National Scrapbook Day: Fun and Fab!

Bliss and I are gearing up for our April workshop... "Fun and Fab" is the theme.  I love the colors of this new power palette, and the paper flowers are especially fun to work with.  Come join us if you can!

Hearts and Flowers

My Creative Memories upline, Bliss Nishida, always comes up with cute card designs for our workshop sessions.  For our February workshop, we used new 8x8 Lovable Scrapbook Kit.  She designed several cards using the "Joy Fold" method.  I love these cards!

Bliss also created a ton of cards simply by using the decorative parts of the paper and adding some finishing touches.  We love bling! Later on, I went through my sticker collection to find titles for the cards. Instant greeting card success.

Just Desserts

Okay, time for my first crafting post!  I was feeling especially ambitious the beginning of this year... I had already completed my "Local Style" PicFolio calendar, and I wanted to do another themed calendar.  This was for my mom, as I had not updated her calendar in two years!  I was inspired to do a desserts theme because she loves late night snacking.  I searched around for some ideas.  My goal was to create all the desserts from Creative Memories papers and punches.  Here's what I came up with...

My favorites are the orange creamsicle and oreos!

Obssession meets reality

Stationery has always been my weakness.  Love, love, love paper products.  I would drag mom and dad into Sanrio Surprises almost every week to drool over their newest items in the latest design.  The obsession was kicked into full gear during the year I spent living in Japan.  I would constantly pick up postcards at every new town or city I toured.  And I could spend hours in a Japanese stationery store (one of my favorite places to shop) trying to decide what to buy.  However, when I returned home, I quickly realized my penchant for cards and letter sets... and I had enough stationery to last me a lifetime.

Merge that obsession with a heart for design and that can be a dangerous combination.  I was already hooked on scrapbooking, and with the popularity of scrapbook supplies hitting its peak a decade ago, the choices available became overwhelming.  I quickly curbed that problem by becoming a Creative Memories Consultant (thanks, Bliss!)  and deciding to exclusively use their products for my albums.  That was one of my most liberating decisions! It was time to give up stamping and resist the latest crafting craze.  I wanted keep projects simple, rather than requiring an army of tools and supplies. 

Out of this heart for simple design and love for stationery, I began a small launch of products to sell at a craft fair in December 2009. This gave way to Simple Stationery.  Right now, my main products are desktop calendars, mini notebooks, and card sets, but I hope to come up with some new items this year.  Stay tuned... I hope to get you caught up on some of my recent projects this year.

Testing 1-2-3

This is my first venture into the blogging world.  Per usual, I spent too much time on aesthetics, as I tried to create the perfect banner and coordinate fonts and colors.  Navigating a blog is very different from staring at a blank scrapbook page or inDesign file.  With these web based creations, editing takes place "behind the scenes" before you publish or go "live."  I'm still trying to figure out the different functions and layers to this program, but the perfectionist in me keeps comparing to other blogs as I wonder "how did they do that?!"  Oh, the joys of technology!