So Excited! Guest Creative Teaming for Lauren Grier

I’m a bit behind on blogging, but BIG THINGS have been happening! First and foremost, I started guest CT’ing for Lauren Grier - one of my very FAVORITE designers — at Sweet Shoppe Designs. When I saw Lauren’s Facebook post that she was looking for people for her Design Team, I was so excited that one of my ‘heroes’ was in the market for new team members that I abandoned my own advice to work for a while longer at ‘honing the craft’ before even applying to work for someone; I immediately sent her my gallery and a gushy email about how I bow to her greatness expecting to never hear from her again and POW! Out of the blue she writes back and asks me to join her team as a 3 month guest for now since this is my ‘first gig’.

I am basically over the moon. :) I’ve been creating pages for her for the last two weeks and I’m like a kid in a candy store. I can’t get enough of playing with her products!

Here are the I created for her so far:

Visiting the Easter Bunny - April 2014

This one uses the ‘doodle it up half pack’ that was a collaboration between Lauren and another of my favorites - Cindy Schneider. I wish I had time to create pages using both of the templates AND all of the journaling cards, but we’re on time crunches each week and I’ve also got tons of work from my Design Star class keeping me busy (more on that later). I loved that these templates have a place to use your PL cards in traditional layouts. How smart! I’m a huge fan of PL layered template cards from Cindy in general because I always want my cards to match my pages perfectly and coordinate with the kit I’m using. This allows me to use cards again and again and have totally different vibes each time! Also - you can always harvest layers from the card templates to build your own ;)

I used the [every day] april is kit from Lauren on this page and I LOVE her bright colors and fun Easter doodles. I also used elements from this kit to create my own PL card on this layout. I think Easter is such a happy, fun time of year and her colors and drawings really reflect that whimsy. The great thing about her [every day] kits is that you can use them in the “traditional” theme-y way, but they also work for general April pages that are not just about Easter.  

Project Life 2014 (Week 16, Day 4): Super Fuss

This page uses the Grumpy Kitty kit from Lauren and I have to say - I’m normally such a positive (ok, more like supper peppy) person that I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to scrap with this. Besides, it’s hard when you’re trying to nurture and sooth a fussy child to turn around and take a PICTURE!! Then enter Cameron, stage left… I think he got wind of this kit and decided to be SUPER fussy that day. HA! It was perfect timing. I grabbed my camera and snapped away, and I am SO happy with the results. I know that I will always look back at this page and smile and laugh. I’m so glad that Lauren created this kit: it’s really great to capture even these kinds of moments so that we can remember what they put us through, right? ;)

The papers and colors in this kit are gorgeous for black and white photos, and the orange highlight in the kit was GREAT for skin tones! I added a very light colored photo filter on top of my black and white photos to pull in that orange from the kit even more. I found the toddler rules on Pinterest and they really were perfect for how this day went with Cameron stealing EVERY toy that Evan picked up.

Project Life 2014 (Week 17, Day 5): Sleepy Boy

This page uses the Hush Little Baby kit from Lauren. The darker colors are again great for black and white and really give a calm quietness to the layouts created with this kit all about sleep. I caught pictures of Evan taking his typical ’15-minute-cat naps’ throughout the day in the swing in our backyard, in my arms, and of course in his crib. I also took a few of him in the ‘sleepy stages’. Again, this is a page I will treasure forever looking back at those sweet little angel eyes and long lashes perfectly poised in sleep. Isn’t it amazing how you forget all the fussing and hair pulling and everything else when they are in that blissful moment of sleep? And your heart melts and your smile gets so big your cheeks hurt just filled up with love for your little munchkins? I particularly loved her whimsical sheep illustrations and was so excited to show Evan counting sheep in his sleep ;)

This ‘Hush Little Baby’ kit is on sale this weekend so grab it while it’s hot!

Design Star

And on the FLIP side of the coin, I have been working for about 6 hours a day on my very first digital scrapbooking kit I am developing as part of Traci Reed’s “So You Wanna Be a Design Star?” course I mentioned in a previous post. My kit is all about a party I’m planning for my son Cameron’s second birthday: it will be a pirate birthday themed kit. I can’t wait to share details soon! Tonight is the first night Traci is giving us feedback on our papers and I’m secretly (well, NOW I’m posting it with the world…) nervous to have such an amazing designer reviewing my work and commenting on it. I am excited though to get a true expert opinion on how I can improve. Hopefully next week I’ll have a bit more time to share more about this awesome class and all I am learning.