Celebrate December with Jen Kinkaid

Welcome to Celebrate December at Elle’s Studio!  The month of December will be packed with holiday inspiration, projects, layouts, and gift ideas from many talented designers.  So, make sure to check the Elle’s Studio blog every day for prizes, giveaways, and inspiration!

Today we are thrilled to welcome Jen Kinkaid.  She created a gorgeous layout to inspire us this holiday season.  If you look carefully, you will see some sneaks of our December Kit! 

I knew for this layout that I wanted to use the lovely vellum from Elle’s Studio. I thought it would be fun to layer it over a bolder red chevron patterned paper. I really ended up loving the look because the chevrons in the red patterned paper help direct your eyes to the snowflakes in the vellum as well! 

Decorating my home for the holidays is always a favorite for me, and being able to capture those little details in a scrapbook page are so meaningful. Once I chose my photograph, I thought it would be fun to use the various labels and tags to “deck” out my page, too!


I’ve always loved how Elle’s Studio tags and embellishments are easily layered or alterable to fit my pages.  The cute wood stars were the perfect finishing touch to my layout.


Today we are giving away a $25 gift certificate to our shop!  Leave a comment on this post and we will draw a random winner.   Good Luck!




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Celebrate December with Emily Pitts


Welcome to Celebrate December at Elle’s Studio!  The month of December will be packed with holiday inspiration, projects, layouts, and gift ideas from many talented designers.  So, make sure to check the Elle’s Studio blog every day for prizes, giveaways, and inspiration!

Today we have Emily Pitts with us!  She is sharing some beautiful cards she created using the Noel Collection.

I just love the layering she achieved here, as well as how she inked the Wood Veneer.

I love the bright colors in this card– it would brighten anyone’s day!  


Today we are giving away the entire Noel Collection!  Leave a comment on this post and we will draw a random winner.   Good Luck!

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Celebrate December: Sketch

Welcome Celebrate December Sketch Thursday! Today’s sketch was inspired by LaurelS’s ‘This is so You‘ layout from this month’s DT gallery.


CT member, Melissa Mann created this amazing layout that is sure to inspire you!

I loved that this sketch had a great linear design to it. I love clean lines and grid based layouts. I cut all the blocks of pattern paper out and stitched them down with my sewing machine and then used various die-cuts and tags to “fill” in the blocks. -Melissa

For a chance to win a $10 gift certificate to the Shop create a project inspired by today’s sketch, upload it to our Member Gallery and post a link here. A random winner will be selected and announced with next week’s sketch.

Last week’s winner is misswally!
Congratulations!! Please email michelle@shopellesstudio.com the following info:
Name/Address:
Contest: Sketch 11.21
Prize: $10 Elle’s Studio gift certificate



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Celebrate December | Challenge

Welcome to Celebrate December at Elle’s Studio!  The month of December will be packed with holiday inspiration, projects, layouts, and gift ideas from many talented designers.  So, make sure to check the Elle’s Studio blog every day for prizes, giveaways, and inspiration!

It’s time for a new challenge!  Here’s how it works: We will give you a layout example and a short description of what to do/use for the particular challenge. Complete the challenge and upload it to our member gallery to be entered  and then post a link to the specific challenge post as a comment for your chance to WIN! The winner will receive a $10 Elle’s Studio Gift Certificate to use in our shop.

CHALLENGE | Create a project featuring our Noel collection.


ES Contributing Team member Kay Rogers used our Noel collection to create this Christmas tree decor.  A combination of tags, wood veneer and patterned paper makes for a gorgeous and one of a kind end result.

This stunning layout also utilizes our Noel collection and was created by Contributing Team member Jennifer Chapin.  The amount of detail in this project is amazing!
Are you ready to play along?  Entries are due December 31, 2013 and the winner will be announced with our next challenge, January 1, 2014.  Here’s how to enter:

  • Complete a project based off our challenge
  • Upload your project to our member gallery
  • Tag all Elle’s Studio items used when uploading to our member gallery
  • Write in the description that this is for the December 3rd Challenge (very important so we see it’s an entry)
  • Come back here and post a link to your project in this post.

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Celebrate December with Jenni Hufford

Welcome to Celebrate December at Elle’s Studio!  The month of December will be packed with holiday inspiration, projects, layouts, and gift ideas from many talented designers.  So, make sure to check the Elle’s Studio blog every day for prizes, giveaways, and inspiration!

Today Jenni Hufford is sharing a page from her Project Life album.
Today’s Project Life covers the week of November 25- December 1st: Thanksgiving week!
This is a fun, yet somewhat challenging week to document.  Considering it is Thanksgiving, there are usually many photos to choose from, and a mixture of everyday life and celebrating the holidays.   Additionally, my family always picks out our Christmas tree and decorates on Thanksgiving weekend.  I am always cautious to not overshadow Thanksgiving photos with Christmas photos and products in the spread.  With a combination of Elle’s Studio’s November Kit and Elle’s Studio Noel collection, I was able to achieve the perfect balance!

On the left side of the spread you primarily see Thanksgiving photos.  I spent so much time in front of my mixer that week, I just had to add a photo!   We hosted a Thanksgiving Eve dinner party, so I included a photo of our table and the menu (which is a card in the November kit).   Every year I bring the corn dish to Thanksgiving, so I included the packaging of one part of my corn casserole ingredients.

The right side of the page focuses on the weekend part of our Thanksgiving Break- which included a road trip, a concert, and going to the Christmas Tree farm.   I included the price tag for our tree along with string that tied our tree to the top of our car (I love doing this every year).    
Today we are giving away a set of each of our Wood Veneers !  Leave a comment on this post and we will draw a random winner.   Good Luck!


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Celebrate December with Meghann Andrew

Welcome to Celebrate December at Elle’s Studio!  The month of December will be packed with holiday inspiration, projects, layouts, and gift ideas from many talented designers.  So, make sure to check the Elle’s Studio blog every day for prizes, giveaways, and inspiration!

Today we have a beautiful advent calendar to share with you from Meghann Andrew.  Meghann is a member of our Contributing Team and we just love everything she creates.  I know her December Daily base pages will inspire you as we start the month of December!


Hi there! After failing miserably at putting together a December Daily last year, I decided that this year, I would make more of an effort to document the month since it is my daughter’s first Christmas. Last year, I waited until the last minute to pull things together & I didn’t have my foundation pages ready when December hit. I also hadn’t decorated my Studio Calico Handbook cover. My plan of attack this year is: a) to get myself organized early by getting my supplies and foundation pages ready & keeping it simple;  b) decorate my cover first to get me in the Christmas mood & make the album feel more finished; c) Print all of my photos at 4″x4″.

I started by painting my entire Handbook with a gloss white acrylic paint. I then covered the spine (inside & outside) in extra fabric I had on hand. To finish off the edges, I glued on gold glitter ribbon. 


Once that was done, I went through my Noel collection to find a perfect piece to start with as the foundation for my cover decoration. The grey & white striped Noel frame looked perfect. I backed that with a piece of my favorite paper from the Noel collection, the chalkboard ‘Fa La La La La’ paper. At this point, I knew I wanted something gold to stand out against these neutrals, so I covered the “DEC 2013” piece from the Let It Snow! wood veneer in Versamark, then embossed it with metallic gold embossing powder. To make the year stand out, I backed it with red cardstock. I finished off the frame with a glittered star, bakers twine & a jingle bell. To add a bit more interest & break up the stark white around the frame, I added some gold star rub-ons. 


The first page you see when you open my album is the title page. I wanted this page to highlight all of the colors I would be using in my album this year- red, green, gold, black & grey. I used the ‘Carols’ paper from the Noel collection pack as my foundation and added the ‘Merry Christmas’ tag from the Noel Bits & Pieces pack, which I wrapped with a tulle bow. To offset that, I punched a circle from the ‘Fa La La La La’ paper and outlined it with gold metallic ink. I topped this with three embossed wood veneer trees (since there are three members in our family) and put the ‘Holiday Memories’ arrow tag from the Noel Lil’ Snippets labels just underneath it, as a way to invite you to turn the page. To add more green, I cut out two triangles from the ‘Deck the Halls’ paper and sewed them on with my sewing machine. I finished off the page with a gold ‘A’, my own handwriting for the title & a few sequins. 


On the backside of the title page, I kept it super simple by topping the backside of the ‘Carols’ paper with an American Crafts embellishment. I love the tone on tone look!



My foundation pages are simple & follow the same general design: A foundation of patterned paper, a border along the side or bottom edge, a number punched from the ‘Countdown’ paper outlined in gold, and a tag and other small embellishments to add to it. At the moment, everything is adhered with temporary removable adhesive, just in case that I need to change things up once I have my photo in place. Giving myself more flexibility and keeping a simple design will ensure that I keep on top of this project & have an album that I love at the end of the month, and the Noel collection is really helping me to get excited about this project!

I would love for you to follow along at my blog, Meghann’s Little Corner, as I add photos and finish up my daily pages. Here’s to documenting December!


Today we are giving away the entire Noel Collection!  Leave a comment on this post and we will draw a random winner.   Good Luck!

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Welcome to Celebrate December!

Welcome to Celebrate December at Elle’s Studio! We are so excited to start out the month with our annual event – we are interrupting our current blog schedule to bring you 25 days of holiday inspiration, projects, layouts, challenges, sketches, and gift ideas from many talented designers. So, make sure to check our blog every day for prizes, giveaways, and inspiration!

I want to personally thank Jenni Hufford for coordinating this event and for all the work she has put into it! I also want to thank all the amazing contributors that will be contributing throughout the month – you guys are going to love what we have in store for you! 

Today I’m going to share with you my favorite type of cards to make! I call these “bits and pieces cards” because they hold so many cute and little bits and pieces!

Before I start, I gather up any extra scraps and tags that I have left over from other projects – or pieces I’ve saved because I though they would fit perfectly on these. To start, I back my card base (8.5 x 5.5 inch paper folded in half) with a piece of patterned paper. Then, I cut some kraft paper to 5 x 3.5 inches and center those on top of the patterned paper. Then, take a black pen and draw a line down the middle, and two going the opposite direction. It’s okay if they aren’t centered or perfectly straight – that’s what adds character to the card and makes it so cute! Instead of using a black pen, you could use a sewing machine to do stitching!

Now, all that is left to do is to fill the squares with different pieces! You can use tags, papers, punches, wood veneers, ribbon, etc. The possibilities are endless! And, not only are these cards fun to make, but they are pretty easy, too! There aren’t any rules with the grid – you can see that on a couple of them, some pieces took up two squares! So much fun!

I also get to share a sneak peek with you today from our December kit! These kits go on sale on the 10th of each month at 8:00 am PST and are limited edition! If you haven’t signed up for our newsletter, make sure you do 🙂 On the 10th they are just $9.99 for our launch day special, and then after that they go to regular price of $11.99. We will also be restocking a limited amount of our wood veneers for the launch!

This is going to be a really fun kit and perfect for your holiday scrapbooking projects!

Today we are giving away a $25 gift certificate to us in our shop! Just leave a comment below to be entered to win. The winner will be announced on Saturday, December 7th, 2013.

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Product Spotlight: 2014 Paper Collection – part 2

Welcome to part 2 of our spotlight on our 2014 paper collection – you can view part 1 here. These papers are perfect for pocket style scrapbooking, mini albums, and even layouts, throughout the year! The mini albums also make great Christmas presents for your loved ones, too. You could either use photos from 2013 and put the album together now, or put it together without the photos and let them add them throughout the year! My mom asks for one of these every year, to sit on her desk.

Here’s a close up of one of the papers in the collection:

When this paper is cut apart, you’ll have 4 x 6 and 3 x 4 inch calendars, along with a fun tag calendar and generic journaling tags that you can use on any type of project! There are also tiny journaling and embellishment tags, too.

We asked our design team to make some projects using the 2014 collection and we have some amazing and inspiring projects to share with you! Here’s what they came up with:

Laurel created a “Year of Dates” mini book by using the 4 x 6 inch calendars. On each page she created a pocket so she can slip in a fun idea for the date, and then after the date, she can use it to store mementos from the date! How fun would this be to give to your spouse on Christmas?!

Stephanie created a mini book with the kraft tags on the pages, and used other pieces from the collection to create a beautiful layout, too!

Vee also created this awesome layout by using the small journaling and embellishment tags that can be found on each page!

We love how versatile the 2014 collection is and how easily it can be fit into any type of project you are working on!

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12 Days of Christmas: December Duos Giveaway

Big Picture Classes says: 
The “December Duos” concept is easy, stress-free, and inspiring. Every day for the twelve days leading up to Christmas Day, two of our twelve instructors will share a scrapbook layout, video message, and a page prompt in the form of a duo (“warm & cold,” “give & receive,” “near & far”). That’s a total of two-dozen inspiring ideas!

You can follow the instructor’s lead or march in your own direction as you snap your photos for the day. Then, after printing our fabulously free journaling cards and title cards, you’ll either slip the cards and your photos into a Project Life mini album from American Crafts or use them on a traditional (or digital) scrapbook page.

12 Days of Christmas: December Duos makes it easy to capture all of your most important holiday moments—in a festive new format—while keeping up with all the parties, presents, and pageants that make the holiday season magical.

Learn more and register here! Registration costs $24.00 and class starts on December 12th!

And, today we get to giveaway one spot in the class! To enter to win, just leave a comment in the section below! We’ll draw the winner on December 7th, 2013.

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November #EllesStudio on Instagram

We’ve reached the end of another month and we loved seeing what you’re sharing using our #EllesStudio hashtag!
Our products works so well for weekly, pocket style pages.  Always love catching a glimpse of these online!

What a stunning layout!  Such a great use of angles to draw your eye to the photo.

It’s an embossing party!  Take a peek at how Jaimee colored her wood veneer – awesome!

Everyone loves a great mail day and we love seeing you happy when our product arrives at your door!

We spy holiday cards in progress!
We’d love to feature YOUR Instagram shot featuring Elle’s Studio next month!  Be sure to use #EllesStudio  so that we can easily find it!

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