Inspiration Station

Good morning!  It's Monday which means it's Inspiration Station time! 
Inspiration can come to us in the weirdest places sometime. We can browse through scrapbooking magazines, look at sketches on Pinterest, search through layout albums and find ideas to fuel our next layout.  Sometimes the inspiration is sitting on your kitchen table.

I love to read.  I always have a stack of books on my nightstand.  I recently joined a book club and the first book that I was asked to read was A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout.  I just loved the cover. I just love the hexagons transforming into birds.  I also liked the colors, the black, white and sand color. I decided to use it as my inspiration.

So here is what I created using the book cover as my  sketch and pallet.  Cosmo Cricket's Sweet Disposition collection was perfect for this project.  I then added some Maya Road wood veneer butterflies, some Prima flowers and some CTMH epoxy bubble to complete the layout.

Now I challenge you to find inspiration in your everyday life.  You never know, the inspiration for your next project might be sitting on your kitchen table right now.

Product Shuffle: Alphas!

Good morning!
Jocelyne here in the very first installment of LCOM'S Product Shuffle.  How exciting!  Every week, we will give a new twist to a popular scrapbooking product by using it in an unconventional way.  The product we will be featuring in this week's shuffle is the very popular alpha sticker!

I simply love alpha stickers. I love how easy they are to use, just stick them on the page for a personalized title that gives color and dimension to a page.  But they are also very versatile too.  By simply thinking a little outside of the box, you can use alphas in more than just your titles. 

Here is what I came up with using the very yummy Cosmo Cricket Sweet Disposition collection

Can you scope out the alphas I used?  First, you can see the conventional way I used the word Chill.    One of the downfalls in using alpha stickers, is running out of a certain letter.  In my case, for this layout I had ran out of the letter L.  Time to change title?  No way!  There is always a way to alter existing letters to make it work.  For this layout, I was able to cut a P to make an L.  I also used O's in this American Crafts Thickers to make the scallop border on the bottom of the page.  I simply cut the O's in half and placed them one next to the other.  

Now take a look at the word Selfie.  I actually embossed the foam letter!  Very easy!  I simply placed the title letters on a piece of backing paper, placed them in the embossing folder and passed it through a Cuttlebug.  Be sure to use the backing paper (like the one you peeled the sticker off in the original packaging) because once you pass it through the embossing machine, they will be virtually impossible to peel off if you use regular paper.  I love the texture it gave my letter, almost mimicking the background paper.
 

Finally, I added some CTMH ribbon, some prima flowers, wood button and tag, layered some Cosmo Cricket Sweet Disposition stickers, some Simple Stories mini alphas and words, a few My mind's eye enamel dots and a few bows made with twine.  And just to show how versatile those alphas are, I underlined the word chill and added dashes on top of my banner in the upper left hand side of the page.  I even added an asterix in one the flowers and hid another under a paper flower to make a hint of a leaf.  Go check out all the alphas you can find in the store and I challenge you to be creative with them.

Join us again on Saturday for a new Sketch it out!  Have an awesome day!