Two Peas in a Bucket

July Garden Girl Project Sneaks

Here's a look at what you'll be seeing in the Design Team section July 1st!  We love what the girls have up their sleeves!  If you haven't seen them already, check out this month's Milestone-themed projects here.

Celebrating Milestones With Customized Cards with Julie Campbell

It's no secret that I love creating handmade cards.  No matter what the occasion or sentiment, a card made by hand conveys the underlying message to the recipient that they are cared for.  I especially love creating cards to celebrate the milestones in people's lives.

Here are some cards that I've created to celebrate some of my loved ones' big days, along with some tips on customizing cards for all of the milestones in your life.

1. Birthdays

Nautical 40th Birthday Card

This is a card I created recently as part of my Trendy Trios card making video series.  It's easy to customize birthday cards with alphabet/number stickers or stamps.  You can even make birthday cards in advance to have on hand, leaving a blank space for the recipient's age until you're ready to use it.

2. Weddings

Going To the Chapel Card

Wedding cards are some of my favorite cards to make!  If you know the couple's wedding colors, create a custom card to coordinate!  For this card, I used plain veneer icons & dressed them up to create a bride & groom.

3. Babies

Welcome Baby Card

New babies always give me an excuse to pull out all of those sweet papers & embellishments in my stash.  You can create with the traditional blue or pink hues or mix it up for a little added interest.  I wanted to keep this card neutral enough for it to work for either gender.

4. New Home

Home Is Where You Are Card

This card is from my Journey Into Card Making Workshop.  Send a heartfelt greeting to a friend who's moved into their new home.  Change the sentiment up a bit to say "Welcome to the neighborhood!" to greet a new neighbor.  Bring along a plate of freshly baked cookies with a coordinating tag for an added surprise.

5. Graduation

Let's Celebrate Card

Don't forget to use your photos!  There's nothing more customized than including a photo of your recipient on the front of their card.  With all of the fun photo frame embellishments, stamps & dies found in the Two Peas store, adding photos to your cards has never been easier!  You can find more ways to use photo frames on your cards here.

I hope you're inspired to create a handmade card to celebrate the milestones in others lives this year.  Be sure to upload your cards in the gallery for everyone to see!   - Julie

We asked the Garden Girls to describe what products they're drawn to when selecting items perfect for their scrap style. We'll be sharing what they had to say once a week or so on the blog, starting with Amy Tan!  Here's a look at how Amy puts her favorites to work:

Love Amy's style?  Try the following for yourself: mix alphabets in your titles, cluster layers of embellishments around a stacked photo mat, have fun with hand-stitching and reach for bright colors.  Browse some of Amy's favorites here!

1,2,3... improve your Instagram photos (with video tutorial)

Hello everyone, it´s Janna here. In May, Two Peas in a Bucket is focussing on photos. Therefore I would like to share a short video about my Instagram related photo editing process today. I have a rather strict routine how I am editing my photos - there might be better and/or easier ways, but maybe this helps you a bit with editing your photos :)

You might already know that I am a huge (huuuge) fan of Instagram - for me, it is the best social media tool ever. Why? Because it allows you to get in contact with other (crafty) people very fast and to see snippets of their daily life (you know this saying .. I am not curious, I just like being well informed?! *hehe*). All joking aside, for me it feels as if I get to know people better and it is a great way to share my passion for scrapbooking with crafty people from all around the world.

Here are the links to the photo apps I am using:
Snapseed - free
Pic.Tap.Go. - 0.99$
Instagram - free
Picfx - 1.99$
PicFrame - 0.99$
Whitagram - free

...and what I also love about Instagram is that it encourages me to take more photos. There are lots of great photo challenges on Instagram - photo a day, for example, where you have a theme for each day of the month. This does not only let you take more photos, but to see the world around you with different eyes. Furthermore I am using a lot of my Instagram photos on layouts, please click here to see some of them in my Garden Girl gallery.

I would love to know which apps you are using to edit your photos - do you have any favourites? Any editing apps you can´t live without?
And did Instagram (or any other photo sharing program) increase your scrapbooking?

Have a great day, everyone - wherever you are!
Janna
xo

Get to Know: Michelle De Leon

You may have noticed there is a new face in the Garden.  We're so pleased to introduce you to the newest of our design team members: Michelle De Leon!  We know you're going to love the dreamy quality to her work, not to mention her gorgeous photography. Here is a little about Michelle:

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About me: My name is Michelle De Leon and I'm  from Alberta, Canada. Recently, I was accepted into a Master's program for Speech-Language Pathology, and I'll be starting in the fall. I discovered the scrapbooking world last year, and I'm so happy to have found a hobby that allows me to be creative while documenting memories!

About my family: I am not married and I do not have kids yet. My boyfriend is finishing up his Master's degree in engineering in a different province, so we've been doing long distance for a few years now. His passion and skill in photography is always an inspiration to me! I also have two pet cockatiels, one of which I've had since third grade.

About my style: This is a tough one to answer! I am still finding out what I like and what works for me, but I tend to go for a feminine, dreamy look. 

My top 5 papercrafting essentials: I think the answer to this question changes from time to time, but right now I'm really enjoying vellum, sequins, badges, neutral patterned paper for backgrounds, and gold mist.

On any given day you might find me: studying during the school year, working during the summer, volunteering, or enjoying low-key quality time with the important people in my life :)

Michelle's first page went up in the Garden with our May release and can be found here.  We love what she did with this topic.  You'll also want to watch for her first video in our Seeing Double series later this month.

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It's so great to learn more about you, Michelle!  Again, welcome!!

You can follow Michelle on her blog, Instagram and on Pinterest.

 

Creative Space Tour with Lexi Bridges

Hey Peas! Lexi here today to give you a little tour of my scrap space. Some Peas mentioned in a CHA chat that a video tour would be fun so I decided to bring that to you today. Some background info on the room: Until 1.5 months ago I was scrapping on a concrete floor in the world's messiest scrap/storage room. "Hoarders" would not be proud. Or maybe they would. Anyway, it wasn't pretty. We turned our john deere room (an extra room in your basement to drive in your lawnmower for anyone not in the midwest) into a new space for me to scrap and teach. (I homeschool part of the week.) The room had concrete floors, part concrete walls/part unfinished walls, no light to the outside world and an unfinished ceiling.

 Not pretty. I've only been in this space about 6 weeks, but the remodel was well worth it!

 

And some pictures to go with the video

Lest you think, "Wow. That girl has got it together!" Let's be real- that video is a serious illusion. It took me an entire day to get it to videoing standards.  My room is never, EVER this clean. Ever. On a good day it looks like this

and usually it looks much, much worse. And that's with the floor covered in junk, too. Just keeping it real ;)

Thanks for joining me today and taking a look into my room! Let me know if you have any questions. I would be happy to answer them.  Have a great day! - Lexi

Quick and Easy Layout with Mists & Masks Tutorial by Céline

Hello Peas!  Celine here with a fun tutorial to get you out of your confort zone! I have come up with a fun and easy (you’ll see) tutorial for you – I hope this will inspire you and I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with !

Let’s start!

 

 First of all, choose the patterned papers you would like to work with. Choose a busy patterned paper for the main background and a ledger one or clear one to mist.

Choose your favorite mists or, at least, the ones that match your patterned papers. If you don’t have lots of mists, then pick the ones you would like to work with and match your patterned papers according to your mists colors.

Now you have to mist ! Don’t be scared, everything is going to be alright ! Try to mist not too close (you’ll get a small circle spot) and not too far (you’ll mist all over the place BUT your layout) : try to mist from at least 8 to 10 inches from your background.

Now mist 3-4 times on your background.

Repeat the same step with different colors, without cleaning the mask, and on different spots on your background.

Now, instead of cleaning your mask, use it as a stamp and clean it on your background! You’ll get amazing, unexpected designs!

 How cool it looks now!

Now your background is ready to be scrapbooked.  Pick a few embellishments you really like, print your pictures and have fun!

 

Supplies list : Maggie Holmes 12x12 Paper Pad ; Studio Calico Sundrifter First Kiss Mr Huey ; Studio Calico Sundrifter Splash Mr Huey ; Studio Calico Here & There Desert Mr Huey ; Studio Calico Snippets Circles Mask ; Studio Calico Here & There V Mask ; Dear Lizzy 5th & Frolic Accents & Phrases w/ Foil Stickers ; Dear Lizzy 5th & Frolic Die cut Shapes ; Basic Grey Knee Highs & Bows Ties Wooden Flags ; Glitz Design Love you Madly Whatnots ; Glitz Design Love you Madly Giant Rhinestones.

Folded Circles Tutorial with Paige Evans

For the March Garden Girl Gallery the theme was SHAPE UP YOUR SCRAPBOOKING and I (Paige Evans) had so much fun turning the most simple of shapes - the circle - into a fun and detailed focal point on my layout!

Here's how they came to be:

1) Gather your supplies: I chose the My Girl line by American Crafts, a 2 1/8" circle punch, and a ruler that is about 1" wide.

 2) Start punching circles from the patterned paper. It definitely helps to have double-sided papers because both sides will be seen!

 3) Admire your collection of circles!

4) Take a ruler that is about 1" wide and place it in the center of a circle. Bend up the exposed sides of the circle over the ruler. Remove the ruler then press and crease the folded edges. You can either glue the edges down, stitch them down, or leave them popped up a bit for dimension!

 5) Line up the pieces side-by-side in a row.

 

6) For the next row, tuck the pieces over then under (then repeat) the bottom edge of the first row.

 7) Now you've made a happy and fun border for your layouts, cards, and projects!

 

 If you get a chance to make a project using this circles technique, I'd love to see, so make sure to leave a comment with a link to your project below! THANKS! - Paige

Trends Watch: The Nautical Season with Nancy Damiano

Nothing says Spring quite like a nice bold nautical theme. It's navy, graphic and timeless. We've been seeing it pop up everywhere in fashion, home decor and jewelry.

It's nice to see that trend in scrapbooking products this season as well. From the bold red, white and blues of Fancy Pant's Down by the Shore to Glitz' Uncharted Waters with its additions of fuschia and gold.

This nautical page uses themed elements to highlight a day ashore on a cruise vacation. The repetition of anchors and flags bring out the 'where' of the page, while the bold turquoise color lets the landscape photo shine. 

Now let's take a look at how fellow Peas are using the nautical theme in some non-conventional ways.

This pirate page by Jossiah uses the same collection on an everyday layout depicting childhood. I love the contrast of feminine flowers and an anchor here.

This popsicle page pulls the red,white and blue elements from the collection while telling a funny family story by BeckyLitz. The banner creates a shelf for the photo and adds whimsy to the layout.

This Nice Catch layout by audreykit uses beautiful layers of the Unchartered Waters collection to highlight a cute fishing shot. I love how she used twine to draw the eye to the title. 

I love how brains32192 documented her thoughts on motherhood in this page using the same collection.  Anchors symbolize stability and strong foundations - what could be more perfect for a page highlighting a mother/daughter relationship.

Whether it's a day at the beach, cruise vacation, silly moments or important bonds, the nautical theme has something for you.

Show us how you've used this trend in your pages. We'd love to take a peek!

 

May Garden Girl Sneaks

It's mid-April and we're gearing up for a new batch of Garden Girl projects to be released May 1st!  Any guesses what next month's theme will be? ;)