I have been in the Papertrey Ink family for 4 years now, heading into year 5, and I can honestly say working with Papertrey Ink products is the most fun I've had creating! This past year was very eye-opening for me as a designer. With the introduction of the Monthly Moments line, I was really able to get back to my grass roots of my love of scrapbooking, and for me it was refreshing. It really allowed me to create in my true style and remember who I am as a designer, and also to bring that sort of style into my cardmaking with fun techniques like paints and watercolors, lots of visual layers and such. The creating part for me is truly the most fun...getting messy and watching the project come to life is good for the soul! My talented teammates push me to be better and better, and I love that. Not only are they talented and fun, but they are such genuine people, and I am so blessed to call them friends. I hope my projects continue to inspire you to find your creativity too in 2015.
#1. Luxe card set.
The Wet Paint stamps were one of my favorite products this year, as I'm a font addict and love the hand scripted look! Combined with polka dots, black and gold, really makes for a timeless look!
Again, this project included my love of gold right now and along with layered stamping, I think creates an elegant feel with texture and shine to bring it to life.
As I said earlier in this post, the Monthly Moments line really brought me back to my love of scrapbooking, and for that I'm so grateful. I hadn't been scrapbooking as much until the Monthly Moments line came out, and I have to tell you some of my very favorite projects this year were created with it! I stamped on every layout this year and love how stamps can add so much to a page. With stamps, you can create your own patterns in colors that work for your photos! And you don't have to stamp directly onto your page, you can stamp onto die cuts and add color that way or create your own "washi tapes" with stamps and strips of paper. :)
This one combined the Monthly Moments: September goodies with Phrase Play. Typography is so trendy right now, and I loved how the Phrase Play collection honed in on that trend this year! Layers, layers, layers. I love them. Mini albums are the perfect medium for adding lots of layers and details.
#5. Beautiful Brushstrokes, Thanks card.
This year the watercolor trend has had my heart, and the Beautiful Brushstrokes kit put together by Betsy Veldman was so much fun to play around with...who knew you could stamp on watercolor paper and then use just water to blend the images and make them look like they were painted on! I can't get enough of this. (As you'll see in the next few projects. lol)
Stenciling and creating your own backgrounds was all the rage this year. I used the Cover Plate dies to make my own stencils in this blog post to create my own background by watercoloring through the stencil. Love how it's so easy to create a place on your card that will ground the other elements, and it all blends so well together. I need to remember to do this more often.
The Circles Scribbles dies fascinated me, and here I used them as a border on a Spring layout to create flowers. Really like how it turned out. The larger size of the Circle Scribbles dies are so great not only for cards, but for scrapbook layouts too!
Heat embossing has made its way into almost every card of mine lately, and it's fun to have little the little nooks and crannies to add color like on these Botanical Blocks stamps.
It's such a joy each month to open up all of the blog posts and see the creative ideas and different styles during the countdown when all of the team members receive the same products, yet everyone's projects are so different! The group posts are like Christmas to me. Nine times out of ten, we don't see each other's projects ahead of time, so it's always a delight! This year my goals are to get familiar with Illustrator and come up with some stamp ideas to submit to PTI when they hold their yearly meeting. I can't wait to expand my horizons in that realm of stamping as well!! I'm so excited about the possibilities! THANK you for being so supportive of Papertrey Ink. We couldn't do any of this without YOU, friends! :)
Head over to Nichole Heady's blog for color swatches and sketch recipe cards based on the team's favorites! All you have to do is make a card based on one of these to be entered to win your PTI Wish List! Have fun creating and good luck!
