Besides seeing what our design team creates, we love seeing what YOU create, too! Here’s a peek at some of the awesome items we’ve seen popping up around the web this week – make sure you click the links so you can see each project in full detail, they are amazing!!

365 Mini Album by Allison:

& layout by Stephanie:

Gift cards by Michelle:

Love how our new tags go with lots of different colors and styles – so much fun!

If you’ve created something with our new line: Handmade Layers, please feel free to leave a link in the comment section and we’d love to feature it next week!

See you tomorrow for our birthday celebration!
xo, Elle
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Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone who was affected by the earthquake and tsunami. It breaks our hearts to see the amount of devastation and loss.  

We are feeling so inspired by our design team – and spoiled with the extra inspiration, too! Melissa put this super cute layout together and I love how she used the chipboard windows with our newest collection!

On this page she used our Handmade Layers Note Tags, Blank Pennants, Journaling Tags and Cut Outs!

Thanks so much for inspiring us today, Melissa! It’s beautiful!!
xo, Elle

P.S. This Saturday we will be celebrating our 4 year old birthday – time just flies when you’re having fun! Make sure you check back on Saturday for a big giveaway!!

 

I love finding inspiration in advertising, and once of my favorite places is magazine ads.  This ad from Green Mountain Coffee was featured in the Dec/Jan 2011 issue of ReadyMade magazine and immediately caught my eye with it’s bold use of color and titlework.

I thought the color combination would translate well to a scrapbook page, so I pulled a few basic supplies to get me started. Don’t stress too much about gathering everything you need at this stage – you can always add and swap things out when you get deeper into the design!

While looking for suitable photos for this layout, I came across some shots of my son on his birthday wearing an orange shirt. Since the coffee cup in the ad was various shades of orange, I knew the photos could work. But I wasn’t sure what size or how many of them to print just yet.

Using the ad as a rough guide to my page layout, I arrange some of my supplies in a similar design:

I used a blank piece of 4×6 photo paper to indicate approximately where my photos might go.  This helped me determine what size to print them (I opted for two photos approx. 3.5 x 5″).

To create a title similar to the ad, I used a combination of foam letter stickers and typesetting, printed on cardstock. I was able to determine the placement of the type by laying out the letter stickers (but not sticking them down), and measuring roughly the area they took up before removing them.  Then I set my text up in a word processing program and printed on the blue cardstock.

Notice how the main focal points in the ad (title, coffee mug, product placement) represent the focal points on my page (title, photos, embellishment tags.)  I also used the location of the ad type (lower right corner) for my journaling placement.

So the next time you’re stumped for page ideas, flip through a magazine and pay attention to the ads. There is lots of inspiration to be found there!

Each weekend JessicaSprague.com is featuring a designer spotlight and this weekend is our weekend! That means, our ENTIRE digital shop is 25% off (Including our Advent Calendar and Let Me Count The Ways mini album – two amazing items that have never been on sale before! Eeek!!),

Plus we have a brand new, never released before, FREEBIE!?! It doesn’t get any better than that, huh?

Use these on your digital layouts for little journaling details, or print them out and slip them in your photo albums over photos! They are 6 inches long so they work perfectly on those 4 x 6 inch photos. 

The sale and freebie ends this Sunday night (March 6th), so make sure you take advantage of it while you can! And, no coupon code is needed!

Also, we’ve been getting a couple questions about our digitals, so I thought now would be the perfect time to answer them! If you don’t see your question answered, please leave it in the comments section and I’ll try to answer them in there 🙂

Currently, we have no plans to release it in digital format. Our digitals are limited to either retired, and out-of-print items or new designs that we will never sell in printed format. So, in order for us to release the line, we would have to wait until it has been retired.

No! We usually include a pdf in each digital set and you can use that to print them out and use them on your paper layouts, minis, cards and more! Pdf files can be easily opened and if you don’t have a program to open and print them, you can download it here for free. We also offer some hybrid (pdf only) projects, too!

What are you going to be releasing next?
We’ve been getting a ton of requests to release our popular and long retired line from 2008 called “My Dear”, so that should be coming out soon!

I think that’s all for now! Don’t forget to go download the freebie and take advantage of that 25% off for this weekend only! (no coupon code needed)

Hope everyone has a wonderful and crafty weekend!
xo, Elle

Our Handmade Layers collection works on layouts for boys, too! We love how Rebecca used our tags – and added a real jean pocket to the layout! Awesome!! I feel so blessed with all this amazing inspiration from our design team! Thank you so much for inspiring us, Rebecca!

For this layout she used our 2 inch circle tags and our Blank Pennants.

Make sure you also stop by Rebecca’s blog and show her some love!
xo, Elle

p.s. Tomorrow we have a super fun digital announcement! Stay tuned….

This sweet layout was made by our design team member Jennifer Chapin and has me saying “more please”, too! I love how she made that collection of pennants in the middle of her page – so fun! And, what a cute moment she captured of her little girl! Love it!! Thanks so much for this lovely inspiration, Jennifer! It’s perfect!

She use a ton of tags from our Handmade Layers collection, including: Cutouts, Blank Pennants, Inspiring Pennants, and 2 inch circle tags!

Also, make sure you stop by her blog! It’s super cute!!

 

Mandie made a special layout today with tags from our newest collection, Handmade Layers! I love how this collection goes so well with papers that can be found already in your stash. They add the perfect finishing touches, too! She used the Date and Place Strips, Large Circle tags and the Blank Pennants.

So fun! Thank you so much for this extra inspiration today, Mandie, this layout is beautiful!

Also, make sure you visit her blog! She just posted some of her Project 365 and it’s beautiful!

We have a winner to announce from yesterday’s giveaway from Izzy’s Attic! The winner of the awesome prize is:
Roxanne at February 26, 2011 9:14 AM

Congrats, Roxanne! Please email me as soon as possible to claim your prize!

We are excited to host this special giveaway from Izzy’s Attic! The owner contacted me and when I saw her work, I just knew our readers would LOVE them! Here’s a little about them:

Izzy’s Attic is a brand new store on Etsy. They offer unique easy to follow step by step PDF tutorials to create your own one of a kind patterns. These are great for beginners and have at least one picture for every step and are very easy to follow. These tutorials can be made for any age and can be made into a pin or clip as well. Make sure you visit their shop to check out all their amazing tutorials!

You can also become a friend on their facebook page to receive word on new products and discount codes.

Winner will receive a custom made headband of your choice with 5 tutorials emailed to you. To enter, head on over to their shop, then come back here and leave a comment telling us what headband is your favorite! The winner will be drawn Sunday night, February 27th.  

Big thank you to Izzy’s Attic for making this giveaway possible!

February’s Inspiration Gallery is now LIVE and our design team has done it again and put together an amazing showcase of layouts, mini’s, cards, frames and more! There is something in there to inspire everyone, I think. They worked with items from our previous launch for this gallery and next gallery they will be working our collection we just released! Big thank yous to these ladies for all their hard work!!

Also, we wanted to say thank you so, SO much for such an incredible response to our newest collection, Handmade Layers. We are so excited that you love it and words cannot express how much your support means to us 🙂 We love you all SOOOOOOOO much!!
xoxo, Elle