131 Search Results for baby card

A farewell by Nadia

29 June, 2014 - Cards, Vintage Summer Basics

Hi there..

Well .. today I am writing this post with some sadness. I have decided to step down from my spot at Maja Design. I have been on this team for 6 months now, and was Guest Designer back in December and worked with their products all of last year so I do feel like I know their papers well.

But the time came last month for me to make some changes.

My life right now is full on. There is literally no moments off, ever. My baby Sofia is now 1, sleeps less (which is great because I get out and do stuff before getting kids from school) and I do not wish to miss out on precious time with her right now because I need to scrap, or feel sick in the mornings because I stayed up late the night before scrapping. I mean, I still do , don’t get me wrong LOL but I just cannot do it as often. I basically need to leave my days free and get some scrapping done at night .

My older girls are both in school, so we all know what that is like.

Right now life for me is: Sofia full time during the day, Sofia + 2 more full time from 3:30 until 7:30 pm when they finally are asleep.

Some nights I feel like scrapping. Others not!

So changes needed to be made to find a balance.

I cannot give my creating up right now! NO WAY! This is my lifeline…

But still I needed to make things easier.

I guess you could say I started feeling this familiar thing happening in my tummy lately.. the thing where you get nervous to create things and it starts to feel not so good .. I have had these feelings before and I let them go too long before acting on them , and reached the point where I burnt out.

So I decided to lessen the load and leave Maja Design for someone who can do justice to their beautiful papers. You see, another thing making me nervous was that I felt that since the time I was asked to join the team (November of 2012, just a few months pregnant with Sofia) , my style has changed dramatically. I feel I have gone from soft, shabby, romantic to a bit of grunge, a bit of mixed media, a heck of a lot of inks, mists etc etc and I did not feel this suited the soft colours of Maja Design’s papers. I felt I was covering up the majority of the paper and for me.. when I cannot do something right I just feel very uneasy.

So with all this, here is a card I crated for my last post at Maja Design.

It is dedicated to Jenny and Marie. THANK you both so much for having me on your team this year, for reserving a spot for me a year and a half ago, and for this great opportunity!

Thank you all for all your support.

Bye for now xoxo

Let it Snow

Posted by Rachelle Sigurdson

16 April, 2014 - Crea Diem, Vintage Spring Basics

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Hello,today I am here to share with you, a LO I did, using the CreaDiem Collection. I hope this is the last Winter LO, I do until next Winter! I am still looking at snow & so looking forward to Spring!

I used:fylid av karelek,kann dig sjalv-BS,sann vanskap,ord flyger-bs,karleken-bs

The Chipboard used is from Dusty Attic. Other products used: MFT die, Petaloo flowers,wild blossoms mixed,fushia, Prima butterflies & resin zipper, the Crafter Workshop Stencil,seed beads…..

Here are some close ups of detail….

I did lots of distressed,hand stitched layers….

Shows some weaving of the paper & rolling…

Ripped layers,ATC frame,brads & resin zipper……

I stained the tree,ATC frame & alpha with Tim Holtz black soot….

Then I put drops of liquid accents on the tree & the frame,then sprinkled on seed beads. I painted the nameplate with picket fence crackle. I used MS texture effects on top of the alpha….

Here is a card I made, using the Vintage Spring Basics Collection…..

I used 1st of March,1st of March -BS,9th of March & a BS of a label. The Chipboard used is from Dusty Attic, The flowers are Petaloo & Prima…

Here are some closeups of detail…..

I did some distressed,hand stitched layers. I left the frame & chicken wire raw,except for inking the edges. I used two shades of green paint on the leaves of the bamboo & once that dried I applied rock candy crackle….

Shows layers,burlap trim from Prima,& chicken wire inserted under a ripped,distressed piece of paper…

Thank you for taking the time to look & have a wonderful Easter weekend….Rachelle

In Our Sofa…Welcome to Elena’s place

Posted by Elena Olinevich

15 March, 2014 - In our sofa

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Good morning, Maja Friends.

Today is my turn to invite you to my little scrap space

It was not easy for me to make the shots of my place after I have seen Jenny’s gorgeous room about a month ago. But anyway, though it is not even a sole room , I hope you will like to see the place where I create.

So I have 3 places where I create – my kitchen, my daughter’s room and our living room, espeacially the big windows that I use to make the shots of all of my projects.

More often you can find me here, at my daughter’s room, where we share one desk:

You have noticed I have almost occupied her desk with my Shimmerz paints and mists, but in turn, I allow her to use them too. She doesn’t mind.

The only issue that arrives almost all the time – who is responsible for cleaning the desk, as I may start to create, then she comes , finds a small place and starting to borrow almost all of my embellishments I have prepared for my project.

After I find time to get back to my project I can not find anything, but on the other day she comes to me and says: Look, Mom, what I have created for you.

So what else I need to say that just – oh, dear, this is adorable, but could you be so kind and don’t pick it next time without my permission first.

So it’s not easy to share something with someone , especially when DT boxes arrive, she looks in them and says – it is too much for you, I need 30% of it or I won’t let you create at my desk.

This is for instance how she says about my Chipboard box:

So doing it this way, I have struggled with her for providing me with one shelf, and she allowed me to use a half of it, so this is where I keep all my stencils, masks and some mediums:

As I can not keep all my supplies in open access because we have another one little kid, my son, who is just 20 months old and who explores life every minute, I need to hide the rest of my stuff.

So this is how I keep all my papers, if I don’t want them to be painted or leaving some sketches on them:

The number 516 doesn’t mean I have 516 sheets of cardstock, it’s just a note that was made during the shipping the box to me by the customs office or someone like that.

As I design for several companies I decided to keep all the collections ( the papers and the embellishments in one box), it makes it easier to find and match them. For Maja Design papers I use their signed boxes and just make the notes which collections are in the box.

I am not going to show you my kitchen desk, as you won’t see something special there.

So our next stop is another room full of light and white furniture:

This drawer is a shabby style one, an we bought the same leather sofa, so next step is to paint the walls with white paint and add some decorations.

Don’t laugh at the number of the baby carriages, I bought them for my decoration projects, but I need to hide them as well as the kids are struggling for them to play with.

This is how many of my Layouts are kept, mostly the old ones, that I don’t like too much and I think I just need to put off the embellishments and give the papers to the kids. I need to think how to recycle them if I don’t want them to be on the albums or on the walls

Yes, the paint is hidden even there.

And here is my favorite object in this room

I am scrap addicted but I am book- addicted too. It is full of the books for the kids or teenagers mostly, but I buy those books that are out of age, and that are inetersted for everyone. I need to say that for the past 5 years I have spent on the books almost the same som of money as for my scrap hobby. I seek for good and inspiring illustrations, good poetry and the text that makes you start thinking while reading. No needless to say that I find a huge inspiration from the books too.

My hubby doesn’t like the idea of spending too much on my hobby as well as on the books as his main argument is – we don’t have ebough space to keep it all. But I have already found many drawers and extra space everywhere, and I can not wait when our house will be built so I can have a huge studio and cabinet in one, half of it will be for creatong, the other one – for enjoying the books.

I hope you have liked my space as much as I love my house.

Next time Maja will invite us to her space, so stay tuned and don’t miss it on April 12th.

Upcycled Art Desk Organizer using Vintage Spring Basics

Posted by Nancy Hanttula

21 February, 2014 - Altered Items, Tutorials, Vintage Spring Basics

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Hello Maja Design fans and friends! Nancy Hanttula here again, this week to share an upcycled project that I recently finished for my craft desk. I created an organizer to hold some of my most frequently used pens, colored pencils, watercolor pencils, and brushes. To create this holder, I used the gorgeous Vintage Spring Basics paper collection.

Here is a photo of the finished organizer full of my pens and pencils.

And here is a photo of the finished piece before I filled it up.

To create this organizer, I used a drink holder from one of our local Sonic drive-ins. I have had it in my office for quite some time just with this intention in mind.

I would like to mention….that with the drink holder in it’s upright, put together position, because of the way it folds into itself, I marked the sections that would be showing with a “C” for cover, meaning I would want to cover that particular section and on the bottom a “DC” for don’t cover, so that I would know that I wouldn’t need to cover that section because it wouldn’t be showing. When you see the photos of the holder flat later in this post, you may see the marking “C” or “DC” and that was to help me know which parts will actually be seen when put together.

To cover the individual pieces of the container, I used the same technique that I used when I created the map of the United States in my project ….”There’s No Place Like Home” …. you can see that post by clicking HERE … but basically, I outlined the shape on the cardboard that I wanted to trace with a dark colored pen,

traced over it with tracing paper,

then flipped it over and colored over the lines with a pencil,

flipped it back over, and retraced the pattern onto the patterned paper that I wanted to adhere to the cardboard.

Then I cut it out, inked the edges, and adhered it to the cardboard using A LOT of Tombow permanent adhesive.

Here is a photo of 2 of the finished sides of the organizer once all my shapes had been adhered.

Once I had finished covering the organizer, the fun began.

I gave a lot of thought into how I wanted to decorate this piece. I love to add a lot of dimension and texture to my projects….but I knew that this was a piece that was going to get a lot of handling, so with that in mind, I decided that instead of adding a lot of extra dimension, why not do some stenciling and inking AND why not use up something that I had amassed a huge quantitiy of over the years and really seldom ever used. What was that? you ask. Well, it is RUB-ONS. I LOVE Rub-ons. I have so many of them…but I almost never use them. Honestly, I forget that I even have them most of the time. AND, in my experience, they ruin so easily. So I pulled out this huge accordion-style paper organizer that I bought just to organize my rub-ons a few years back and just started sifting through my stash. Well, I am happy to report that I have a gold-mine of rub-ons and yes, quite a few were stuck inside their own packaging beyond use….but I found so many that were not.

I started by stenciling. Using just some ordinary acrylic paint and a Tulip brand stencil. I like the Tulip stencils because they have an adhesive back and lend perfectly to the use of paints.

And then I started in on the rub-ons. I guess, the hard part of this was knowing when to stop. I love color…and I think I achieved exactly the amount of color that makes my heart and soul sing! Another reason why I love the Maja Design papers so much is how easily they adapt to the use of bright color….they just make the color so much more vibrant to me.

Here are some photos of the finished sides of the organizer with the stenciling, the rub-ons, and some extra ribbon and button trim I added.

I bought this amazing chicken wire on a roll from Hobby Lobby. I cut it with my button shank and stapled and hot-glued it to a few places.

Now, I would like to add that there are 2 areas on this divider….2 small flaps that if you look at the photos that are of the flattened organizer you can see them in the lower right bottom corners. I had to carefully add rub-ons to these areas by cutting them in half and lining them up as best as I could.

And as far as the fork, knife, and spoon rub-on (that was from Michael’s dollar area) I decided that this organizer could easily be used by placing 4 large cups into the dividers and filling them up with plastic silverware for parties such as baby showers or birthday parties..

.and that side would be perfect for that.

Using some basic Mason jars, I spray-painted them, used a bit of sand-paper to age them up a bit, and added some chalkboard tags from The Vinyl Wall. These chalkboard tags could easily be changed to read pens, watercolor pencils, paintbrushes, etc. as well.

Okay….once the divider was embellished to my liking, and instead of using the mason jars, I used another upcycled idea …. I teach an art class at my workplace once a week…and I save a lot of the empty toilet paper cardboard rolls for various projects that we do….well, I shoved a bunch of them into the organizer. This way, I could easily organize the sections with my supplies, and actually giving me much less wasted space. Here is the before:

And here is the after:

So, here is side one (empty)

Here is the 2nd side:

Here is the back side/or front side depending on which way you like it:

And the last remaining side:

So, there you go. I hope that I have inspired you to look at something perhaps a bit differently and I challenge you to create your own upcycled masterpiece.

The Vintage Spring Basics papers used for this project included: 6th of May front and back; 3rd of March front and back; 5th of May; 7th of May back.

Other supplies used for this project included: chalk ink from Prima Ingvild’s Shabby Tote, Garden Grass, Old Rose, Vintage Pink, Teal Damask, Lime Pie, Cold Ice; various rub-ons from Kaisercraft, BoBunny, CTMH, Stampin’ Up, stencil’s from The Crafter’s Workshop and Tulip; acrylic paint from Apple Barrel and Plaid; Tombow Permanent Adhesive; wooden buttons from Prima; ribbon from Webster’s pages and from my personal stash; buttons from my personal stash; chicken wire from Hobby Lobby; & Aleene’s Tacky Glue. Misc: Mason Jars, Chalkboard tags from The Vinyl Wall, White chalk ink pen from Chalk Ink, Krylon spray paint in Blue Ocean Breeze. and sandpaper.

Thanks so much for looking! Wishing you a super creative weekend! Hugs!

In our sofa… Welcome to Jenny’s place

Posted by Jenny Grotherus

20 February, 2014 - In our sofa

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We always invite people in to our cozy world at Maja. We want you all to feel welcome and smell the coffee when you cross our threshold. But. You’ve never really visited us in our office or our respective scrap spaces. We decided to change that. In this little series you’ll be invited to our respective CT members scrap havens and who knows… there might be a personal guiding through the Maja office and warehouse in store…

The first one out to show you around her scrapspace is… Jenny. Jenny

When we first bought our house it was a complete mess. No heating, no electricity, no laundry room, etc, etc. And. No scrapbooking room either. I had been jammed up in a corner in our apartment and I really wanted a place for my stuff when we got a house. Not likely. It was so small it wouldn’t fit. The first year I litterally had to work on the floor using a carpenter’s rule and an isolation knife to create some cards. After that I was (again) jammed up in a corner with tons of building supplies. I think I got about four nails in my feet during that time.

I had saved up for years for my dream. Due to regulations and other difficulties it turned out to be a lot cheaper to build a separate house then add an extra room to the current one. So I started drawing. And planning. And drawing. And planning. Again and again and again. All to get the best possible solution and save as much money as possible. I drew the house and built it myself together with a carpenter who did some of the construction work.

It was very important to me that my scraphouse would be welcoming and cozy even if you didn’t scrap. I didn’t want it to look overwhelming and crowded with supplies, still I wanted to be able to have it visible and reachable. Tough combination.

I chose it to be in the same style as our main building so you can feel they belong together. I’ve used the same wooden floors, base colour and ceiling.

So take of your coat, borrow one of my dressing gowns and step inside… hallway_w The bureau is an old cherry beureau that we used to have in our apartment. It didn’t fit in the new house so I bought some paint and new knobs for it. The dressing gowns are a must for any scrapper. At least in my opinion.

I have divided my house into different areas… One messy area with paints, one sewing area, one clean area, one computer area and one area where I can stand up working. The last one is my area with kitchen cabinets… kitchen_cabinets_w Besides from being a good height it holds tons of supplies. kitchen_cabinets_w_bears

My desktop carousel is filled up with a lot of “must have” supplies. Tools, Pearl Makers, rulers, knives etc. The cute bucket is one of four that I have in the house. They are a complement to my two large trash cans. Everybody’s lazy by nature. It’s so much easier to through away stuff in something small that’s close to where you work then use the large trash can. I empty the small ones in the big ones when they are full.

I mainly use the electricity to iron ribbon on my mini ironing board and for my Distrezz It All. But I’m considering putting in my coffee machine as well. kitchen_cabinets_w_wedding Hydrangeas are my favourite flowers and I have tons of them. The beautiful wedding frame emptied my travelling funds when I went to Dubai a couple of years ago. I just had to have it. I keep dual tip pens in the corner… kottens_c_w So here’s the true Kottens’s Corner. The best armchair I’ve ever come across. I actually fit. I can crawl up like a little girl with my long filly legs. That says something. Everybody who tries it wants to buy it, but oh no. It stays right there. kottens_c_w_r I love to alter ATC trays and configuration boxes… Here are a couple of them. I keep different pens in the white cutlery holder that was a Christmas present from Marie two years ago. kottens_c_w_l I want people to feel at home in my house. So here’s my little Fika corner. Cookies, biscuits and I also have lemonade. The candle holder used to belong to my grandmother and my other grandmother crocheted the table cloth. w_w

The IKEA Expedit shelf was another leftover that I saved from the dump. The beautiful basket on the floor holds books, my beloved teal socks and a million phone chargers or so.

The luggage trunks are Joel’s treasure-chests. I keep toys, blankets and other stuff in them for him to use when he visits me in my little house.

The beautiful wallpaper is a reprint of a wallpaper that was really popular when our house was built in 1910. w_w_close A little close up… kitchentable_w In the middle of the room I have placed our old kitchen table that didn’t fit our tiny kitchen. It was collecting dust in an old barn so I rebuilt it to include shelves on one side and chairs on the other. People think that I’m nuts, but I actually saw a bunch of cute baskets on my way home from work in the display window of Åhléns. So I bought them and rebuilt the table to fit the baskets. I painted it white and put some IKEA Helmer drawers under the leaf and my clean area was all done! It fits three or more if you remove the Helmer drawers. kitchentable_w_shelf I usually sit on the side where the baskets are when friends are coming over. It gives me access to both the messy area and the clean one without having to move around. long_desk_w Ok, so let’s take a look at the next wall. The long desk contains the messy are, sewing area and my working area. window_w I love to decorate my windows… This area is also great as an extra worktable. It’s just to remove the Helmer drawers. pic_rails_w And now to my favourite area. The messy one. To the left-my Distress Ink Pad storage. Holds all 48 pads. I have recently re-organized the picture rails again since I can’t fit everything… sew_w And here’s my sewing area. I used to sew a lot of curtains and baby clothes by order, but there’s simply not time for everything… sew_w2 Buttons and other handy stuff… work_w Here’s where I work… usually a lot. 🙂

gym_w window2_w

I hope you have found some inspiration from my little corner of the world.

Next time we’ll be visiting Elena, so don’t miss out on her space March 15th. Jenny