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May 17, 2013

Making good use of those scraps!


Do you ever get your kit and as you go through the smaller tags and embellishments you find yourself wishing you had more of them? I do that almost every month! Today I want to show you just a couple of ways to use your scraps to actually make more of what you love from your kits. It’s one of my favorite ways to use my smaller pieces or my favorite pieces too.

I gather some of the shapes or pieces that I like so much and a piece of cardstock. You could also use a heavier cardboard or chipboard works well too.

You simply need to lay your items out and trace around them.

As you can see from this photo, I have some extra “help” when I am scrapping sometimes. These little toes belong to my youngest, Teague, and he was insisting on standing under me for each photo that I snapped for this blogpost. I couldn’t help but not edit his piggies out for at least one picture in this post. It’s so real life and it just shows you that scrapping is something that you can do even when the little ones are “in the way”. I love to hand my kids blank paper or extra stickers or stamps to play with when I am busy with my scraps too. I think it just makes them love scrapping even more and it certainly keeps them entertained and they get to be creative too. So that’s my bonus scrap tip for the day. Let your kids play and eveyone is happy!

Okay. Back to the simple tip on using those scraps. =) Just cut them out and now you have templates to be used on any patterned paper or vellum or add glue and glitter and you have a whole new set of embellishments to use on your next project,  layout, card or Day in the Life page.

As you can see, using the pieces as templates not only uses your scraps, but it adds extra fun to the kits we all love each month by giving you more of your favorite pieces. As you can see in the card I made for my mom this past weekend, the tiny envelope on her card looks nothing like the little Maya Road kraft one that came in the kit. But it’s the very same one…just traced and cut from colored, patterned paper.

I like to keep my templates in a box all their own and I pull it out and use my shapes, or cut more and add to my box each month. My kids like to trace the shapes and my youngest boys are just getting to the age where they are learning to cut them out with my help too. I am sure that there must be some truth to the family that scraps together, stays together. Or makes a mess together. Or something like that. =) I hope this has sparked an idea or two in your own creative mind today. Have fun tracing, cutting and using up all the great scraps that add up each month. They can sometimes turn out to be the best part of the kit!

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April 16, 2013

Designer’s Challenge


It’s time for another challenge! This time around, we are going to focus on a few simple elements: subject, color and title.

For the subject, pick something you’re loving lately. For me, this was clementines. We have been eating them non-stop since the fall, and I can’t seem to get enough of them.

For the color, pick one color and go with it. My color here was orange. I love it and I use it all the time!

For the title, finish the thought, “Hello ________.” Here, I titled my layout “Hello Cutie!”

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 You have until Tuesday, April 30th at 10pm EST to upload your layout to the gallery and leave your link here. The winner will be announced on Thursday, May 2nd and that lucky scrapper will win a $10 coupon to spend in the Daisy Boutique!

Looking forward to your layouts!!

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March 29, 2013

Simple Stories Exclusive Papers: How We Used Them


We are so excited to share our exclusive Simple Stories/Cocoa Daisy collaborated papers with you, here’s a few of the ways the Design Team used them, so awesome!

Christine made a card: 

Laina used one of the 4×6 pieces as a background:

Alissa used them for her Project Life, I love that she took a 4×6 and cut it to fit two 2×3 pockets, so many ways to work these papers:

Anna combined a few of them to make a mat for her photo and journaling:

Denise used one of the journaling cards as just that, a journaling card! I love how she captured a teen’s focus with the pie chart, cool idea.

Emily went rogue and used the lovely teal ledger B side of one of the papers. She only wished she’d had two of that sheet because she could have used some of the Elements side too…

Jaime fussy cut one of the polaroids out and used it as an embellishment in her design:

Jody used one of the 3×2 Elements as a house for her date:

Kim added her’s to a card and then punched out part of it, you don’t have you use them as expected!

Lisa used a 4×6 to house her title and photo as well, but got a completely different look:

Mandie cut out a single HAPPY arrow tab from one of the 4×6 elements to use as a directional embellishment, I love how many different uses this card had!

Mandy Kay used one of the 2×3 Elements as one of her “pictures” on this page. Who says you need to frame only photos?

And there you have it, just a few of the ways our Designers used the fun papers from Simple Stories. So you can go all out with Project Life, or you can easily incorporate the same Elements into you traditional scrapbooking style. I love versatility so much!






March 13, 2013

Masking off your masks


Hey there, Daisies!

Mandy Kay Starner here to share a little trick I use, to get a little different look from my masks/stencils.

I love, love, love the look of stencils used on a background of a layout, BUT I am far too much of a clean scrapper to get all messy with several colors of spray inks and paints. So to get the custom look without all the mess, I busted out my very favorite Crafter’s Workshop Stencil…

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Its the Herringbone stencil and you can find it in the Daisy Boutique, HERE.

I layered my stencil over my cardstock, added a “frame” of cardstock over the top of the stencil to make it a bit smaller than the original, and taped it all down to my work surface, so it wouldn’t shift around. Then, I taped off random sections of my mask so they wouldn’t be filled in with my spray ink.

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After I sprayed my cardstock with some grey spray ink, I removed the orange washi tapes and then filled in the spaces with my chalk edgers. You could use paint daubers, or a brush/cotton swap and some spray ink…

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And this is how it looked after I removed all the masks…

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And now, you’ve got a custom background! And here’s the finished layout…

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I used a little bit of stuff from my stash and quite a bit of the March kit “Sketchbook”.

Thanks for stopping by the Daisy Patch and I hope you have a fantastic day!

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March 12, 2013

Teaming Up With…


This month myself Lisa, Ashley, Sharmaine, Jody, Emily, Alissa, and Denise have all teamed up together to show you how we’ve used the little glassine envelopes that come in some of your kits. You know the ones that you often find in your main kit with the little bits inside? They are so cute, so we thought we’d get together and show you some different ways on how to make the most out of this little envelope.

Lets start with Ashley. She made this lay out this month and used the envelope for her title work.

Ashley says, ”I used a glassine envelope for my title. I stamped using the Nate Basics alpha in Versamark, then embossed with Gold glitter finish Zing embossing powder. This is a fun way to add a title to a layout, because the translucent glassine adds a base to provide some definition between the letters and the background, but doesn’t break up the background design too much. I did something similar using vellum and letter stickers from my layout last month, Seriously the cutest hands all of the time.

Sharmaine’s layout is so sweet. She filled her envelope with the little cameras cut from the ‘Snapshots’ paper and a handful of gold glitter.

Jody added her’s to a mini book using the leftovers from last month’s kit.

Yes, that really is adorable!

Emily also made a layout.

Emily says, “I used my glassine much like Ashley, as a house for the title and part of the journaling. But I ripped the bag in half, so it was one layer. This made it a bit more transparent and could overlap the photo without losing it.”

Here’s my layout. I used my glassine envelope for my hidden journaling.

I love the fact that you can see the journaling through the frosted envelope, but because it’s frosted you can’t quite read it so therefore it doesn’t become the focal point of the layout. The photos do, but the story can easily still be read by taking out the card.

Alissa used the envelopes on this mini book.

and the reverse.

Alissa says, “I taped 2 bags together and filled them each with gold and silver sequins for the cover of this mini. Adding the rest of the pages was super easy using clear tape.”

And finally we have our Denise with this happy layout.

Denise has used her glassine envelope as part of her layers here. There is some hidden journaling on the sunburst card inside the envelope.

We hope you love how we’ve used our glassine envelopes this month. We’d love to see how you have used your’s too. Please do come and leave us a link to your gallery.

Thanks for stopping by today.






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