Gabrielle Pollacco : MajaDesign

Scrapping in a Soft Monochromatic Color Scheme

4 December, 2013 - Collections, Layouts, Sofiero, Vintage Autumn Basics, Vintage Spring Basics, Vintage Summer Basics

Hi everyone! It’s me, Gabrielle here with you today to share a layout I made using a soft monochromatic color scheme. The photo is one that I took of my youngest daughter a few years ago with her cousin….I love the sweet softness of the photo so I wanted my page design to be in keeping with this as well. To make this page I combined a variety of Maja collections including Vintage Spring, Summer & Autumn Basics and some Sofiero as well. I created a video tutorial to share how I created this page step by step. Enjoy!

Here are some close-up photos of my layout…

Before I started with my page design I pre-cut some of my favorite Maja images from the patterned papers – Clocks from the Vintage Autumn Basics (XVI) and butterflies from Vintage Spring Basics (4th of May – I cut out some yellow and green butterflies). I also added some chipboard accents (Lavender from Dusty Atic Designs) which I painted white and tinted with green and brown chalk ink.

The flowers and lace accents on this page are from Tresors de Luxe,….the flower is a white fabric bloom that I lightly tinted with some of the Versa Mark chalk ink (Spring Green) that I used on the background paper.

I added light touches of green coloring to my background using a Versa Mark chalk ink and also added texture using home-made texture paste and a Crafters Workshop stencil (Reverse Chickenwire). I chose a green in that I thought coordinated well with the green paper I used from the Sofiero collection that I used to matt the photo.

Maja Design Supplies: Vintage Spring Basics (7th of April, 6th of May), Vintage Summer Basics (1904, 1932), Vintage Autumn Basics (XVI), Sofiero (The Elegant Wine House).

I hope you enjoyed my project today and will try out doing a monochromatic color design page using beautiful Maja Design products! Thanks for having a peek! xo

Love Beyond Measure

Posted by Gabrielle Pollacco

20 November, 2013 - Collections, Layouts, Vintage Autumn Basics, Vintage Spring Basics, Walking in the Forest

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Hi everyone, it’s Gabrielle here with you today to share another project! I just love this photo of my sweet niece Alicja with her puppy Dahlia, taken a few years back. My niece is now grown up and recently got married and her pup Dahlia is getting up there in years, but I’m always struck by the way she still cares for her first pet.

Dahlia (the puppy) is wearing this cute li’l plaid coat in this photo and it immediately brought to mind the lovely patterned paper in the ‘Walking in the Forest’ collection called ‘Flannel Shirt’, so I absolutely had to use it on this page! I used the backside of this patterned paper as the base of my layout and the patterned front side to accent my layout.

I did loads of fussy cutting for this page which included clocks cut from one of my favourite papers from the ‘Vintage Autumn Basics’ collection (XVI), cutting blooms from the ‘Vintage Autumn Basics’ (XXII) and butterflies from ‘Vintage Spring Basics’ (6th of May). I applied most of the fussy cut pieces with foam pop dots to give a more 3D effect. Here are a few more close-ups of the page details….

I used Vintage Autumn Basics (XIV) blue striped paper to matt my photo and I distressed the edges using the Tim Holtz edge distressor tool.

I did a little bit of misting with Lindy’s Stamp Gang mists and stamping with a Bo Bunny background stamp.

Maja Design supplies: Walking in the Forest (Flannel Shirt, Flannel Shirt-bs), Vintage Autumn Basics (XVI, XXII, XXII-bs, XIV), Vintage Spring Basics (6th of May)

Thanks for stopping by the Maja Design blog today and having a peek at my project! xo

Having Fun Combining Collections!

Posted by Gabrielle Pollacco

6 November, 2013 - Collections, Layouts, Sofiero, Vintage Autumn Basics, Vintage Spring Basics, Vintage Summer Basics

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Hi everyone! Gabrielle here with you today to share my latest project. I just love pouring through my Maja Design papers and picking and choosing which designs I want to put together to make up a project! For this page I think I dipped into quite a few collections! For the base of the layout I used papers from the Sofiero collection, then for the fussy cut blooms and clocks I used paper from Vintage Autumn Basics. I even used a little strip of scrap paper I had left from Vintage Summer Basics (1922-bs) the small scallop strip with white dots, and some butterflies from Vintage Spring Basics.

Here is a close-up of the center piece of my layout, so you can see the fussy cut blooms and clocks that I ahered with foam pop dots so that they would stand up from the page. The chipboard frame is from Dusty Attic (Decorative Scroll #1) that I coated with Gesso, stamped and finished with a crackle varnish.

I did a lot of inking and spritzing for this page as well as a little bit of masking with stencils and texture paste. I used a little bit of Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Victorian Velvet along the bottom edge of the diagonal strip before I used a Crafters Workshop (Damask 6×6) stencil along the edge. For Spraying I used Lindy’s ‘Clam bake Biege’ and Perfect Pearls ‘Intereference Red’ (it’s more of a pink color with lots of shimmer).

I used another stencil in the top right corner (Prima Flourish 12×12) as well as lots of fun stamps, Prima Stitches Stamps, Bo Bunny Distressed stamps. Added a little washi tape (Freckled Fawn) and added more fussy cut images from the Vintage Autumn Basics collection. (I used the rose blooms from the Vintage Autumn Basics collection rather than the roses from the Sofiero collection, which I used for the background, because the images were a little deeper in color and I thought would work better for a fussy cut bloom.

Maja Design Supplies: Sofiero Collection (Enjoying the Fragrance-bs, Strolling Down the Rose Path-bs), Vintage Autumn Basics (No. II, No. XVI, VI-bs), Vintage Spring Basics (6th of May – fussy cut butterflies), Vintage Summer Basics (1922-bs)

Thanks for stopping by today and for the kind comments! xo xo

Fabric Inspiration {Ska vi ta en Fika}

Posted by Gabrielle Pollacco

23 October, 2013 - Collections, Layouts, Life in the Country, Ska Vi Ta En Fika?, Vintage Autumn Basics

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Hi there! It’s me, Gabrielle here with you today to share a layout I made using some of my favourite Maja Design papers from the Ska vi ta en Fika collection. This layout began from an inspiration photo I found on Pinterest. It was a photo of some crocheted blooms with some muslin fabric. Here is the photo….

I just love the look of the white blooms with the touch of soft green and the draped look of the fabric on the gingham material. I immediately started thinking about how I could imitated this look on a scrapbook page. My first thought was of Maja papers since there are so many wonderful fabric look pages to choose from and I know that the ‘Fika’ collection has some lovely gingham style papers. Here are the main papers I used for this project….

I used the ‘Kladdkaka’ paper as my gingham background and then cut the “Chaite” paper in a drape design on a diagonal (I was also cutting out the lavender blooms at the same time because I was just going with the green accent on this page. I used the green “Smulpaj m äpplen-bs” paper as matting for my photo just to add that little extra touch of apple green.

To make the blooms I used the Spellbinders smallest die from the ‘Rose Creations’ dies, I cut out a whole bunch from simple white/cream cardstock and gave each of the petals a little crinkle. I finished each bloom with an adhesive pearl. I had a section of apple green trim in my stash (from a local dollar store – no name) that I used to add a bow to each floral cluster.

I created a drape by first cutting the ‘Chaite’ paper in a curvey line, then moistening the edge with water and then creating the draped line with my finger tips. I felt that the draping wasn’t as lush as I wanted it to look so I used the scrap pieces left of the ‘Chaite’ paper and cut out 3 crescents (giving them a little bit of a fold as well) and tucked them under each of the draped areas.

To embellish around my photo, I cut two hearts, one from the ‘Kladdkaka’ paper and the other from a scrap piece of paper I had from the ‘Life in the Country’ collection called ‘Kitchen Garden’. I matted the hearts with some plain white cardstock and trimmed with a scallop edge scissor. I also cut out a couple of clock designs from the new ‘Vintage Autumn Basics’ collection “No. XVI”. The cameo is one I had in my stash from Websters Pages.

I added a brocade design to the background paper to go with the ‘fabric’ theme using a Crafters Workshop stencil (Mini Damask) and some home-made texture paste. I added some flourish to the page with a Dusty Attic chipboard flourish (Corner Flourish #1) which I coated with Gesso and stamped with a Bo Bunny script stamp and finished with crackle varnish.

Maja Design Supplies: Ska vi ta en Fika (Kladdkaka, Chiate, Smulpaj m äpplen-bs), Life in the Country (Kitchen Garden), Vintage Autumn Basics (No. XVI).

I hope you enjoyed my project today and hope that you have fun with some fabric inspiration using Maja Design papers! xo

Scrapping in a Masculine Style {Vintage Autumn Basics}

Posted by Gabrielle Pollacco

9 October, 2013 - Collections, Layouts, Vintage Autumn Basics

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Hi everyone, it’s me, Gabrielle here with you today! As most of you know by now, I have two daughters and no sons so most of my scrapping is done in a more feminine style. But I do have a bunch of handsome nephews and my dear husband that I occasionally get to scrap, so I was so thrilled to see that the new ‘ Vintage Autumn Basics’ collection has a big variety of both masculine and feminine paper designs.

I recently recieved this beautiful collection and while normally I automatically reach for the more feminine papers, this time around I wanted to scrap in a more masculine style. I had this photo of my dear husband Steve and my cutie-pie nephew Jared at a retirement party for Steve’s older brother. The title on the page ‘Tempus Fugit’ (Latin for ‘Time Flies’) was just perfect for this photo! It seems like yesterday that we were baby sitting my young nephews when Steve’s brother and his wife would go on trips, and now my BIL is passing down the reigns of his company to my nephews! Time really does fly! (the little girls you sometimes see me scrapping are Jared’s little girls!).

For this page I went with the ‘time’ theme and used lots of the clock images in this collection, as well as layering a number of the patterned papers. I started out by fussy cutting out a bunch of the clock designs.

Here I used one of the clock chipboard designs from Dusty Attic, but I cut and pasted one of the clocks from the Vintage Autumn Basics papers to the face of the clock. I dressed the chipboard up a bit by using a bronze metalic paint and adding some dots and details (I used Scribbles Bronze paint….from Michaels). The zipper is also a chipboard design from Dusty Attic (I wanted to try and stick to masculine style embellishments for the majority of the the decorations.

I had this cute metal stopwatch embellishment that I found at Michaels, I didn’t love the clock design they had used on this embellishment, so again I cut out one of the clock designs from the Maja paper, tinted the edges lightly with blue chalk ink and pasted it on the clock. The chipboard gears are Dusty Attic, as are the roses…the larger blue flowers are from Petaloo (Darjeeling collection….I think the are are really good match to the Maja collection).

I always like to use scraps of burlap for masculine layouts, I think it adds that nice textural element to the page that lace usually adds to my more feminine pages. Another nice masculine element to use is corrugated cardboard, metal, buttons and chipboard elements. Here is a list of the Maja goodies I used on this page….

Supplies: Maja Design “Vintage Autumn Basics collection” ~ (No. XIX, No. XIII-bs, No. XVI)

I hope you enjoyed my masculine style page today, and hope you will give this beautiful new collection a try whether you scrap in the masculine or feminine style! xo