. Here are a few close-up pic's of my page...

Supplies:

Patterned Paper: Maja, Vintage Summer Basics (1908-bs, 1911, 1920, 1922-bs), Chipboard: Dusty Attic Designs (NEW deVine Frame Set, and NEW Flutterbies #3), Flowers: Jolee Boutique, Prima, Dusty Attic and Recollections (nest/eggs). Other: lace trim, kitchen twine, pearl strand all off the roll from local fabric store, adhesive: Tombo 2 sided sticky tape strip.

A few people have asked me what that tattered sting stuff is that I use around my floral clusters.  It's a roll of yarn I bought at our Michaels craft shop, from the yarn area. I've posted a picture below so that you can see what it looks like.  A roll of this stuff goes a long long way and with a 40% off coupon, I think the whole roll cost me only like $3.00

 

I hope you give paper ruffles a try! The Maja papers are of such a high quality, thick and strong so they can take plenty of paper manipulating. The ruffle technique works beautifully on cards as well!

 

Maja Designs ~ January Mood Board Challenge!

I'm really excited to show you all my first project with Maja Designs!  Every first Tuesday of the month Maja puts out this cool challenge called the Mood Board Challenge.  This is a board created by Jenny Grotherus our super talented design team coordinator filled with inspiration to help you create a beautiful page full of gorgeous color, texture and perhaps journal inspiration as well.  Below is the mood board for January...I chose to use the 'shades of blue', 'warming browns', 'torn', 'some stitches', 'hand journaling', 'plaid' and 'crisp air' as my inspiration points.  And I just loved the inspiration poem as well!  It put me in mind of this photo I recently got of my two great nieces, riding these stone elephants....it's so true how children find such joy in simple things and how the world around us can move us to feel like children again.

I used the beautiful and perfectly distressed Maja Designs collections called 'Life in the Country' and 'Vintage Summer Basics' to make up this page.  I chose papers from these two collections but they also have a wonderful Vintage Winter collection that is filled with these pretty blues and browns.  Here are some close-up's of the page showing some of the detail work....

The intricate chipboard flourish in the corner of the photo is another NEW Dusty Attic piece called Vine Corner and the flourish at the bottom is called Scroll #10.  I'm always amazed at how incredibly detailed Dusty Attic gets with their chipboard!

 Supplies:

Patterned Paper: Maja Designs, (Life in the Country 6x6 paper pad)(Vintage Summer Basics)

Chipboard: Dusty Attic Designs (Vine Corner, Scroll #10)

Flowers: Prima, Dusty Attic

Alphabet stickers: Websters Pages

Martha Stewart Edge/corner punches (Swirling Lace)

 

I've already been asked by many of you where you can find these beautiful papers.  They do have a Store Finder at their website, all you have to do is click the flag for your country and you'll get a list of vendors carrying the Maja products.  I do have to say for those of us in North America the pickens are thin right now so my best advice would be to let your local scrapbook store know of your interest in these collections.  I find most local stores are very interested in knowing what products people would like for them to bring in.  I do believe there are a number of online stores in the other countries as well that would probably ship to North America as well.

 

For more information on the Mood Board challenges and to see more layouts made by the design team with this months mood board you can check out todays blog post at the Maja blog :)

 

Exciting News!! I'm on the Maja Designs Design Team!!

So a little while back I was contacted by Jenny Grotherus the design team coordinator for an amazing paper manufacturer in Sweden, Maja Designs,  to see if I would join their design team. They have gorgeous paper collections designed by an incredibly talented artist, Marie Janson, the designer and founder of Maja Designs.  At the time I had already been telling myself that for 2013 I would not take on as much scrapbooking teams and guest spots as I have in the past years.  So my first response was a kind but reluctant pass.  But I was curious about their paper collections and Jenny said she would send me out one of their collection packs so that I can see the beauty and quality of their papers.  I was delighted when just a few days later I recieved this huge box of their full collections!!  And let me say, I was VERY impressed!  Their beautiful shabby chic designs are right up my ally for the type of scrap papers I like to use and the heavy weight, 2 sided designs are just perfect for the fussy cutting and paper manipulating I like to do when I scrap.  Although my intention was to agree to a guest spot, in the end I couldn't help but give them a big Yes!  I would love to be on the 2013 team!

 

Curious about the look of their papers?  Here is a little sampling of some of their collections, I just love the soft distressing and pretty designs, creating with these papers so far has been a delight!  If you want to see more of their collections you can find them HERE.

Aren't they beautiful?!!  I've already got some projects done with these beautiful collections and am eager to share them with you along with some fun techniques!  But you'll just have to wait a few more days until the new year when I can begin sharing them with you!  So without further ado, here is the creative team for Maja Designs 2013! 

 

 

I was so happy to see all the amazingly talented ladies that I will be working alongside on this team.  Many of them are old friends that I've worked with on other teams and if you are not familiar with their work, I'm sure you'll be dazzeled over the next year as you see their work each month!

 

So I'll share some of my work with this companies gorgeous products in the coming weeks, in the mean time you may want to check out and browse their new website Maja Designs and perhaps click to follow their blog, you won't be disappointed! :)