the pink couch: scrapbook

Showing posts with label scrapbook. Show all posts

Jun 16, 2015

Gossamer Blue and Etsy

It's super hard to believe but an entire year has already gone by and my time as a designer for Gossamer Blue has come to an end. With my final kit, I decided to create a few things that went along with the kids' final month of school. So, a couple of cute teacher gifts were put together. I seriously love gift wrapping. The little layers of fun paper things mixed with random unexpected objects; painted feathers, sequins, those cute word bobby pins! These little gift wrap boxes actually inspired a couple of new ideas for the etsy shop as well!

Since the kids are on summer break, I've signed both of them up for a summer reading program through the local library. As an incentive for reading, I made them these little reading log books with Popsicle book marks. The reading logs are made with a PL 3x4 card and then filled with index cards cut down to size. It's such a fun way to encourage the littles to read more!

I also made these little wooden keychains. Summer just seems like the perfect reason to pull out all of the paints and make something cute. Like an ode to summer camp from childhood!

In the Main Kit there's lot's of cute embellishments and really large cardboard letters - spray painted gold they make really pretty addition to my art table!

and finally the Etsy part! I am reopening up my little shop tomorrow. Now that my obligations have slowed in time for summer, I'm hoping to have lots of extra time to devote to my own collections! This first update is called:

Summer Soiree

- it's a summery collection of both handmade and vintage, a little of everything with a summer time theme. I'll be adding more to my shop throughout the summer but this first update is so exciting, it feels as though it's been forever since I've really devoted any time to my artsy little shop. It's good to get back to what makes you happy!

Thanks for stopping in today! I look forward to being able to post a little more regularly as well. I've come to love summers and the extra time that comes along with the warm season!

xo ~ Tara

May 22, 2015

Gossamer Blue ~ May

It's hard to believe but this week is the kids' last week of school. We made it and I'm not sure who is more excited about the impending last day of school but it may just be this mommy! I imagine without the constant stack of homework and projects every night to help with, I will have more time to create and photograph - something that I miss doing throughout the year!

and the end of the school year means Graduations to celebrate and lots of teacher appreciation gifts to hand out - which leads to lots of creative gift wrapping since I'm a huge fan of gift cards. It takes a little imagination to make a gift card feel like a well thought out gift and it's achievable if you spend a little more time with the gift wrap process - it's all about the layers! So this month with the help of some Gossamer Blue kits I wanted to focus on some creative ways to wrap up those tiny presents!

There is still one my project to share with Gossamer this month, a fun little travel journal that you can quickly create for your summer road trips! These were made with the May main kit! I plan on making a few extra of these, I think they'll come in handy to take along with us on our traveling adventures this summer.

Have a wonderful weekend friends! The family has plans to visit a ranch this weekend (and I'm super excited to be bringing along my camera, I've been wanting to break in a new camera lens - just needed the right setting!) The rest of the weekend will be spent preparing my Etsy shop again - so looking forward to summer and all the of the possibilities!

xo ~ tara

May 15, 2015

Gossamer Blue Blog Hop - May

If I had to choose between all of the kits over at Gossamer Blue I would pick the Bits & Pieces kit - every time! I always find that I look forward to sorting through that kit the most each month and the May kit Bits & Pieces kit is one of my all time favs!

Welcome to the GB May Blog Hop friends! I knew I wanted to save this kit to use for a project after Mother's Day. We took the kids down to Schnepf Farms for their annual Peach Festival on Mother's Day and spent the afternoon picking peaches, riding carnival rides and eating a bit too much kettle corn. It was a wonderful sunny afternoon here in the desert - which is where I decided to draw the creative inspiration for this tiny mini album named appropriately: Desert Peach!

The first page in this album is simply a little stack of vintage papers all stacked and stapled to a cardstock page. It's like having a notebook to fill out, a narrative about a day well spent.

Since this book is so incredibly tiny, each page is only 3x3 inches, I knew I needed to keep the individual pages simple and as flat as possible. My love of embellishing would have to take a back seat to the simple approach this time around.

I cheated a little and used a few older photos of my Mom's garden. California peaches are slightly prettier than the desert grown ones - in my opinion of course. Even Chase was convinced that we were picking mango's instead of peaches. :)

Even though it was warm May Sunday it never really seemed to phase the kids much. It was like an Easter Egg hunt looking for peaches that were ripe enough to pick and we came home with a bag full of sweet smelling fruit!

Thanks so much for stopping by today! Hope you enjoyed my mini album post and don't forget to check out these girls' blogs for more super cute Gossamer Blue projects!

Tara Anderson - that's me!

Apr 1, 2015

Gossamer Blue ~ April

I love the first of the month when I update my gallery over at Gossamer Blue! It's fun to see lots of little projects all come together. This month's kit include lots of Elles Studio paper and Simply Stories chipboard embellishments. The add-on kits though came with a variety of Crate Paper - Craft Market products - which are my personal favorite!(How could you go wrong with that much gold glitter!)

I may a little early with this idea, but I wanted to start putting together a mix of things to take with me on a road-trip that's currently in the works. I used one of the Craft Market linen bags from Crate Paper and made a little 'weekend adventure' bag - full of things I can use on the go!

You can never have too many gift tags laying around! Especially as we're getting ready for end of the year gifts for everyone involved with the kids' school year!

Here's a super cute idea for Easter (there's still a little time!) Easter Bunny wands! I found a printable template and used the template to trace out a 'chocolate' bunny shape onto some scrapbook paper. I cut out the shapes, mine are backed with colored card stock paper, and then sewed almost all the way around the bunny leaving just enough room for a small wooden dowel. I used some extra chipboard embellishments to decorate the bunnies and I'll add a name tag to each bunny with the kids' name on them. (I wanted to make a few pink paper Peeps as well, I think they would be perfect in a vase with some flowers for our Easter brunch table!)

I have a Pablo Picasso class to teach later on today so I 'm off to review notes and make sure I have all of my class samples ready to go! I hope you have a fun day planned as well and thanks so much for popping in this afternoon!

xo ~ Tara

Mar 15, 2015

Gossamer Blue Blog Hop & giveaway

Welcome to the Gossamer Blue blog hop! This month left me rather stumped on an idea to feature. I thought about Spring, and Spring vacation and all of the craft projects I have on the agenda and then I remembered that Easter is just a few weeks away! The kids always want to know why the Easter bunny doesn't bring the grown-ups a basket so, rather than a traditional Easter themed project I wanted to take a traditional idea and put my own twist on it. The Easter Basket! Sounds simple enough - usually filled with bright green plastic grass, candy and little toys but what would your Easter Basket look like now that you're all grown up?

So, there's the inspiration: to create an Easter Basket filled with the things that I love right now!

Here's a quick list for what my basket would include:

cute coffee mugs and plates
a tiny planted succulent

a collection of handmade cards or tags

a pretty garland

a giftcard to Starbucks (love their green coffee)

some new washi tape

wooden beads and bottles of paint

some embroidery thread for making tassels

all in a great vintage milk glass bowl!

The kids and I stopped into a local gallery over the weekend, this particular one is filled with rocks and glass works. (I now realize that anytime you take small children into a place with the word 'rare' in the title that it will induce a near panic attack!) The rocks were incredible - lots of cut and polished crystals to see. I thought it would be fun to make a small collection of cards using some of the left over paper that I had leftover from the March main kit. I cut the pieces into geometric shapes to mimic the quart spears we had seen in the gallery and sewed them along in a row.

These cute coffee stamps can be found in the March life Pages kit!

What would we find in your Easter basket?

I'm giving away one of the sewn fabric garlands! I used lots of little pieces of fabric - some found and collected, some new and a few vintage, all in pretty Spring colors. If you would like a chance to win the fabric garland that I made for these photos, leave a comment below on this post. I'll choose a winner at random on Tuesday.