Little Something Sunday with Rachel Hall

Creating Distressable, Multi-Toned, Embossed Cardstock
* As featured in the AMM NSD Online Crop

Materials Needed:
Cuttlebug and Embossing Folders for Cuttlebug (Or any machine that embosses)
Cardstock
Gesso or Paint
Foam Brush
Trimmer


Directions:
1.) Paint on your chosen cardstock using Gesso or paint. For this tutorial and project I used Gesso. Cover as much as you need for your embossing system. For the Cuttlebug folder I covered a 4"x6" area.

2.) Let dry.
3.) When the Gesso or paint is dry, cut your cardstock down to size if you have not already.
4.) Place cardstock into your embossing folder. For the Cuttlebug, place it in the folder right side (side painted with Gesso) UP.

5.) Run through machine.

6.) Remove the cardstock from your embossing folder.

7.) Now you can sand and distress your embossed cardstock!

8.) Use your new embossed and distressed cardstock on a project- this size is perfect for cards like the one pictured above.

Design Team Recommends with Kat Glossop

This week's Design Team Recommends suggestions come from Design Team Member Kat Glossop. I think when you see what items Kat has on her favorites list you will totally be able to pick up on her unique style. To go to a product in the store, just click on the product title.

Carolee's Alpha Stickers-Kat is always using these alphas in her mixed font titles.

October AMM Kit-"Fresh and Easy" Kat said some of her favorite layouts were created with this kit. There are just 3 available at a reduced price!

Sassafras Lass Bungle Jungle "Bungle Dots"

Sassafras Lass Sweet Skully Rub Ons-Cuteness it timeless as Kat says and at only $1.64 cuteness is affordable too!

Domestic orders enjoy $5.00 shipping and most of these items are currently on sale so go stock up on your favorites!

May Design Team Inspirations

This month the design team was inspired by Jennifer Longenecker. She posted this super cute layout in our gallery and the design team decided to take some inspiration from it to create their own layouts. So let's have a look at what the design team did!

"Dreams of Chocolate Bunnies" by Jennifer Longenecker

First up is Karen Grunberg's take. Karen said, "I loved everything about this layout. The design, the topic, the way all the elements are layered. But my favorite part is all the mediums used. There's stitching, there's paint, there's cutting, there's mesh. It must be a delight to touch this. I also loved that there were black and white and colors together. I used a series of photos instead of the same one but I did vary the black and white and color as well. I also placed my photos the same way and in the same location. And I stitched and painted as well. I also used upbeat, happy colors to emulate the wonderfully happy feeling of this layout."

"The Unworn Hat" by Karen Grunberg

Next up is Kat Glossop with this fantastic layout. Kat said, "I was inspired by the design of Jennifer's page, with the photo and title up in the left corner. I also loved the stitched paint mat, and what looks like a material mat as well - gorgeous!"
"Shh" by Kat Glossop

I love this take on Jennifer's layout done by Tonya Dirk. Tonya said, "I love the three pictures that Jennifer used up in the left hand corner, I decided to substitute the two side photos with patterned paper."

"A Not So Happy 4th" by Tonya Dirk

And last but certainly not least is this adorable take from Rachel Hall. Rachel said, "I love the row of three photos and all of the handcut/diecut details used in the layout so I had to replicate that look in my layout. I also love how the title was broken up into different fonts and type and used that as well in breaking up what would be a long title for my layout."

"No, No, No!" by Rachel Hall

Thanks so much to Jennifer and the design team girls for the awesome inspiration!

National Scrapbook Day Crop Winners

I hope you all enjoyed our National Scrapbook Day Online Crop this past weekend. I wanted to take a minute to highlight our winners here on the blog. You will be receiving your prize packs shortly.

Color Combo Challenge
"Don't Drink the Water" by Casey Wright


Sketch Challenge
"Now & Then" by Krista Gradias


Food Menu Challenge
"Three" by Maria Swiatkowski


Fabric Challenge
"Love Grows" by Nicole Pomeroy


The winner of the scavenger hunt was Rachel Theall! Please be sure to email your mailing address to the design team member who sponsored the challenge so they can get it to Michelle who will be mailing your prizes out to you. In the coming weeks, you will see the tutorials posted by the design team posted here on the blog. If you didn't get a chance to participate in the crop you can always complete the challenges on your own. We would love to see them.

Design Team Challenge with Larissa Albernaz

After all of the NSD weekend long festivities are you ready for another challenge? This month we have a great sketch designed by Kat Glossop and our hostess is Larissa Albernaz. For this month's challenge you need to use the sketch below as well as clouds somewhere on your layout. Let's have a look at Kat's sketch.


Here is the sample Larissa created to further inspire you.

So here's the quick and dirty rules. Base your layout on this sketch, use clouds, and then upload your layout to the challenge thread and the gallery by midnight on the 21st of May. After that, Larissa will choose a winner who will receive a $10.00 gift certificate to the AMM store and a selection of AMM's famous trims to be shipped when you place your order.

Sound good! Alright, well get your head out of the clouds and get scrapping!

Technique Tuesday with Tonya Dirk

Folded Circle Border
Here to share a new technique with you is Tonya. She is going to show you how she creates the folded circle borders that she has been using on some of her recent layouts.

Just click play below.



Thanks Tonya!!

Member Monday with Jenn Findlay

Happy Monday. I hope everyone had a very creative National Scrapbooking Day. The design team here at AMM will be posting the winners of their challenges soon, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I am here today to share with you my pick for Layout of the Week.

I chose this fantastic layout from BarbP. This is her youngest daughter who was just married last month. Aside from the gorgeous picture, I love the overall design and the layered bits of patterned paper she has as a photo mat.

"First Dance" by BarbP


Be sure to leave Barb some love here on this post and to visit her blog for more inspiration!

Little Something Sunday with Karen Grunberg

Documenting Two Weeks in My Life

I've wanted to do Ali Edwards' Week in the Life project for the last few years but somehow I never managed to actually do it. I liked the idea of documenting an ordinary week in our life, but when it was time to take the photos, I always found an excuse or two not to do it.

At the beginning of 2010, I made a list of 52 things I wanted to do this year and I purposefully put doing a Week in the Life project on the list. I figured now that it was on the list, it was going to get done.

As it turned out, I did it twice.

The first one is a minibook that I put together in advance (if you've ever done a December Daily album, I did this in the same style) and then each day, I picked just a few topics and photographed and wrote about them instead of trying to capture everything. This took the pressure off of trying to make things interesting and it made it manageable since my project was already put together and I was just adding photos and words (all of which I handwrote to make it even easier). This project was more art and fun and didn't try to capture everything.

Here are some photos from that book:

You can read more and see all the pages of this project on my blog.

I thought I was done with this project and felt good about the outcome. But then Ali did it this week and I couldn't decide if I wanted to do it again or not. So I decided to take photos as if I were doing it and make the decision later on. It took me three days but I finally decided to do it fully digitally and very very plain.

This project was the opposite of the other one. I used only photos and words and just five free digital papers. I made 4 pages per day which added up to 20 photos for most days. I wrote all the journaling on the computer and tried to capture most of the moments of our day. Here's a photo of what each day's page looks like:


You can see the full week of photos and words here. And you can download the template I made here.

This project was much more detailed but because it stuck to only photos and words and it was purely digital, it didn't take more time each day than the other one where I had to print and glue, etc. I might still end up printing this one, too but I am still undecided.

The reason I wanted to share both of these was to show you how wildly different the two projects are and yet they are the same idea. Sometimes you can take the same subject again and again and depending on how you choose to create your project, it will look and feel completely different.

Did you ever do a Week in the Life project? If so, I hope you share it with us.

Happy National Scrapbook Day

Come on over to the boards and play along. We have our challenges listed so far and lots more tutorials planned throughout the weekend! Check out the info and sneak below!


You must be registered in order to post your creations and win.

PLUS!!! Rachel is offering a chance to win a $10.00 AMM store gift certificate to registered users who participate in a challenge or use a tutorial and post to her blog. You can check out her details on her blog here.