The Story includes a fabulous mask by Christy Tomlinson for Pink Pailsee. Paired with ink, mist or paint, the mask is a great way to customize a layout. Simply place the mask on your surface, cover with your chosen medium, and remove the mask to reveal the design. Challenge #31 is to incorporate this technique into a layout. Our guest designer, Allison Waken, put her doily mask to use in this page:

Allison created her own patterned paper by masking with black mist, then trimming the result down to photo mats and border strips.

I love that the varying saturation of the mist adds interest to the coloring of the mask.

The doily design is perfect for these little peek-a-boo pieces.

Are you ready to try your hand at masking, and perhaps win some scrapbooking goodies along the way? Here is how:

1. Create a layout using the masking technique. We would love to see a Scrapbook Circle kit in action, but any materials will do.

2. Post your layout to your blog, a gallery, or our Facebook page. Come back to this post and leave a comment with the direct link to your posted project.

3. Deadline to enter is Wednesday, May 30th, 9:00 pm Pacific.

4. One player will be randomly selected to win a $10.00 Scrapbook Circle credit.

I’ll be back Tuesday with more masking inspiration from our design team, and you can always browse the gallery for more ideas. Good luck and happy masking!

Thanks to all who participated in our Mothers challenge! Your layouts were beautiful and touching. The randomly selected winner of a $10.00 shop credit is…

ANGIE

…with this layout using the May kit, The Story:

Don’t you love what she did with the mask? Angie has a great tutorial on her blog for mixing the paint that came in the May add-on kit with texture paste. Hint, hint, wink, wink. You may want to keep this in mind for the future!

Angie, please email me at precociouspaper (at) yahoo (dot) com with your contact information and we will get you set up with your prize. Everyone, thanks for playing and stay tuned for our next challenge!

Included in “The Story” kit is an element deck by Cosmo Cricket from their Twenty-Three line. I flipped through it as soon as I opened my kit and fell in love with all the fun designs! Let’s take a look at what Jennie did with these tags, shall we?

See how Jennie framed her photo? Instead of trimming down blocks of patterned paper, Jennie just pulled tags from the element deck. And not only are the tags design elements, but also journaling blocks and a title!

Have you been playing with the Cosmo Cricket element deck? We would love to see! Upload your photos to our Facebook page and we’ll come take a peek. Have a great day!

Hello! Today we have DT member Jennie lifting subscriber Andrea. Here is Andrea’s page that she shared with us on Facebook.

I love the ballons, those little hearts along the bottom and all of the layering. Such a fun page!

Jennie lifted Andrea here with this page. She even played along with Andrea’s layout title. Love the splatters on this page and how she used the longer word stickers all layered at the bottom. Fabulous!

Thanks, ladies, for the continued inspiration!

If you’d like to be considered for one of our Lifting You features, share your work on the Scrapbook Circle Facebook page.

Hi Scrapbook Circle friends!

Sophie here to share with you one of my current love: Smash pads!

I fell in love with the Smash Pad from this month’s add-on.

I loved it so much I wanted to use all of the tags at once!!

This note pad was perfect to illustrate the theme of some photos I had taken of my boy reading with his grandma: book pages; passing on knowledge and culture.

I cluttered the note tags on one side of my layout.

I used them to write my journaling : here is how to do it:

- the journaling is typed in my computer and then printed on the tag.

 -  I usually write under Word and my text is created in a frame :

- I print it once,

- then I glue (do not use permanent glue) the tag on top of my text, using the frame as a guide to make sure my text will fit the tag

- and print again.

- et voilà!

After that I stitched on the tags to add the finishing touch ( well, you know me by now: no stitching: no layout!!)

I love the end result!

It is one of my favorite layouts this month!

What did you do with your Smash Pad?

Do share your layouts with us on our facebook page!

We love to see what you create!

Have a great day!

Sophie

OK, so I am always looking to do something new with my mists. They aren’t new to scrapbooking, and probably every technique has been seen BUT before I tried this little trick, and went to You Tube to see if it WOULD work, and found no videos. OK, so maybe it isn’t THAT lame an idea! (Of course it crossed my mind it wouldn’t work too… but what the heck!)

I placed my rub-on airplane on the line I had traced that I planned to sew on. I then used a paint brush to paint on some spray ink… dabbed and smeared (cuz I had no idea what I was expecting), and VIOLA! The ink did NOT cling to the airplane as I had hoped! YAY!

The airplane int he kit is white-so the reason I even thought if it was I wanted to use the airplane rub-on on the almost white paper… so I was looking for a way to make it stand out!

I then stitched and DONE! I can’t say EVERY rub-on will work the same way, but these white Hambly rub-ons are begging to be “resists”!

Thanks for stopping by! And if you give this a try, link us up! Or Facebook it! We would love to see!!

Hello! We have a new sketch challenge for you to play along with.

Here are a few layout to get you inspired to play along with us.

Diana F.

Diana W.

Nicole

Use this sketch with your Scrapbook Circle kits and share your work with us in the comments section and/or on our Facebook page before May 23rd. I’ll share all of the players here on a reveal post on May 25th. 

Enjoy and have fun! Can’t wait to see what you make.

Our latest challenge asks you to create a layout with the theme of mothers. You can record your thoughts on motherhood, document memories of your own mother, or scrapbook important women in your life. Rebecca took on the challenge and created this touching, sweet layout:

I love that the focal point is this gorgeous photo of Rebecca’s children. How precious is that captured moment? The title work on the side is fabulous, too!

And then, this sweet journaling. I’m sure Rebecca’s children will treasure these words one day.

Thank you for the inspiration, Rebecca! How is your entry to the challenge coming along? You can find more details here. Have a wonderful day!

This month’s kit has a hidden gem in it… one piece of paper. That’s right, you heard me… paper.  There are lots of great patterns in this kit, but my absolute favorite one is so versatile and a little goes a long way!

It is this paper by Studio Calico:

I was inspired to chop it up into all those pretty journalling cards…but I knew that I didn’t want to use them as journalling cards on their own! Sure, they would be great for that – but I just loved all the different patterns on the cards and the colours too! I cut the whole sheet and came up with 2 different pages with it!

The first page might just be my new favorite page – I used the Lilybee paper from the kit as a base and layered the distressed journalling cards all over the page. I made good use of the Add-On I picked up this month too – LOVE the Hambly white rub ons and the coral overlays too. They are my new BFFs

I had enough cards left over to make a second page – and added in a few scraps from my kit this month too!

 I hope you are inspired a little to cut up your paper and make it go a long way!

Our May guest designer, Allison Waken, has been cutting up the May printable with amazing results!

Allison’s title is directly from the printable. I love how she stacked the circles and stitched them down the side.

The date tab is also from the printable.

Allison certainly has inspired me to print out that printable and put it to use! How about you? Have you used the printable this month? We would love to see! Be sure to upload your projects to our Facebook page. Have a great day!