Friendzy Friday

For this week's Friendzy Friday I have decided to focus on something that is very hot right now. Something we can barely keep in stock....The Sew Easy!

I have always loved the look of stitching on layouts and cards but was always a little intimidated as I can barely sew a button back on a shirt. Enter the Sew Easy. It allows you to add a fun element to your page without being a master sewer or even owning a sewing machine.

The tool comes with one head and has storage for needles in the handle. The mat is sold seperately and really makes using the tool SO much easier. We R makes their own floss which is so smoooooth and comes in lots of colours.

I keep the cards that come with each head on a ring so I can refer to them for the different stitches.

You can use a ruler to guide your tool or free hand it. Depending on the weight of your paper the holes might go right through.

If your paper is heavier then you may need to use a piercing tool or needle to poke them.

A little bit of stitching in a straight line or zig zag

Or a lot of stitching as a frame. You can use the scallop head to create free hand clouds and trees

And here's a little tease of what's to come in the land of Sew Easy...a case, new wider heads, baker's twine floss, metallic floss and variegated floss. Keep your eyes on the blog for more details in the not too distant future!

retreat results....very 'stitchy'

I spent this past weekend away in Grand Bend at the Two Scrapbook Friends Spring Retreat. I had a fantastic time as always. What's not to like about a weekend full of scrapbooking, great food and 70 women??

I realized when I got there that I didn't really bring a whole lot of patterned papers with me so I picked up some new papers from MME and a few from Fancy Pants. I also had to purchase the jillibean dutch mustard collection before I came. Just can't get enough of the 'bean!

My friend Darcy took this pic of Holden last year and I've been hanging onto it for just the right layout. This is the first layout I did of the weekend and I blame it for the stitching obsession!

Of course I had to scrapbook Wyatt's recent stitches and I used the Sew Easy tool to create the zigzag. I tied off the end to mimic how the stitches are tied.

Oh look, is that stitching on those die cut stars? Yup. MME also brought out baker's twine with each of their new collections and I bought at least 4 colours. It's a little tougher to stitch with but the result is pretty cool.

Jillibean. I bought some Maya Road mini spools and wound floss around them to coordinate with my layout. A little glimmer mist added to the kraft to take up some of the 'white' space

For this layout I was inspired by Dee's crimped squares on a design team layout. I love how the texture looks (thanks Heather for letting me use your crimper!) Thanks Darcy for helping with the stitching of the squares!

I stitched this one around 4:15 am Saturday morning! I covered some old chipboard for the title and popped up some clouds. I LOVE these new MME papers!

I was a bit stumped on what paper to use for this one so Joanne came to the rescue and found me these papers on the flip side of some Fancy Pants summer papers. I bought the fence in the US back in Feb and have been itching to use it. I inked my chipboard letters (thanks Cathy for the faded jeans ink!) then covered in Glossy Accents. The rolled flower and butterfly were leftovers from my jillibean design team kit and I used Jenny's Martha scissors on the grass.

More jillibean along with a Prima canvas title which I love. Wish they'd do alphas in plain canvas! more stitching!

All in all a productive weekend. I used the few lines I had as much as I could. My wrist and shoulder hurt a bit from the stitching but I think it was worth the pain! LOL!

I get to spend all of this coming Saturday scrapbooking at the store for National Scrapbook Day too. I feel pretty lucky!

May design team

For this month's design team kit each member was given a Jillibean Soup collection to work with. Well that made me really happy as I am a huge fan of jillibean. I received the super fun 'spotted owl soup' which is all about birthday.

I made the usual card and layouts but also thought that, given the theme, that a few other birthday decor items were in order.

Banners are everywhere right now and I'm a fan. I cut these ones out of a patterend paper and stitched a string for them to hang on. I made buttons into balloons and used up some very old Heidi Swapp chipboard letters.

More banners! LOL

I love the corrugated shapes that jillibean comes out with

I popped up my owls and used just a tiny bit of liquid adhesive to hold the strings in place

Here's my little extras...

I used a foam ball inside this cupcake wrapper then used pins to push in crumpled 1" circles. The pins add a fun touch and are so great on cards too.

Although most of this line is very fun and full of bright colours and patterns this patterned paper is a little softer so I added a Prima felt stem and used the 'bean blossom' under a die cut to form the flower. I used baker's twine to decorate the handle and voila, a pretty little gift bag for one of my friends!

This banner was cut out on the store's Accucut. There are lots of fun things that we can do for you with this die-based system. Keep your eyes on the store's blog for more amazing ideas. I added some chipboard letters then embellished with lots of fun bits and pieces. I used the baker's twine to string it up.

Another fun kit!

Make sure you check out what all the other ladies did over on the TSF gallery!