Gabrielle Pollacco : MajaDesign

Scrapping Greens & Creams

5 November, 2014 - Coffee In The Arbour, Collections, Created Art, Layouts, Ska Vi Ta En Fika?, Vintage Autumn Basics, Vintage Frost Basics, Walking in the Forest

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Hello Maja fans! Gabrielle here with you today to share my latest layout using a variety of Maja design collections. Green has always been one of my favorite colors to scrap, but lately I’ve been scrapping a lot of pinks and purples. I thought it was high time to play with some of my old favorite green toned papers mixed with some soothing neutrals.

I love the warm green in the Ska vi ta en Fika collection, so I used one as my backdrop for my layout design. I then chose one of the neutral papers from the same collection for my next layer. I wanted to play a bit with the side edges so I chose to use a chipboard Zipper design From Dusty Attic, moistened the sides of the papers and pulled back the paper in the center, creating small pleats. I then attached the zipper chipboard pieces (painted with some Bronze 3D paint (Scribbles) and glued it behind the edges of the paper. The title and the number chippies are from Dusty Attic as welll.

There are some tag images in the Walking in the forest collection, so I cut these out to used along the top of the photo as a page accent and a place to put a little journaling. I also cut another tag out of a Coffee In the Arbour paper and stamped one of my Signature Word stamps ‘fabulous’ that I recently released. (My word stamps can be found at The Scrapbook Diaries).

I wanted to keep the page accents naturalistic so I chose a new Dusty Attic chipboard piece called Wildflowers #3 to add alongside my photo of my two little great nieces.

And finally in the corner of the photo I accented with a few blooms from a tin of flowers from Recollections. I did a bit of background stamping as well with some green Moss Lawn color from Ingvild Bolme.

Maja Design Products used in this project: Ska vi ta en Fika? (Smulpaj m Applen, Havrerujor, Pratstund), Walking in the Forest (Klippark, Flannel Shirt), Vintage Autumn Basics (XVI), Vintage Frost Basics (Days of December), Coffee in the Arbour (Feel the Grass Between Your Toes).

Thanks so much for stopping by the Maja blog today! Hope you get a chance to play today! xo

Scrapping Girl Style {NEW ‘A Gift For You” Collection}

Posted by Gabrielle Pollacco

22 October, 2014 - A Gift for You, Coffee In The Arbour, Collections, Layouts, Vintage Autumn Basics, Vintage Spring Basics

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Hi all! Gabrielle here with you today to share a layout I made of my little great-niece Kiera. I love this sweet pic of her that her mother took, I wanted to keep the page light and feminine so I thought I would go with a grey and pink color scheme. I decided to work with the soft brown/grays in the NEW ‘A Gift For You’ collection, and thought it would be fun to use pink as my accent color, using some papers from some of the other Maja Design collections.

While this collection is meant as a holiday collection, I thought it would be fun to show how you can use this paper collection for non-holiday themed projects as well. One thing I really love about Maja Design papers is that, while the front of the patterned paper gives itself more to the theme of the collection, the backside allows you to use the paper for any theme because the backside tends to have a more generic design to it.

I began my page design by layering grey toned papers from the ‘A Gift for You’ collection, with pinks from other collections (Vintage Spring Basics, Coffee In the Arbour). I also took one of the scripted pattern designs from ‘A Gift For You’ collection (Hope to See You Soon paper) and used this paper to punch floral petals using an EK Success punch (Retro Flower, medium and Large punch). I used both sides of this patterned paper, lightly inked parts of the petals, leaving some parts natural. Then I lightly misted the petals with water and gave them a crinkle. I added some floral stamens to the centers to finish the look. The chipboard corset chipboard piece is from Dusty Attic Designs called Lacing Tash.

I used ‘My Dear Friend-bs’ paper as one of the layers on my project and then used the left over scraps to cut out some heart shapes which I matted with the darker gray paper called ‘Wrapped in Old Newspaper’. I added machine stitching and then used some Platinum Stickles over the stitches to give the thread a glittery look. The chipboard title and zipper accents are from Dusty Attic. To give the page that light-hearted girly look, I cut some butterflies from the ‘Butterflies are Free’ paper from ‘Coffee in the Arbour’ collection.

I added more floral designs in the top right corner using the same method I mentioned earlier. I clustered these over a Dusty Attic Corner Flourish #1 which I painted with white Gesso, stamped with some script stamps, edged with some brown chalk ink (Ingvild Bolme’s Branch Bark) and coated with Crackle Varnish.

Maja Design Papers used in this Project:

~ A Gift For You (Handwritten Postcards-bs, My Dear Friend-bs, Hope to See You Soon, Hope to See You Soon-bs, Wrapped In Old Newspaper-bs)

~ Vintage Spring Basics (7th of May)

~ Coffee In the Arbour (Buttterflies Are Free, Raspberry Jam Cookies-bs)

~ Vintage Autumn Basics (XVI)

I hope you enjoyed my project today, and hope that I’ve inspired you to use your Maja papers on a variety of different themed projects.

Putting Some Cheer in Your Day

Posted by Gabrielle Pollacco

8 October, 2014 - Cards, Coffee In The Arbour, Collections, Vintage Autumn Basics

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Have you ever had one of those days were you need something to cheer you up? This has been one of those days for me. Woke up this morning putting together quotes to get our roof re-shingled before the winter, then check the basement to find out that the main water pipe leading to our house has ruptured and flooded our basement. Not good. This is one of those days I could use a happy card 🙂 Fortunately I had some time to work on some of my design team work on earlier days and this card I made using the ‘Coffee in the Arbour’ collection put me in a happier frame of mind.

I used a portion of ‘Raspberry Lemonade’ paper for the background of my card, and then cut out one of the lovely ‘coffee time’ designs from the ‘Delicious Moments’ paper as a center piece to my card.

I have to say the ‘Delicious Moments’ paper has to be one of my favourite papers in this collection, I think it’s especially a great paper for cardmakers. It has so many beautiful images that can be used as centerpieces for cards and tags.

I wanted to add a home-spun look to the card so I cut out a petal design and used it as a template on a bunch of scraps I had from some of the other pretty patterned papers in this collection. I machine stitched around the edges of the petals to give a patchwork quilt look to the floral design. Then I lightly moistened the petals with a misting of water and gathered the bottom edge of the paper. I finished the design with a coordinating gem.

Maja Design Papers used in this project: Coffee in the Arbour (Raspberry Lemonade, Raspberry Lemonade-bs, Delicious Moments, Raspberry Cupcake, Raspberry Cupcake-bs, Rose Garden, Raspberry Jam, Grandma’s Old Porcelain, Flourishing Garden), Vintage Autumn (XVI).

I hope you enjoyed my project today and I hope it’s put a little cheer in your day as well! xo

An Autumn Tag with Video Tutorial!

Posted by Gabrielle Pollacco

24 September, 2014 - Collections, Ska Vi Ta En Fika?, Tags, Tutorials, Walking in the Forest

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Hello Maja fans! Gabrielle here with you today to share with you an Autumn Tag I made with the, oh so gorgeous, Walking in the Forest collection! I don’t know how many of you know, but I recently came out with a couple of stamp sets, and for the first time I’ve used my water droplet stamps on a project! I knew that the Maja papers would work nicely with my stamps because they have the perfect balance of simple backgrounds combined with beautiful print images.

Sometimes it’s easier to show how to do something than it is to explain. So I took the time to tape a step by step video on how I put this tag design together. Enjoy! ….

….I hope you enjoyed watching my tutorial as much as I enjoyed creating this project! Here are a few close-ups of my tag to view at a more leisurely pace.

I used a leaf stamp that is part of the water drop stamp collection I made. I used it on some green Fika paper, cut it out, gave it a crinkle and added them to my floral cluster. The lacy doily behind the floral cluster is a die from Memory Box called ‘Quinn Flourish’.

Here is a close-up of the water droplets stamp design. I use a little trick of adding some white highlights to the drops with a white gel pen to give them an extra sheen and even more of a 3D look. The wood floral design is from Wycinanka and the butterfly embellishment is from The Kraft Nook.

Maja Design products papers used on this project: Walking in the Forest (Fresh Air, Birch, Flannel Shirt), Ska vi ta en Fika (Blabarssylt).

I hope you enjoyed my project and video tutorial today and hope you will have yourself some fun with Maja’s ‘Walking in the Forest’ collection. You can find my stamp sets at The Scrapbook Diaries!

Scrapping Favorite Colors

Posted by Gabrielle Pollacco

10 September, 2014 - Collections, Layouts, Ska Vi Ta En Fika?

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Hello Maja fans! It’s Gabrielle here with you today to share my latest page design using some of my favorite Maja papers. I don’t know about you but I personally have certain favorite color combinations I like to use and one of them is Plums/Purples/Greens. That’s why Ska vi ta en Fika? is a collection I go back to again and again when I’m scrapping a page design.

I used three papers from this collection: Favoriter (both front and backside), En Kopp Te, and Soders Hojder. I used Favoriter as the matting/frame paper, cutting out the inside and using the backside for the creamy banner piece I used behind the photo. I used Soders Hojder for matting the photo and for the circle accents and I used En Kopp Te-bs as the main background paper.

I used a Dusty Attic chipboard as a corner accent on this page. I first painted it with Gesso to give it a good base for my color tints. Then I inked the chipboard with Ingvild Bolme’s Moss Green and Branch Bark inks.

I made the banner design by using the backside of the ‘Favoriter’ paper, cutting a strip and cutting a ‘V’ grove into the bottom of it. I like to do a little machine stitching to my cut outs to give them a nice finish. I also used a circle stamp (a design by Janene Meyerowitz) on the Soders Hojder paper and cut little circle accents for my page design.

I always like to added a little texture to my page designs, for this one I used a Crafter’s Workshop stencil called ‘Mini North Star’ with some home made texture paste. I finished the look with some coordinating green adhesive pearls.

I hope you enjoyed today’s post as much as I enjoyed creating it! I made this page using products from a page kit package from The Scrapbook Diaries, you can get your page kit with a video tutorial with step by step instructions on how I made up this page by visiting their store. Thanks for stopping by the Maja Design blog today!