April's Favourites and Winner

Thank you to all our great entries for April it was hard to pick our favourites and there were lots of great ones to choose from! Here are the ones we picked out...

Rita

Julie J

Kicka

Lesley G

And the winner is ....

Yvonne Yam with this gorgeous layout!

Congratulations Yvonne please contact me Anna at thestudiochallenges@gmail.com to arrange to be our guest designer for a month!

11th May - Sketch

We have another great sketch to inspire you today, Valerie has created this sketch inspired by Jinny's April challenge layout.

Here are the DTs takes on it:

Cari

I love this sketch is simple and easy to follow, It didn't take me much on finish my Lo. Last month I went to Brazil to meet some friends, the picture is me, walking for one amazing street in Sao Paulo.

I recently bought some neocolor II crayons, It's extremely easy to make this watercolor clouds with them I do recommend them!

Hilde

My neighbour has a pond with koi fish. Luckily he has lots, and they breed naturally so quickly that he need to sell 50-60 each summer. If not, I think my cat Ponky would have been in big trouble if he discovered this:

I streched the design a bit to fit landscape oriented photos, and I used the same one twice. Who says you can't *lol*?

Here is a trick for you when using busy background papers: go with a completely different color in the title -  it takes the focus away from the busy paper and lead your eyes to the photos. Imagine the tiltle in brown - your eyes would immidiately be drawn to the busy, right hand side.

Jinny

Seeing as it's Mother's Day here in the U.S., I thought it only fitting to scrap a couple of pics from one year ago today.  I've combined a number of amazing manufacturers, including Jenni Bowlin, Basic Grey, and Elle's Studio, to create my take on the sketch, which I've rotated 90 degrees to the left to better accommodate my horizontal pics.

Kat

I loved the sketch and I adored Jinny's original layout.  When it came time to do my own layout, I didn't follow the sketch that closely.  However, I did pull in elements that I loved and stuck to the sketch closely enough that you can tell (sort of) where my layout came from.

Katarina

This was such a great sketch, and I actually used my project life cards to make a LO without photos, about my biggest change in life right now, being divorced. 

Guest Designer - Lesley

I don't normally "follow" sketches as I'ma  bit of a rule breaker but this sketch worked perfectly for me on the Ruby Rock It Banner background. The additional banners etc are from the now defunct Kanban collection but work well with my "SmilERs" layout.

Please link up your takes to the side bar, we would love to see what you do with this lovely sketch, you have until June 8th to enter!

27 April Challenge - Epic Fail!

Epic Fail - has something happened lately that you would rather forget, if so now is the time to create a layout about it! We all learn something from going through tough times, what did you learn?

Hilde
If it's on film or tape, I have scrapped it - good or bad - happy days, epic stunt fails etc etc. This time I want to say something about an object I consider an epic failure: the pocket bike (aka mini moto).  DS11 has one, and he loves it, but it is the most stupid gadged invented ever, in my opinion: it's limited where you can ride, it's really small, and it brakes down or runs out of gas all the time.

Jinny
I guess that I'm not big into photographing failures, because this was an uber difficult challenge for me to find a single picture that would fit the theme.  However, I did discover the below photograph of my oldest's 9th birthday cake.  The air conditioning went out in our car on the trip to Grandpa and Grandma's to celebrate, and unfortunately, the cake couldn't contend with the 100 degree temperatures that day.  I did attempt to rescue it and tucked the after picture into the pocket behind the one below.  It wasn't perfect, but it sure tasted delicious ;)!

Kat
At first glance my "epic fail" doesn't really look that epic. I chose to scrap before and after photos of when I got my hair done.  I paid almost $100 to get my hair cut and colored...and my before and after photos were almost identical.  The real epic fail is not the hair cut or the wasted money, but is actually my inability to take big chances.  I'm working on it, though.  I may not be getting pink hair anytime soon...but maybe I'll look into becoming a redhead!  :-)

Petra
I have an epic fail for you all. I have had a drivers license for many many years and I am pretty good at parking... or well I am OK anyway, and I have never hit anything while parking really. This day I was going to collect my son and was a bit stressed, not only for collecting him and getting to my next appointment on time, but also because I had this major delivery at work which had taken a lot of my time and energy lately. So I wasn't really in balance. When making this easy parking I suddenly noticed I was stuck - WHAT... what happened.... I had hit a car parked on the street. Really embarrassing and an epic fail for me. So what can you do but make a page about it....

Stephanie
If you read my blog, then you probably know that my husband and I recently purchased our first home. What you don't know is that before there was the *dream* house there was an epic house hunting fail. We found a condo right by the beach that we thought was perfect for us and we put in an offer. Unfortunately, the thorough home inspection we did revealed problem after problem after problem. We ended up withdrawing our offer … I was so disappointed, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise since we wound up finding and buying our perfect townhouse about a month later.

I didn't have a photo of the "epic fail" condo but I did have a photo of the view we would have had if we had gone ahead with the purchase, so that's what I used here. The journaling is on the back.

You have until 11th May to upload your layouts from this month in the sidebar.

Happy scrapping!

March Favourites and Winner!

Thank you so much to everyone who played along with our March challenges.  It is getting harder and harder to pick winners each month because all the entries are so inspirational.

First, the runners up

 Sweet Scraps:

Jo:

 

 

And our winner this month is....

 

Lesley:

Keep an eye on your inbox, Lesley, as you have been selected as a guest designer!  We are all looking forward to seeing how Lesley interprets our future challenges!

13th April - Numbers

Todays challenge is all about numbers - its a year of big Birthdays this year in my family, one of them being mine and it just so happens to be my nephews first Birthday today too so todays challenge is to create a layout including numbers, whether its your title, journaling or both would be even better!

Anna

This challenge falls on my nephews first Birthday so it had to be a page about him! I used all my numbers for his date of birth and weight, its great for using up your left over Thicker numbers!

Hilde

My youngest son (11 YO) has a crush on soft guns ATM. I find the tiny plastic bullets all over the house - so annoying. I hope the crush is over soon...

Jinny
From stamping and stickers to chipboard and journaling bits, I had so much fun thinking of all the ways to tie numbers into my design this week.  I really wanted to design a page around my kiddos' birthdays being 07/07, 11/01, and 02/02, being as they each ended up with their own personal lucky number, but I have very few digital baby pics of my oldest and haven't yet printed many of my youngest.  So, it'll have to wait for another occasion.  In the end, I decided to scrap a couple pics of my oldest, celebrating his first double-digit birthday last summer.

Kat
For my layout I focused on my niece's rainbow themed birthday.  I've been searching for an excuse to use my wood veneer numbers, so I'm glad I finally got the chance!!

Katarina

This challenge was a bit of struggle for me, and I had to work a bit to make it happen.

But the title says 365 days, 52 weeks, 12 months... I´m a mum every day of the year.

I´ve used loads of gesso, and dylusion sprays on my page, and the die cuts are cut out with my silhouette Cameo.

Petra
My page is all about counting numbers. The journaling is in swedish and says: "Mom, I do not have to start school. I already know how to count to 100."

I used Maggie Holmes Styleboard collection from Crate Paper, Thickers from American Crafts and stamps from Kaisercraft for this page.

I sprayed Gesso onto of the numbers and then I used different mists. 

Stephanie

As soon as I heard the challenge, I knew I wanted to create a project that highlighted reasons why I love my husband. I began playing around with some design ideas for a layout but, in the end, decided a mini album would be fun. I used 4x6 photo sleeves from American Crafts as the base of my album, creating several 4x6 inserts on cardstock. Then I tied the whole thing together (literally) with some purple ribbon. 

Please link up your entries to the side bar.

Happy scrapping!

30th March - Sketch

Today's challenge is a Sketch , created by Valerie from Cari's January challenge layout.

Here are the design teams interpretions;

Anna 

I kept quite close to the sketch as I liked the layout of it. It's of my nephew all wrapped up from the cold!

Cari

How fun was to use this sketch again, I simply love it! The first time I used a cut from the cameo, but this time I fussy cut a paper. I love how relaxing it is cutting figures from different papers and the best is that you can have a lot of embellishment from it!.  

Hilde

My dog, Scoobie, isn't the brightest. She knows she's not allowed on the couch, but she thinks that if she hide her head, I can't see her.

Why the husband doesn't tell her to get off, is another story...

I replaced some of the circles with other shapes, and stamped, cut, inked and doodled the circles.

Jinny

I just love the movement found in this sketch and had to add even more with my favorite splotchy use of mists.  I also pulled one of my all-time favorite color palettes into it with lots of yummy stamping and a beautiful mix of patterned papers.  In addition, this page is just the left half of a double layout.  LOVE to have you stop by my blog to see the other side!

Kat

I really liked the smattering of circles, so I played up that element, even making my photo a circular shape...

Katarina

I loved this sketch, it gave me loads of creative space, and I used stencils and inks to create an EGO-page about myself.

Petra

I loved the sketch. So easy to get inspired from.

I used a lot of mediums on my page and many many layers.

The picture is one of my daughter just awoke in the morning... often not a sunshine girl at that time of day LOL. 

I used Maggie Holmes Flea market from Crate Paper when I created this page. 

Stephanie

I was so excited to work with this sketch because I love incorporating circles onto my layouts! For this particular layout, I ended up using a circle placemat by Jillibean Soup and several small, round embellishments like enamel dots and ink drops. My layout ended up being a loose interpretation of the sketch, but that's what is so great about sketches ... you can use them just as a base for inspiration!

Hope that's inspired you to get creating!

Please link up your layouts by 13th April to be in with a chance of being our guest designer!