Holiday Cheer with Maja Design

Hello friends!

I'm in today to share a Christmas project for Maja Design. I'm not much for Christmas papers as you would know by now, but their "Home for the Holidays" collection is absolutely delightful! For this month of December, I will be creating with this collection just to get into the festive cheer.

This is the tag I've made:

I've done some layering of papers from the 6x6 paper pad, as well as with the die cut tags and postal stamps. Again, my background work was simple - with some festive words stenciled with modeling paste and colored over with a matching blue in watercolor and paint

Some close-ups:

A chipboard ornament which I colored with glitter ink and stacked on top of a die cut snowflake from one of the more neutral colored papers from the paper pad. I chose red to highlight the color in the bottom-most piece of patterned paper and to use it as an accent color that really popped.

Layering of the tags which I fussy cut out. To create the snow falling on the tags, I added generous amounts of white glitter paint and allowed it to dry.

This postage stamp really warms my heart! It reminds me of exactly what we do in cold weather with our loved ones - we cuddle!

That's all I have for today. Have a great day ahead!

Sweet Baby with Maja Design

Hello friends!

I'm finally able to share a layout I made of my little girl - it took awhile to get those photos printed! I was very tempted to use the Vintage Baby collection, but thought I would have a bit of fun with a collection that's not baby-based.

Here is the page, made with the gorgeous pinks from Summer Crush:

I choose this particular sheet "Off to meet him" as the background color matches my photo's perfectly. I also liked how Marie has drawn the images such that my photo and clusters can be placed in the centre without being too cliche or flat. My background is very simple painting with pink and brown, and I had added my stenciled lace after the painting so that I get a nice contrast of white against the colors. Usually my stenciled designs get lost in the colors I add so this is one way of letting them stand out.

Some close-ups:

My layers of papers, made from scraps from the same collection. I also have a piece of chipboard which I tucked in between and colored with various dimensional and distress paints.

My floral cluster to make it more feminine. Underneath is a spare die cut leaf which I had from a previous project made with Enjoying Outdoors.

And my title which I had colored with gelato and watercolor pencil to match that of the ladies in the corner.

And that's all I have for today. Thanks for dropping by the blog!

love,

Vintage Summer card with Maja Desi

Hello friends!

 I'm back on the Maja Design blog again today with a simple card to share with you. Don't be surprised, even in a small simple card there are design principles you can follow to make your card visually more pleasing to the eye.

When layering my papers, I like to alternate between a neutral shade like grey, off-white or beige and what I like to call a "character color". Basically, it's the color that sets the theme and feel of the project and gives it its "character". In the case of this card, my "character color" is the soft purple with tinges of pink and it has given the card a romantic and feminine hue as it is going out to a very special lady. So following this guide, I alternated off-white with purple, and on the purple itself, varying between intricate designs like paisley swirls and simpler mini fleur di lis. The contrast between these elements lends a lot of dimension and pleasure to our eyes.

Some close-ups:

I stamped on my sentiment on a solid purple background and juxtaposed it next to the banner with more off-white so that it's obvious it's the message I want to send to my recipient. The banners were arranged to form an inverted triangle with the floral cluster, so that gives the visual flow of the card.

A little bit of the background mediums work: stenciling, painting and some stamping. I used a lace border stencil for a more feminine touch, and a little splash of blue just to create a color accent. I also placed the cut-out from the info strip diagonally across my sentiment for a smooth visual flow as that is the direction our eyes would follow when reading from one line to the next. My chipboard from Blue Fern Studios was altered with simple heat embossing using one of the fabulous EP.

Well I hope these guidelines are useful for you when thinking about creating your next project. Until then, happy crafting!

An Autumn Story with Maja Design

Hello friends!

Today I'm up on the blog with another layout I created using the Enjoying Outdoors collection. This time, I focused on the rich greens and browns of the papers and used it for a trip we took in the forest during autumn.

We were on a broad walk in the middle of an age-old forest of karri trees and there was a little lookout by the side. Being boys, my two sons ran up the lookout and were surprised to find a little star badge on one of the wooden beams. They went on to make up their own story about how it got there and a new adventure was created. I love it that they are so creative and curious in their own ways about the world around them, and that there is always a story (pretend or not) to everything they see.

Some close-ups:

My paper layers, which I made into a vertical line to imitate the towering trees in the Valley of the Giants, a very ancient karri tree forest. By alternating the different shades of brown and green, and with the patterns in the info strip, I was able to add a lot of contrast and details. My chipboard was embossed in brown, and I painted green glitter paint over.

Adding more details with the die cut leaves and words from the info strip.

A simple background of stenciling words and sprinkling of paints. My chipboard frame was painted with watercolors and I also had lace and hessian tucked into the paper layers.

That's all I have for today. Thanks for dropping by!

love,

Enjoying Outdoors with Maja Design

Hello Maja fans!

I'm on the blog today to share a mini album I've made from the brand new collection Enjoying Outdoors. I love the sweet combination of purples with browns and greens - and reminds me of the lavender fields we saw while on a road trip to the forests in Western Australia.

 

Here is the cover of my mini. I love the stalks of lavender in the die-cut sheet but lavenders don't grow well here, so I tied a small bunch of dried forget-me-nots (I keep lots of these whenever I receive a bouquet of flowers, which is not very often by the way!) with some lace. The die cut tags from the 6x6 paper stack are the perfect size for the mini too. 

Here's a look at the inside pages:

This is really a very small album - about 3" by 5" so I decided to keep things simple inside without excessive layers. Just lightly distressed edges on the papers and banners made from the info strip to give me plenty of space for photos and journaling.

 

A little more fun here with chipboard and lace. We always try to spot mushrooms on our walks in the park so I added those as a reminder of the little bits of nature we see when we're outdoors. Now if only there were truffles here.... 

In the end, I couldn't resist adding more layers and flowers.

And the last two pages of the album with simple photo mats and flat flowers so that the album doesn't end up too chunky.

That's all for the mini album and I hope to fill it up soon with pictures of our family out in the parks for our walks and the fun things that we see on the way!

love,
jelissa

Thank You with Maja Design

Hello friends!

I'm excited to be up on the blog today to share a card I made using Maja Design's Autumn Basics collection. Some of you may know, our baby girl arrived last Tuesday morning and we've received lots of well wishes for her, as well as gifts all the way from Sweden, Malaysia and even Australia! This Thank You card is meant for one of my fantastic scrappy pals who sent her love all the way across the sea.

I've layered papers from the Autumn Vintage Basics collection seeing how the weather is cooling down these days in Singapore - a good thing for me as I'm now on a diet that makes me perspire endlessly. It's part of my Chinese culture to make sure that mothers who have just delivered get the best nutrition to help their bodies recover from childbirth, although everyone around me including my doctor thinks I need to get more R.E.S.T! But lying down in bed and sleeping the whole day is just not my kind of thing, so I've been making myself using by.... making thank you cards!

I've kept my background simple because I want the designs on the papers to show. Some splattering of paint and watering it for a water-color effect (this is so trending now!), and fine stenciled designs just to keep the composition in place. I've also added twine to my flowers for a more rustic autumn look.

Some fussy cutting over here which helped me to relax after a hectic morning of bathing baby, having my breakfast and catching up with some housework. To make the fussy cut flowers stand out, I popped the image up with 3D foam dots and dabbed Sticklers for a bit of glittery goodness.

Hope you like what I have shared with you today!

love,

The Sweetest Thing with Maja Design

Hello friends!

Today I'm up on the Maja Design blog to share with you a layout I created using the gorgeous papers from the Vintage Basics collections.

Since the keyword is "vintage", I dug out this old wedding photo of my parents. Photos from their generation generally have an orange/reddish tinge so I used a sheet from Vintage Summer for my background. But I also liked the romantic roses and memory-keeping theme from Autumn so that was how I came to mix the two collections together. Surprisingly, the lilac and peach blended beautifully. It also helped that I had bits of green as a bridging color to tie the two together.

Some close-ups:

My floral cluster and title with die-cut leaves sneaked in.

Another floral cluster resting on my paper layers. You can see some of the background stamping peeking through.

My balancing cluster which I had some fussy and die cut layering, as well as clock hands chipboards from Blue Fern Studios, keeping in wit the theme of love being timeless.

More paper layers here whose color scheme I had borrowed for the background.

That's all I have for today. Thanks for dropping by!

love,

Memories with Maja Design

Hello Maja fans!

I'm back in today to share a project I made with the limited edition Nyhavn collection. This time, it's using one of the many IKEA frames I have around the house and turning it into a display piece in my living room.

Here is the project:

Although I've not been to Nyhavn before, looking at the papers remind me of the seaside places we visited in Perth. One of these was the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse located right at the southern tip of Western Australia and it's where the Indian Ocean and the Southern Ocean meets. We didn't see a lot of boats on our way in, but the place is just as rich in history and we spent some time looking out for migrating whales.

The frame was originally black but I coated it with white gesso and that gave a beautiful rustic finish which added to the seaside feel. To create my layers, I used strips of papers from the Nyhavn collection and selected them to match the colors in my photo. I left these layers untouched by mediums as I wanted the designs and colors to show.

A little detail which unfortunately I didn't capture very well in this photo. The grey world map is a bonus sheet found in the collection pack and I deliberately cut out a piece with the map of Australia and tucked it behind the coral chipboard from Blue Fern Studios. The different chipboards I used were colored to match the other paper layers.

For the corals, they were covered with a layer of stucco paste and then colored with 13@rts Matte paint in Apricot. For the border chipboard, I blended a few shades of blue and turquoise gelato. To create a sandy effect, I sprinkled sand grit and mixed in some glass beads.

Some background work I did - creating resist with embossing powder and painting with Ayeeda mists over. I left some of the more intricate details on the Maja Design background paper untouched.

Parts of my floral clusters. I tucked in a few shells which we had collected from another beach in Perth. One thing I realised is that we use so many products to embellish our projects that we forget the most basic and meaningful of embellishments are those that we collect on our trips and from our life events. Just as scrapbooking is about collecting memories, keeping these memorabilia is also a huge part of remembrance.

That's all I have for today. Thanks for dropping by!

Memories with Maja Design

Good day friends!

Today I'm up on the Maja Design blog and I have for you a layout created with the Nyhavn collection. We've seen a lot of the new Summer Crush last month so I thought I would like to feature a slightly older collection but just as perfect for your summertime adventures. 

I really love the color palette in this collection - it's warm and comforting, yet fun and outdoorsy at the same time. So I chose this photo of Hubby and Eldest playing on the tyre swing, the two of them spending some precious time together. Subsequently I realised, even the colors from the photo match the papers too.

More details in the close-ups:

My floral cluster on top of my paper layers. You can see lots of background work - stenciling, painting with Ayeeda matt paints, splattering, stamping and heat embossing to create resist. My chipboard from Blue Fern Studios was also colored very lightly with gelato so that it blends nicely into the embellishments and allow the colors from the background and papers to stand out.

Another mini cluster where you can see the gorgeous designs on the Nyhavn papers. I've also layered the info strips and used those as subtitles.

My balancing cluster. The leaves were die cut and tucked in to create a nice little bouquet.

That's all I have for today. Thanks for dropping by!

love,

A Perfect Day with Maja Design

Hello friends!

Have you ever fallen in love with a collection of papers so much that you just cannot keep your hands off of it? Well, I am looking at the new Summer Crush collection from Maja Design and there is this mad impulse to make loads and loads of stuff from it. I guess that's why it's so aptly named "Summer Crush"!

This is my second project featuring these papers and I'm focusing on the pink this round after working with the teals in the previous post. It's remarkable how easy these two colors are to work with, either together or on their own. Here is my layout, a rare one of me and the boys at the park since I'm always the person behind the camera. It's not often I play rough with them, especially since I'm pregnant now but you can tell that we were having a lot of fun here! More like they were having a lot of fun tickling and climbing over me....It is a pleasant reminder that it's not a must to capture the moment, but more important to live in it.  But make sure your camera settings are right so that the husband can do the capturing instead.

Now in the collection, one of the sheets actually came exactly like the background you see here. However it was too flat for my liking so I trimmed out the centre teal portion and mounted it onto another sheet with the pink checkered design. This way, I can distress the edges of my teal paper and make it more dimensional and outstanding. I would have done some stitching as well along the edges if I wasn't such a klutz with the sewing machine. Once again, my background mixed media work was kept close and tight to the main cluster so that it doesn't cover up the gorgeous images Marie has drawn over the page.

If you look closely, almost everything on this page is a square of some kind. The papers I used for layering are all squares of different sizes,  my chipboard frame is square, my two main sheets of patterned paper are squares, the stamped design is square... and I even found two square buttons in my stash! Now what's up with the squares you say? I really have no idea other than it's fun!

Some close-ups:

I just cannot get enough of those straws! In my previous post I demonstrated how to make these cute little babies and this round I've used the hearts and chevrons to complement the whole mood of the layout.

Layering the patterned papers and also a die cut doily to create some additional detail in my floral cluster.

The info strip which I used as a subtitle.

That's all I have for today. Hope you like what I have shared!

love,