Making Memories

Simple Cheer Up Card

As you all pretty much know...I'm a SIMPLE Scrapper.

 

I like clean lines, graphic designs, and itty bitty photos. :)

Here is a very SIMPLE Cheer Up Card I made using my Making Memories Slice and The Basic Design Card.

I first printed my words out using white cardstock and folded the paper in half.

I then I cut a 4" letter S using the Basic Elements Design Card

Next, using the same card, I cut the rest of the letters for the word Smile.

I adhered them over the printed words and to finish I trimmed the top and bottom of my card.

I simple, clean Cheer Up Card. :)

Have a Great Day!

Wendy Bretz

Guest Designer Michelle Unruh

Help us welcome Michelle Unruh to the Making Memories’ blog as a guest designer. Michelle’s inspiration for this layout came from Blueprints sketch, which was perfect for her photo of her little guy. Michelle explains how she created this layout.

I went online and found a star that I could print on copy paper and use as a template. The title was cut with My Slice and the Zootopia design card. I thought that the layered lion head made a perfect replacement for the "O". After I cut the letters in my title, I used the shadow feature to back the letter with orange cardstock. I used brown ink to edge the letter and the lion head to add extra dimension.

Thanks Michelle for sharing your layout with us.

Jewelry Tips from Jill

Today I am showing you another piece I made with Vintage Groove.  Since the last piece I made
was not too colorful and because, my gosh, spring has sprung here and is so intensely inspiring and absolutely gorgeous, I am doing an ode to spring in my creation today.

I decided to use a lot of color and some of the fabric flowers like the pretty Crochet and Ombre flowers of bright Cantaloupe and Magenta. I wanted my piece to be flowery, but
at the same time more down to earth and less phoofy!!!! I toned the piece down by
bringing in some brown tones and more neutral pieces. I then decided to use leather instead of a chain to make it less dressy and more wearable, like on a T-shirt. Don't get me wrong you can dress this piece up too!!!! But for my personality the wearability of the piece is much greater.

As always when I am in the process of making my Vintage Groove pieces, my mind is going a million miles an hours thinking about tips to give you makers out there.
So....... Here They are:

1) Deconstruct:  Remember that nothing is set in stone on your parts.  Sometimes you may like a piece or a part of a piece (like the faceted stone flower shown in my necklace) but you feel it needs a different middle.  There is no rule that says you can't take something off of something and put it somewhere else.

2)Combine Parts: You can also combine parts by layering them, so that they give a piece a different flavor.  It is often surprising how wonderfully things go together to create a whole new part. In my necklace I took the crocheted flower and paired it with the melon colored Ombre flower.

3)Spacing of your pieces: You can eliminate jump rings or add them. As you know by now there are jump rings on all the pieces. I found that if I used all jump rings that were supplied to me with the parts I chose that the spacing of my piece would not please me because things would be too far apart. In ‘My Ode to Spring necklace,’ I wanted the spacing to be very tight and have the flowers be very close together.  The way I achieved this, is I exchanged and used some of the small jump rings and connected them directly into the hole that was part of the piece.  It is not a bad idea to have different sized extra jump rings of both silver and gold so you have more control over spacing.

4)Adhering pieces: Last but not least hot glue is a great thing to use to combine flowers.  It gets into the pores of the fabric and holds beautifully.

I hope you enjoyed our blog today and that you found the tips useful.

Jill Schwartz

Slice Tip - Cutting Foam by Wendy Bretz

Slice Tip - Cutting Foam

Here are a few Tips I have when using the Slice and cutting Foam. :)

1 - Make sure you spray your Hand's Free Mat with a good dose of our Repostional Spray Adhesive.  Unlike cardstock or patterned paper, The Foam sheets are thicker and I think the need a little extra stick-um :)

2.  Have a SHARP blade.  A dull blade, no matter what you are cutting on may tear or rip your material you are cutting.

3.  Turn your speed down.  I like to turn my speed down to slow when cutting intrique cuts or different materials other than paper. 

 

Thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave a comment and let me know if you have an great tips using the Slice! :)

Wendy Bretz

 

Guest Designer Stephanie Muzzulin

 

Help me welcome Stephanie Muzzulin as Making Memories' guest designer. Stephanie created some card sets and a card storage box using Making Memories' Dilly Dally collection.

 

Supplies:

Dilly Dally12x12 papers

Dilly Dally perforated Word Block Specialty paper

Dilly Dally 8x8 Specialty Papers

Dilly Dally Stickers and Rubons

Dilly Dally Brad Combo

Dilly Dally Diecuts

Dilly Dally Ribbon- Green Rose

Cardstock

Ribbon

White Box

Label Die

To Make Box:

Measure sides and top of box.

Cut Various DP to cover Box and adhere.

Add score Tape around box and add Green Rose ribbon.

 

Top Of Box:

Diecut Label die and Dp with same label die.

Adhere Dp to Label Die.

Punch Out perforated Label Block and add  Sentiment Sticker.

Add Brads to both sides of Label Die and Adhere to top of Box.

 

You Are My Sunshine Card:

Make card from cardstock.

Add Green Dp along bottom of card for grass.

Add rubon add gem to center of little flower.

Pierce holes for Butterfly.

Sew Butterfly Die Cuts together and adhere to card.

Round Corners Of card.

 

Dream A Little Dream Card:

Make card from cardstock.

Cut layer and adhere DP to card Base.

Cut sentiment Block from Dp and mat with Green Dp sewing along the edges and Adhere to card Base.

Tie a Bow around card base.

Cut three rose lengths fro rose ribbon and form into a flower and adhere brad to center of flower.

Adhere flower to bow.

 

Spring Has Sprung Card:

Make Card from cardstock.

Layer a couple pieces of Dp and then sew along edges.

Punch out label frame from Dp and adhere sentiment sticker to the center and adhere to card base.

Layer butterfly diecuts sewing down the middle of butterfly and adhere to card.

 

Spring Is in the Air Card:

Make card from cardstock.

Adhere Dp to cardbase.

Cut and adhere specialty circle Dp to card.

Cut sentiment  from Dp and adhere to card.

Add Brad.

Cut and Adhere Green rose ribbon along top of card.

Thanks Stephanie for sharing your cards with us. :)

Jill Schwartz: A Typical Day

So you ask me about a typical day...... well I think my day would surprise most people.  A lot of folks think all I do is design and nothing else.  I wish!!!!!  Like any other business it must be managed, thus much of my time while in my studio is spent dealing with the day to day minutia of running one. In fact I sometimes feel I design on the sly as my time is filled with so many have-tos, like answering emails and phone calls, paying bills, choosing insurance, working out the show schedules, sourcing, designing, replacing vintage pieces, setting up vignettes for shoots, making sure our customers are called and serviced, maintaining the website, facebook, and so many other things..

My studio is 6000 square feet and each day there are about 10 of us that work in the space.  My production manager, Carolyn, is in charge of making my designs come to fruition.  Once I have designed a piece it is Carolyn's job to order the parts and to dole them out to the folks who are making my designs and teach them what to do.  She has kept the studio utterly organized and has been an essential part of my team. Then there's Patrick, my other right hand who assists me in all the areas of design.  He too has been with me for many years. 

I have learned so much more that I ever realized was possible.  When one runs a business there are a plethora of areas that you are called on to attend to.  In my many years of business I have intimately learned about the legal system, negotiating contracts, copyrights, trademarks, our health system and insurance, doing business abroad, sourcing, managing employees, building out a space.  It's a juggling act.... but I kinda like having a lot of balls in the air.

If I am travelling and doing a trade show it is one of the few times that I only have one agenda during a day, otherwise my day can get crazy as I am pulled into so many places.

I love building the trade show booths; it is a very intuitive process for me.  I do not plan the space but rather have an idea in my head about the look and feel that I want to portray. It's kind of hard to talk about because the first time I build a new booth I am not sure how it is really going to look. It is in the mix of textures and things that I bring with me and how I put them together that somehow make the booth come alive.  It takes about 11 to 16 hours to set up, usually with one other person. The look of my booth is of utmost super importance to me as it is the stage that sets the mood and feel for my latest collection. I also love the people part, it is so much fun as you really get to play and interact with people all day long and at the same time sell your work.    Many customers have become sort of like family, as you see the same people over the years and they sort of grow up with you.

Here are some of the booths I have created over the years:

I also adore the days I get to source materials for my line  When I come across that special little part which happens oh so often , I sort of fall in love with it. My mind goes crazy imagining how I can use it.  The process is so totally inspiring.

Embellishing a mini-album

I don’t usually need an excuse to make a project, but sometimes it’s nice to have one anyway! I made a mini-album, and seeing as renewal was the theme, I made a toilet-roll mini album (with flattened empty toilet rolls – a renewed purpose for them!) and then used my Slice to decorate and embellish it. I made this album with some reminders for myself about renewal, but mini albums like this make great gifts! You can add as many rolls as you wish; I used three for my project.

 

To cover each of the toilet rolls, you need a piece of paper that’s the following size:

1 roll length + 1”  x 2 roll widths + 1”

Here are the steps on how I covered each roll with patterned paper. All the papers for this project are from the Making Memories Dilly Dally collection.

Next comes the fun part with the Slice! I made heavy use of multiple design cards for this project. I love how you can use the design cards for multiple purposes. And even though my project had nothing to do with Thanksgiving, the font on the Turkey Daze card was exactly what I was looking for.

On the first roll, I cut the title from Basic Shapes 2. For the background, I layered the die-cut shaped paper that’s in the Dilly Dally 8x8 paper pack and matched up the stripes to add to the layering effect:

On the second roll, I used flourishes from the Basic Shapes 3 card.

On the third roll I made a layered banner from the Dilly Dally card (with dimensional glue dots to make it pop), then cut out the word Joy from the Basic Elements card.

The tags were all cut from the Basic Elements card. Then on each one I used an element from the pattern word block page in the Dilly Dally 8x8 paper pack. On the first one I used the font on the Turkey Daze card to cut out the letters for Hope. Hope is always a good thing to have renewed, right? The great thing about this font is that if you put the letters very close to each other, it looks like the letters are joined – very cool!

On the Hello Sunshine tag, I cut out a shape to look a bit like the sun. Actually, it’s one of the layer elements from a flower on the Dilly Dally card – just repurposed for the renewal album. Sunshine always makes me feel renewed!

On the final tag, I played on the idea of the bee from the word block paper and wrote “Just Bee” (letters from Turkey Daze font again) to remind myself that sometimes I need to stop and just be, to feel like I’m being renewed.

I inked the edges of all the tags, then “renewed” some ribbon from a gift I’d received to add to the tags. I punched a hole in the corner of each roll and joined them together with a metal ring which I embellished with some more repurposed ribbon.

The Slice really is great for mini-albums – the different sizes of the shapes and fonts lend themselves perfectly to projects like this!

Of course, you could take Renewal Day to mean anything you want. Maybe your driver’s license needs renewal, or maybe your house needs some “renewing” paint… perhaps you have a friend who you haven’t heard from in a while and you need to renew contact. Just for fun, why not post a comment with your ideas and suggestions?

If you’re a fan of the Slice and you’re on Facebook, make sure you Like the Slice Facebook page!

~ Caroline ~

Slice Tutorial on Positioning by Wilna

 

It's Thursday and time for another Slice tutorial. I love working with my slice and I use the Slice Elite. *insert smile*
Last week, Pamela asked this question in the comments: I would really like to know more about lining up your cuts so that you don't cut into other areas you don't want to, and can maximize the use of your paper. It's very hard to see were the blade will start cutting and were it will end. Does this makes sense? Yes! what a great question. With this week's tutorial, i will show you how to position your slice to optimize your paper.  I want to encourage you to play along as this is a great exercise in getting it down.

Step 1

 Step 1: For this page i want to (again) cut out a few negative shapes. I am using a star because my page is about my girls' dance. I used the Applique Basics design card and chose this star. I used a piece of cut off patterned paper just to cut out the shape.
Do you see the x on the design in this picture? That's to indicate where the slice will begin to cut.

Step 2

 Step 2: Take the shape you just cut out and without lifting it from the cutting board, mark with a black marker the exact spot where the x is on the slice.

Step 3

 Step 3: Now place your shape wherever you want on the page and trace it with a pencil. Note the position of the shape. I am still keeping it "upright" meaning that with my tracings, the slice will start cutting in the lower left corner of the star. I hope this makes sense to you!

step 4

Now, select the shape again on your slice and press "SELECT". The slice will move the blade to where the x is on the shape on the slice screen. So, in this picture, i looked through the Plexiglas to make sure the blade is on the lower left point of the traced star. Cut it out.

Step 5

Step 5: as you can see here, i am still learning. My placing is about 1 or 2mm off, but you know what? I am doing way better with the tracings that just guessing. See how close you can cut now?

Step 6

Step 6: When all your shapes are cut out, then erase the pencil lines. Now we are ready to finish the page.

I traced the stars with glue and glittered the edges. I used the Bravissimo design card for the word. The papers is from the Making Memories Just chillin line. Thank you for visiting this blog. If you have any questions, please ask! I am happy to help.

Wilna

Guest Designer Mandy Koeppen

Today we are excited to have Mandy Koeppen as Making Memories’ guest designer. Mandy created lots of different projects with Making Memories' Tie the Knot collection, which I'm so happy to share.

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When I first got the Tie the Knot items I didn’t know what I was going to do with them because we only have a few photos from our big day. As I was flipping through the products it hit me use them with the Father Daughter Dance photos. After that the layout I created came together really quick. I blew the black and white photo of my husband and daughter up to 8x10 then trimmed it down one I had it in the position I wanted it. I love using oversized photos to make sure the photo remains the main focus of the layout. I used the Tie the Knot Tulle flowers packaging for the pattern paper at the bottom of the page. I wanted to give a little added pop so I punched out the pinked circles out of the same packaging then added pop dots and the Making Memories metal flowers. I also used Tie the Knot journaling book, borders, and mixed flowers on this page. I raided my stash for the Making Memories rub-on title, the numeral rub-ons, and the woven letter K.

After I was done with the layout I wanted to create something wedding related so I pushed a few ideas around a couple ideas didn’t work but these 2 cards did.

The cake card was so easy to make. I cut 2 pieces of the Tie the Knot paper that I wanted to use then I rounded the top corners. I layered the pieces and adhered them to the folded side of the card. I had the Tie the Knot journaling page cut out for another project and didn’t use it and to me it looks like a fancy cake top so that’s what it turned into. I had the 2 little ring embellishments and congratulations sticker in my stash. After everything is adhered down cut around the cake til you meet the folded side of the card on the bottom tier of the cake make sure you STOP cutting here otherwise you won’t have a card when your done. I added a tulle ribbon and the Tie the Knot gems to finish the card.

Card #2 was a quick throw together of scraps. The 2 journal pages are cut down, layered, and adhered to the card. I added a tag dangling from twine to the top. On the tag is a vintage doily flower, a Tie the Knot brad, and a flower that I made by scrunching up paper and shaping it into a flower. A few pearls and the card is finished.

Last and certainly not least when my girls saw the tulle flowers they wanted them as headbands and barrettes. That is just what I wanted to use them for too. They are really easy to make too! This one used a clip barrette, adhesive, and the tulle flower. Easy peasy and oh so cute!

 

Slice Fabrique Blog

Guess what? We have a new blog and Facebook page specificially for the Slice Fabrique.

The Slice Fabrique is works with design cards specifically customized for fabric allowing you to cut alphabets, numbers, flowers, icons, basic shapes, and more. The Slice Fabrique™ works on a variety of different fabrics such as felt, flannel, and cotton. Apply a fusible web to your fabric prior to cutting so your fabric die-cuts are ready to be ironed on to your project. You'll love the result.

 

Check it out and become a fan.

• Slice Fabrique Facebook Page

• Slice Fabrique Blog