Love is in the air! Valentine’s Days is just around the corner and we are all in the mood for LOVE! To celebrate the month of love, Smidapaper has a brand new challenge for you!

The challenge this time around is to alter a Valentine’s themed project. You can alter just about anything from boxes to notebooks as long as you incorporate Valentine’s theme into your project. Sounds easy right? To get your creative juice flowing, Josie and I have some ideas for you.

Cindy’s take:

Josie’s take:

I hope we have inspired you and now it is your turn to show your creative side! Send your entries to smidapaper@mac.com by Monday, Feb 14^th and the best altered project wins a RM50 Smidapaper voucher.

Just in time for Christmas! smida paper gift RM25 & RM50 gift vouchers available now.

Tags are fun! Not only you can attach it to a gift or hang on a Christmas tree, you can also double it as bookmark. Speaking of tags, have you partipate in our “tag along” challenge yet? It’s very simple and all you have to do is to create a tag using the colour cream, green or light blue & have at least one vintage inspired element.

Send your entries to smidapaper@mac.com by Monday, Dec 13^th.  The winner will get a RM50 Smidapaper voucher! Hurry, there’s still time!

~Cindy~

I am not a trend watcher but there’s one particular trend that I’ve seen everywhere has really caught my attention. DOILIES! They are immensely popular and I believed it is because they add so much elegance to a project. I spotted a few doily inspired products and here are some of my favorites.

Doilies pattern paper from the Restoration collection. The colors are really beautiful and so retro!

I’m swooning over these tranparencies.

 Think of all the possibilities you could do with this vintage doily punch! 

The beautiful doilies patterned paper from the Life’s Portrait collection. 

Here’s the card I made with the beautiful paper. I cut one of the doily patterns from the paper and layered with a turquoise bloom and a butterfly sticker. Isn’t it looked trendy and shabby all the same time? 

So what do you think? Are you inspired already? I hope you enjoy today’s post and happy creating!

~Cindy~

Masculine Card Challenge

Most of us tend to shy away from masculine cards simply because we are intimidated by the colors. I know most of us prefer to work with a softer palette like pink or baby blue so today’s tutorial will show you how to create a simple masculine card with a touch of pink. Yes, you  heard me right! A pink masculine card, lol!

Before you start, choose the pattern paper that you want to work with. For instance, I choose the beautiful paper by My Mind’s Eye from the So Sophie collection. Polka dot and graph work well with any kind of design.

To begin, trim kraft card base to 4” x 5”. Punch two strips of brown cardstock using a border punch, then adhere across the top and bottom of the card.

Adhere polka dot paper to the left side of the card,

And graph paper to the right side of the card as shown.

Next, place a die cut border along the seam of the pattern papers.

Place “HAPPY” chipboard letters across the card.

Lastly, spell “birthday” using letter stickers and place them below the chipboard letters.

There you have it! A simple decorative yet masculine card in minutes! Now, how about a challenge to create a card for the dudes using pink? We would love to see your pink masculine card. Email us your take at smidapaper@mac.com and you have until Friday, October 29^th, 2010. The winner of the challenge will win a RM50 gift voucher to be used at the brand new Smidapaper store! Hurry up and put on your thinking cap right now!

Happy Creating!

Today’s journaling idea need not correlate directly to the picture that is scrapped because today’s journaling prompt stretches beyond a specific retelling of an event or a moment. This idea highlights the power of words, even when it’s just in bits and pieces rather than in long lofty paragraphs. A collection of words and phrases sometimes help to tell a story even better and with larger meaning than a properly structured paragraph. This usually works for a layout that is more thematic than event-based, like how in my example it’s like a collection of words that remind me of who I am and how far I’ve come, hence the photo is a childhood photo from a million years ago. The words and phrases can be in your direct journaling and can also make up the embellishments like in this example where the stickers, etc form a big part of the page design.

This fun journaling idea can even be translated onto different types of projects, and when you seem to have trouble finding a proper paragraph to express the page, a collection of words and phrases can surmise it all.

Some title ideas for a project like this might be;

1)    Words to live by

2)    My life in words

3)    Here and now ..in words

After deciding on your title, your journaling would then include the relevant words to your theme whether as part of the embellishments or written down and can include a paragraph to give clarity to the cluster of words.

These are just some thought generators. As you work on this project, feel free to be spontaneous and just include whatever words or phrases that come to mind when thinking about the subject at hand.

I’m sure you get the idea now and are raring to work on your own project like this.  Journal away and feel free to leave comments about which aspect of journaling you might want to know more about, or just to share your journaling experiences. I’ll try my best to address your concerns.

Happy journaling=)

i-mei=)

Paper Scraps

Do you use your scraps often enough? Well, I don’t. So I sat down on my desk the other day and was wondering what I was going to do with all of that paper scraps that I had been keeping for a while. Use it! And that’s exactly what I did. I created three mini cards using only scraps! Yes, everything you’ve seen here is made of scraps! I just picked the paper scraps that I wanted to work with and glued them together. Sounds easy right? It’s time to put your paper scraps to good use, don’t you think? You could easily whip up a bunch of these within a short amount of time.

Happy Creating!

Journaling always works in tandem with the photos we decide to scrap. Today’s idea is actually a variation of a project we’ve done before for a class where the project was a 3 panel wall hanging altered art project but this time round I put it onto a single page layout which would probably be nice framed too. The A-Z of You journaling idea can even work as the A to Z of us (between friends, family, a couple, etc) or the A to Z of prepping for a new home etc with a few relevant photos in a variety of sizes. This fun journaling idea can even be translated onto different types of projects, I myself was toying with the idea of doing it as mini album or as 26 index cards to be stored within a cute little tin box. Either way working with an A to Z list gives way to tons of possibilities (and also helps us make use of our alphabet sticker stash).

If you begin with your journaling idea first and decide on your title and theme, you can work it into your design, like how I used an alphabet background patterned paper, and some camera print paper since my subject is camera mad! Some title ideas for a project like this might be;

1)    The A to Z of you

2)    Alphabetically yours

3)    26 things about you

After deciding on your title, your journaling would then include a list from A to Z that helps define or characterize the person, relationship, or event in question. Ideally the first word of each section should begin with the letter and the easy way to do this would be to just state the adjective and then move on to elaborate for example…

“K…kind. You’re one of the kindest people I know, always giving way to other people sometimes until I lose you on the bus.”  Or “U..understanding. This is a great feature of yours because one of the things that makes us great together is the fact that we can understand each other pretty well. “

These are just some thought generators. As you work on this a-z project, remember that some of the words you employ might be very personal phrases that only your subject and you would understand and that’s fine. And if you can’t find exact adjectives to describe that special person, feel free to rephrase them into verbs, nouns and sentences. For example for the letter M I couldn’t think of a suitable verb starting with the letter M so I just put My hero…=)

I’m sure you get the idea now and are raring to work on your own project like this.  Journal away and feel free to leave comments about which aspect of journaling you might want to know more about, or just to share your journaling experiences. I’ll try my best to address your concerns.

Happy journaling=)

i-mei=)

You will not believe the amazing things you can do with the Sizzix Big Shot! Look out for make & take dates or come by to see for yourself.

So  seriously, this is the box with the Big Shot Pro. All 24 kg of it! Don’t worry, the Big Shot is completely portable. And Pink. But still, you don’t want to drop it on your toes.

We used some new dies which will be available in November/ December but the 3D flower is HOT! Try it in store now.

Earlier this week, Sheila shared a very useful tip about word or a name of a collection that you could find at the bottom of each sheet of patterned paper. I was inspired by her idea that I thought I would share the card version. I found these colorful strips of patterned paper by Echo Park and to create this card, I cut out the strips from the bottom of each paper and adhered them to a kraft card base. To give the card a little something extra, I created faux stitch borders by using a tracing wheel. I hope this idea will help to spark your creativity! Happy Creating!