Olympic Blog Hop

Hi everyone!
Welcome to this special Olympic Blog Hop!

Hope you all managed to catch at least a bit of the amazing Olympic Opening Ceremony that happened in London on Friday, if not you missed out! Aren't we lucky it's happening here in the UK?!

The design team have all taken inspiration from something from the Olympics, instead of posting the layouts here we have all posted them on our blogs for you to hop through! There are lots of prizes along the way, all you have to do is comment on the blogs for a chance of winning their prize before Friday 3rd August. Also if you join in with this challenge you will be entered in for this months prize too, just link your creations up in the side bar, we would love to see what you take inspiration from!

Hope you enjoy this fun blog hop. Here is the list of blogs, just in case you get lost along the way
You start from here and then hop to:
Daphne  http://dapfniedesign.wordpress.com
Valerie http://paperandcookies.blogspot.com
Anna  http://madetoscrap.blogspot.co.uk/ 
Jules  http://www.scrappingmojo.blogspot.com/ 
Katherine http://fruitofmyscraps.blogspot.com
Then don't forget to came back here and tell us what you thought of it!

Next stop Daphne's blog

Ready, get hopping!

Special Olympic Challenge

I don't know if you noticed but the Olympics are coming here to the UK in the next couple of days so we thought it would be nice to have a bit of fun with it! We will have an extra challenge for you on Sunday but instead of having the layouts posted here on the blog we are going to have a mini blog hop through the DT blogs!!
Make sure you came back on Sunday for a bit a fun blog hopping! See you then!

Announcing the new team!

Wow, yet again, it was incredibly difficult to choose the new team! Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who took the time to apply. Believe me when I say that each and every entry was wonderful - there's a lot of creative passion out there! Sadly, I could not add everyone to the team but please don't let that stop you from trying out next time.

There will be TWICE as much inspiration for you in August as we've doubled the size of the DT! There are lots of familiar faces as we have 6 team members rejoining us. So, without further ado, here is the August-January DT!

New members:

Kim Price - http://kimsprice.blogspot.com.au (Australia)

Kat Benjamin - http://kraftykat9.blogspot.com (USA)

Ellie Augustin - http://scrapbookmamaof4kidz.blogspot.com (USA)

Christina Collins - http://dontworry-bescrappy.blogspot.com (USA)

Emi Parczewska – http://www.noomiy.blogspot.com (Poland)

Petra Offrell - http://www.mittkreativakaos.blogspot.com (Sweden)

Returning members:

Anna White-Sharman - http://www.madetoscrap.blogspot.com (DT coordinator)

Daphne Wuenn-Rihm - http://dapfniedesign.wordpress.com

Tessa Buys – http://precociouspaper.blogspot.com

Valerie Mangan – http://paperandcookies.blogspot.com/ (sketch designer)

Jules Dix – http://www.scrappingmojo.blogspot.com/

Katherine Sutton - http://fruitofmyscraps.blogspot.com


I know these amazing girls will knock your socks off with their creativity! You may be pleased to notice that Val has a new "job title" too... she is now officially our sketch artist and do you know what that means? We will be continuing to have sketch challenges on a monthly basis! The second challenge each month will be a sketch :)
Thank you once again for your fabulous applications!

June winners!

Our winners of the JBS Mercantile GCs, as decided by Random.org are…

Debbie http://debbiebakk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/im-back-to-scrap.html

AND

Jennifer http://www.liveteachcreate.com/negatives/

CONGRATS ladies! Email me Amanda(at)scrapbook-101.com to claim your prize!

Thanks for playing along, everyone :)

15th July -Sketchy

Anyone feeling a bit sketchy?!
We have another lovely sketch that Valerie created from one of Katherine's layouts from a previous challenge! 


Here's the sketch:

And here are the great creations that the design team made from it!

Anna

 Another great sketch to use, lots of scope! I get it quite similar the only main difference was I swapped the circle for my new Crafty Workshop template!

I had to document this funny little question my nephew came out with, when we saw a bearded dragon!

Daphne

I love sketches! And I really was delighted to see such an easy-going one from our DT colleague Katherine!

My layout is about a ghost village called Tyneham (Dorset coast). As I only had one pic of The Post Office Row this sketch came pretty handy!

Katherine

I love the sketch, and decided to dig out some lovely Dear Lizzy papers which went perfectly with my cake photo - I don't normally use much pink or anything too pretty with my boy pages.  This was my 1st attempt at piping on my cakes (and the photo is of the better ones!) and now I just have to make all my cakes look like this.

Jan

I rotated the sketch.  I added a colour photo over the black and white photo so you could see the tiny toad Brian is holding.  Added a couple of Elle's Tiny Labels.  :)

Jules

I loved this sketch! I decided to flip it to fit with my photo, as I thought the title fit better on the left hand side. I don't normally stray much from sketches, so it was quite a liberating move for me! 

Valerie

Nothing like a fun sketch to make putting a page together easier. I love sketch challenges! For my page I didn't stray far from the original layout. I adapted the sketch to fit my style - more graphic and in this case, bright. Used a few new Elle's Studio Summer Lovin' tags, too!

They are great takes on the sketch, everyone did something a bit different so lots of inspiration to inspire you to create with the sketch!

Don't forget you could win a $20 gift certificate from Elle's Studio if you enter this months challenges!

We would love to see what you create from this great sketch, please link up your layouts!

1st July - Colour Challenge

Today we have a colour challenge for you! Jules has pick this lovely soft colour scheme for you to create with!

Imagine from Annamarie's crochet blog

Here what the design team came up with!
Anna

These soft colours were a real challenge to me, I don't usually use them so it was good to be pushed out of me comfort zone! First time I tried using black paint on a layout, I always wanted to try it!

Daphne

 

This colour combination really was a challenge! So I had a look into my scraps and was surprised! I found lots of those colours! I didn't know I actually own such tones! 

Jules

It probably goes without saying that I enjoyed this challenge, given that I chose the colour combo! 



Katherine

Another messy page from me, I am really enjoying making them at the moment.  I used the colours with some lovely Webster Pages from the In Love range, but I also wanted to use the circles from the photo too, so I used a mask and painted around some of plates. This photo makes me smile as my son looks so grown up reading the newspaper, which is part of a Sunday tradition after lunch at my parents house, obviously he's noticed this!

Valerie

Like Anna, I'm not very comfortable with muted colors - so this was definitely a challenge for me. For my layout I chose a photo from a sailing trip we took in the San Francisco bay. I remember it being so bright that day that everything seemed washed out & muted against the water.  The colors for this week were a great match:

My journaling is hidden inside the glassine envelope under the photo:

For this months challenges we are really lucky to have another great sponsor which is...

 We have a prize pack from Elle's Studio for one lucky entry! Check out their great new website and there is always some great inspiration on their design team blog too!

As always to would love to see your entries please link them up in the side bar! What would you do with this soft colour scheme?