It's Hydrangeas Blog Hop time!

Welcome to the Hydrangeas hop! You're in for a real treat today; we have eighteen talented bloggers sharing their projects made with the May 2014 collection.

Last weekend was my son's Junior Prom. He took his friend Samantha; they both looked so nice all dressed up for the occasion. My friend Aimee took a LOT of photos of Hunter, Samantha and a few of their friends. I wanted a special way for Hunter to give a set of prints to Samantha, so I made this accordion-style mini book based on a Retreat project from 2012, the Passport to Fun.

Five envelopes are attached to each other by the flaps and accordion-folded to create a booklet. Exposed sections of each envelope are matted with cardstock. Each envelope pocket holds a 5x7" matte for photos. I added two 10x7" papers, each folded in half and pamphlet-stitched inside to hold additional pictures. I used Cutaparts, rubber stamps and pearl stickers to embellish the booklet. I also added some die cut flowers made from Hydrangeas cardstock using my Sizzix Big Shot.

The flap on the fifth envie forms the front cover; inside flap with stamped sentiment.

Accordion extended to show interior.

Inside pockets and pamphlet-stitched inside pages hold photos.

Close-up of pamphlet-stitched pages.

Close-up of envelope pocket with photo double matted on 5x7" cardstock.

Photos provided by Aimee Johnson.

Do you think she'll like it?

Are you ready to see what the rest of our bloggers have in store? Your next stop is Julie at Cape Cod Scrapper. If you get lost along the way, here's a full list of our talented bloggers:

Karen for Club Scrap Creates

Julie at Cape Cod Scrapper

Inkstains with Roni

Deb at Liftbridge Cards and Crafts

Deb Duz Scrappin'

Jill P's Place

Tricia at The Efficient Crafter

Hetty at Craft Chaos

Kay's Keepsakes

Cathy at the Artful Gamut

Anne at Crzymom's Tidbits

Debby at Masculine Inspirations

Dishing with Janet

Tiare Smith

Lisa at Carpe Memoria

Marya at A Notebook Novel

Digital Musings from AnnetteD

Donna at the Crafty Colonel

Thanks for hopping along with us!

***EDITED 5/1/14***

Want to make a similar book yourself? Click HERE for downloadable instructions and video tutorial!

Creatively yours,

Karen

Stamped Spring Wreath Framed Project

Spring is in the air and my gardens are finally looking green and more lush after a very long cold winter. Let's celebrate the season with a framed project. It will make a nice Mother's day present, don't ya think?!

Here are the steps for creating this project.

1. Choose a selection of blue Gelatos to stamp your Hydrangeas blossoms.

2. Scribble some Gelatos onto an acrylic block and "ink" the Hydrangeas bud stamp by pressing randomly onto the colored acrylic block. Stamp onto plain white paper. Form the semblance of a wreath shape, alternating the direction of the Hydrangeas blossoms as you stamp. Leave spaces for the second stamped layer of flowers.

4. Mask the Hydrangeas blossoms and stamp the Wildflowers blossom inked with Neon Pink dabber.

5. Create a similar mask for the Wildflowers blossom and stamp the Hydrangeas leaves with Neon Green dabber.

6. Color the pink flowers with a combo of white Gelato and Neon Pink dabber ink. Add adhesive pearls from Bookshelves to the center of the pink flowers.

7. Use the same technique to color the leaves. *Note: Use blue metallic Gelatos (not combined with white) to color the Hydrangeas blossoms. Fussy cut the wreath from the card stock.

8. Cut a piece of dark pink paper to fit the size of the frame you plan to use.

9. Use dimensional medium and the Tiny Treasures stencil to create faux stitching along the sides of the cardstock. Note: Do this in stages, allowing the medium to dry between applications.

10. Stamp the Textiles and Notions sentiment within the center of the wreath using Sapphire Ink. Adhere the wreath to a paper doily with foam squares.

11. Die cut stems and butterflies from Take Wing Lime Green paper. Attach the doily and die cuts to the dark pink background paper with bookbinding glue and a fine detail paint brush.

12. Complete the project by placing it in a frame.

I hope this project inspires you to create something to celebrate spring. Enjoy the week!

Julie

From The Hydrangeas Gallery

This Hydrangeas two-page layout really gets me in the mood for spring flower planting!

Hydrangeas CS White Print, Purple Plain and Embellishment Pack Cutaparts

Artwork from the Embellishment Pack Cutapart

I love the look of the individual words trimmed from the printed cutapart. You can also do this with the stamp image from the Hydrangeas Borders & Backgrounds UM sheet.

A closer look . . .

Trim the cutapart into individual words:

Attach to the page with adhesive.

Next up, the card below features masking and stamping around the large image from the Collection UMs, and the quote from the Borders & Backgrounds UMs. The angle of the foreground image creates a fun look.

I love this sentiment from the Greeting UM for inside the card!

The text weight quad Club Stamp Print is always fun and easy to use. I made a little flower wrap for a handmade bouquet with this month's print.

Follow these easy steps to create the flower wrap:

1. Cut the CST print into 2x2" squares.

2. Rotate the paper so it's a diamond instead of a square and fold in both outside corners.

3. Bend back the corner for added interest and tie waxed linen thread around the cone-shaped wrap.

4. Attach to a card panel, and fill with Green hand-cut stems and Purple punched flowers. Use foam squares to attach flowers for added dimension. Finish with self-adhesive purple pearls from the Embellishment Pack.

Thanks for taking this springy walk through these fun Hydrangeas projects!
Kay at Club Scrap

Digital Fun with Geometrics

Recently, Karen wrote a blog about the new collection, Geometrics and some cool cards that she created. I really liked the clean and simple style that Karen used, so I thought it would be fun to recreate that look digitally. And it gave me a chance to make some nifty cards with Geometrics Digital!

Let's start by making that square with just two rounded corners:

Note: There are several ways to make that shape - I'm just showing you one way that's pretty easy to create.

1. Open a new document in your digital layout program of choice (I'm using Photoshop CC). Give it a white background to make it easier to see what you're doing!

2. Create a new layer.

3. Change your foreground color to Black on the tool palette.

4. Click and hold on the Rectangle Tool and select 'Rounded Rectangle Tool' from the fly-out menu.

5. Edit the Radius to 80 pixels in the rounded rectangle settings located in the tool status bar.

6. Draw a square about two inches wide. Holding down the Shift key while drawing the square will constrain the shape so that it remains a square.

7. Create a new layer.

8. Click and hold on the Rounded Rectangle Tool and select 'Rectangle Tool' from the fly-out menu.

9. Draw a square about 1/2 inch wide. Holding down the Shift key while drawing the square will constrain the shape so that it is a perfect square.

10. Duplicate the layer with the 1/2 inch square.

11. Use the Move tool to move each of the squares so they line up at two opposing corners. It may be helpful to magnify your view so you can get more precise positioning.

Position the first square

Then position the second square in the opposite corner

12. Merge the three layers together.

Okay, that's your basic shape or mask - yup, we've created a mask! It wasn't that hard, right? You can duplicate that layer as needed and/or resize it to achieve the look you want. For a refresher on using masks, check out my blog on multi-colored stamping HERE.

Here are a few cards I made with this neat mask shape:

For this one, I used the mask like a "punch" to remove the shape from each layer.

I hope you're inspired to try this out for yourself. It's quick, easy and the results are really cool!

Until next time, thanks for stopping by!

-Ron