Maya Road Design Team

Lovely Linen

Hi Roadies! Julia here again with another project to share. I've always loved Maya Road mini albums but the latest ones in linen? Well, I love creating with them...the texture is awesome! Being a sewer long before I found paper crafting, I'm so excited to see fabric mini albums and embellishments.

Todays album is the Linen 4x6 Art Journaling Album and it's four pages of beautiful double thickness linen. It makes the perfect gift album, a wedding or baby album or as the name suggests, a little album for art journaling. My album is more along the art journaling line and is filled with quotes that I love and inspire me.

One thing I did with this album was to fold back the front cover about an inch or so and glue it down. This adds a little unique spot of interest and gives you a peek into the first page of the album.

As you can see, I've filled it with lots of lovely embellishments. I love how the unfinished edges add lots of texture and character to each album.

The cover is my favorite place to embellish and there are many layers of Maya Road flowers, trinkets and trims. To add a shabby chic look to the Antique Room Key, I've painted it with Gesso, making sure not to get the paint into the grooves.

The linen albums really take ink, paint and stamping well. Thoughout this album, I've stamped it with the Art Journaling Words Stamp Set and the Vintage Wallpaper Stamp Set.

Each page in the album contains a quote that is meaningful to me. They are written on White Mini Kraft Jotter Tags.

Tissue paper is easy to adhere to the linen album with a clear multi-medium type adhesive or glaze.

Fabric albums are so much fun to create with. I hope you'll be inspired to give one a try. Thanks for joining me today!

 

Additional Maya Road Supplies:

Linen Mini Tag Pieces

Cream Velvet Resin Blossoms

Vintage Paper Roses

Country Rose Flower Fabric Tape

Vintage Pearl Butterfly Trinket Pins

Vintage Wood Mini Butterflies

Natural Wood Buttons

Vintage Sequin Blossoms

Alterable Canvas Blooms

Cream Vintage Burlap Roses

Ballerina Pink Tu-Tu Tulle

Vintage Pale Pink Pearl Ball Pins

Wood Twigs

Pink Lemonade Twine Cording

 

It's a Chipboard Addiction

Hi there Roodies.

Hope you guys had a great weekend and are all set for some crafting fun.  Today I want to share some projects that I recently created focusing on chipboard and more chipboards and of course chipboards. I dont think you can ever have to many to these. 

My first project is this mini ablum using the super cute Home Tweet Home Chipboard Album, Home Tweet Home mini chipboard set (for some of the little birds and branches; selection of chipboard birds are also provided along with the mini album), Love mini chipboard set (for those hearts) and Christmas Words mini chipboard set (for LOVE).  

I had a lot of fun creating this little mini, especially the cover page. I really like how the album had the house frame layer and also the circle cut out (only for cover page). This gave me the idea of having one of the birds peeking out from behind. Also there were seperate chipboard pieces that you could use to create the window still for the birds.  On some of the chipboard pieces I added some glossy accent to give it alternative look and feel (love textures, as you can see from the ribbons there too). 

And for my second project, having more fun with chipboards and mist. This time using chipboard pieces from the following sets: Decorative Buttons, Ornate Tags and Butterfly along with some of the new paper twine cording, wooden button, pins and kraft typography number. 

Here I wanted to play around with the mist abit and on the button piece (pink), instead of evenly spraying the mist onto the chipboard, I applied it in droplets.  I used the pink ginger maya mist which gives a nice metallic shine and as I found out by applying it this way, I could create a marbled look. 

Hopefully I've inspired you guys to get out those chipboard pieces (I know you have them)! Thanks for stopping by everyone and hope you guys have a great week ahead!

No Ordinary Moments Gift

Hello!  Today I made a a fun little gift box using a page from the Maya Road "Home Sweet Home" Mixed Media Album.  I loved that album from the minute I saw it and I knew that there were many more possiblilities than just an album.

I cut chipboard to add to the back of the chipboard house shape from the album set to form the box and the bottom then adhered old book pages and patterned paper to the all sides of the house box.  I used 25 gauge wire for the handle and one of the large Vintage Spools.  The spool is wrapped in yellow Vintage Measuring Tape Trim.  I lightly sanded the tape trim to give it a time worn look and to soften the color to match the soft colors in the rest of my project.

The little pom poms were made from the Twine Cording in "Shine Gold".  Can you see the little slivers of sparkle in the poms?  I love that.  I also used some of the new "Champagne" Vintage Butterfly Trinket Pins that I stuffed into that bouquet of the Vintage Paper Posies.

My thoughts on gifting this box is that it would make a great gift for a crafter or scrapbooker.  They can use some of the things in their projects like the bouquet of mini posies, the pom poms, or even the metal heart tin.  You could also make the house box for somebody special on May Day and fill it with a few sweet treats.

I filled the inside of the box with some shredded brown paper bag then added a 4 1/2" pinwheel to serve as a backdrop for all of the other things.  The pinwheel is topped with a chipboard Scallop Frame and a Velvet Pleats flower.  The metal Heart Tart is painted, distressed and the center is filled with patterned paper, an old family photo, and some buttons and the Pearl Chain Trim.

The little pink eggs were stamped with the words from the Art Journaling Clear Stamp Set.  The Antique Room Key was glittered up and hung along with the pom poms on the handle.  Metals are so fun!

The house front was decorated with a chipboard "Doorways" piece that was painted, distressed and glittered.  Some Ruffle Egde trim and big ric rac trim were used along the roof then I piled on the wood alterable buttons.  Have you seen the new wood Shaped Buttons?  Those are so cute! Included are hearts, flowers and stars.

I also used Vintage Paper Roses, more Pearl Chain trim, a Ruffle Blossom flower, a Velvet Resin Blossom and of course more Trinket Pins.  I'm in love with the new Vintage Pale Pink Pearl pin.... love, love, love!!  Maya Road knows how to make me all giddy inside :-)

See !!  So perfect... so vintagey perfect.

One last thing to mention is the Mini Organze Roses trim along the bottom of the house...  so soft and pretty for just about everything.  So, then that's it!  If you have a chance and want to make something unique,  get yourself some of the  so, so awesome Chipboard Albums from Maya Road.  You'll find they have some secret power to inspire you to be extra creative.  Go ahead I dare you to give it a try... you won't be disappointed :-)

Thanks for stopping by.  Best wishes for a super happy day ahead!

Hello Italy... Click Click!

Hi there Roodies!  Hope you guys had a great weekend and Piradee here to kick start the week with a mini album inspiration using some of the new products released...

First off are these super (super) cute camera and polarid frame chipboards. Seriously these are so adorable and love how there are little bits that you play around around with. 

On the cover, I used a couple of cameras that I paint with white paint and misted some of the other little bits to create a constrast.  I then layered those chipboard pieces over the misted shipping tag chipboards for more constrast; as I opted to leave mini ablum base "raw".

For my mini album I used the 5-Ring Tab Album, where I also included some kraft cardstock pages along with a few envelopes here and there; which allows me to store all those keepsakes that I collected during the trip. 

And here's some close up and full page pictures of some of the pages. Mostly on the chipboard tab pages, I went crazy with chipboard and embellishments whereas on the kraft cardstock pages, I kept these clean and simple with pictures and captions from our trip to Italy. 

On this chipboard tab page here,  I had a fun time creating a little scenary for all those wonderful sunny days that we had on our trip and also using the new butterly clip and one of the wood embellishment from the wood measure once, cut twice set.

And on these pages here, I used the awesome camera images from the new Krafty Say Cheese Camera collection ... these come in both black and white images. 

And on my last page here, I had  fun time layering all the different pieces and elements... from the new kraft DIY butterfly sticker, to the anitque ornate frame and antique filigree butterfly vintage findings.

Thanks everyone for stopping by and hope you guys have a great creative week ahead! Also don't forget to stop by the Maya Road website for the full details on all the new products being released this season HERE.

Insta Chicago Mini Starring the Picture Perfect Camera Stamps

Hello Roadies!

Emily on deck today with, yes, another mini album. This one is all about our day trips into Chicago last summer while the Maya Road team was at CHA. I had just purchased my first camera phone and, like any new camera phone user, I was having fun learning Instagram. So I put together a mini album of the two trips into the city.

I cut out some feathers, embossed a LOT, did a fun technique to cover the chipboard, and used elements that I wouldn't normally pair, but I think it really worked.  And I used this stamp set, the Picture Perfect Camera Stamps A LOT. It's a very fun and useful set, I highly recommend it.

 

For the cover and inside pages of the new 4x6 2-Ringed Round Tab Chipboard Journal Book , I painted them bright school bus yellow. I added some dimension to the cover with an extra thick layer of paint, and then stamping the word HELLO from the Picture Perfect Stamp Set over and over in the still wet paint and letting it dry.

Once all surfaces were dry, I sprayed the chipboard with Antique Bronze Maya Mist and then rubbed it off with a paper towel. It gives a cool grungy look perfect for a city mini ablum. 

A few places, I rubbed too hard and pulled some of the paint off, so I sprayed with more mist and you get this really awesome look.

I also used the Varsity Uppercase Letters Stamp Set. I think this is going to be another of my go-to alphas, such a fun size and you get a great image every time!

I made my own cut file to add a few extra pages to the album and to title each day trip.

I used the new Say Cheese Camera Transparencies in both Black and White. I love them! I also used a few different colors of the new Paper Twine, that is such a fun product, it can be unrolled like the raffia of the 80s, or tied like this, or well, the possibilities are endless. 

I stamped and embossed a lot. The Spool Sentiments Stamp Sheet reminded me of a passport stamp, so I used that freely in the book. The sentiments work surprisingly well for a travel mini album. Also, I like having different shapes in my mini albums, that set is a great way to bring in a circle!

The new Perfect Shot Arrow Stamp Strip has nine different kinds of arrows. I could not get enough of that set! I think I may need to order an extra set, it's so versatile!

The new Say Cheese Mini Chipboard Set has the cutest little cameras and polaroid type images, I love how you can personalize them because the cut outs pop out and back in! I also used the new What's the Good Word Stamp Strip. It has some awesome speech bubbles in the set, so you can be right on trend!

I kept the star theme going throughout the book by using the My Star Singleton Stamp Set. I loved all the variety one little set can offer!

I like to add unexpected elements to my designs, I used a single bead from the 8 mm Peal Bead Chain

for each of my feathers in the album. I used some small pliers to bend the wire to get each bead off the chain. Super easy and it adds such a fun bit of surprise to the album.

For each day, I stamped on a Kraft Large Ticket the date of our excursion.

To maintain the arrow theme, I cut up bits from the Yellow Vintage Tape Measure Trim and mixed those with another color. I love how much movement it adds!

Maya road has so many great camera stamp sets, I used the Vintage Camera Singleton Stamp here on the left and the transparency of the same design on the right.

That's the boss lady, waiting for the train back to our hotel on the last day of our week in Chicago.

And here's the back cover, just as on the front, I used the unstitched Linen Star Piece as a base for my design, it adds such a nice cozy feel I think. 

It took me forever to put together, but I really am happy with how it turned out!

This one's for you, Grandma

Hey Roadies! Ania here with a tiny, little confession.

I've been holding on to the photos used in this mini ever since 2006. Which is a shame really, considering my dear grandma  is closing in to three digits.

Also, my mom keep reminding me to not forget to send my grandma cards and letters, and "if I don't mind, some of my altered things" as well. Apparently they make her proud,  whenever she gets guests she's quick to bring these items to the table so others can enjoy too (I just hope the guests doesn't get too bored, haha).

And isn't that why we keep creating? Part of why? Because we want our creations to bring joy and happiness to the people we make them for, which in most cases are the same people we care for? And I care for my grandma, really. I guess that's why I've been so hesitant using these photos...I wanted to make them into a perfect little keepsake for her, I wanted them to really shine, to not be overpowered by embellishments or papers, but rather have the scrapbook-elements supplement and accent the photos.

But I digress..

The time had come for me to actually put these photos into a mini...and to send the little "just because"-gift off to grandma (unfortunately I live far away from her, causing me to see her only once or twice a year).

I knew that the Sew Cute Mini Chipboard set would be the perfect accessory to this mini. Add in a piece of the Vintage Tape Measure Trim in yellow, Vintage Wood Tiny Ruler and Organza Primrose Trim in Chocolate on a piece of file/binder chipboard from the Road Rage Signs set and you have the perfect little cluster for your cover.

Add in some Twine Cording, trinket pins and Maya Mist..

The insides were kept very clean.

I adore my grandma. And I hope she'll enjoy this little mini holding memories from the day in 2006 where she pulled out the trusty, old Singer sewing machine to fix my brand new pair of jeans (the legs are always too long for me!).

Well actually. While grandma prepared the sewing machine, it was my mom who fixed the pants.

Nevertheless. I've now finally put this memory down into something grandma also can enjoy.

Now off you go. Create something that will put a smile to someone elses day. I dare you.

 

One last Ode to Winter...

I know... we are all tired of it.  Most of us have had more than enough of the snow and cold and are ready for Spring!  (I think that I just heard today that there are only 20 more days until Spring... yay!!)   I'm ready to do the countdown, but that doesn't mean that I don't love creating with the photos and colors of winter.  I mean, who doesn't love a wintery stamped image or a glittery white wood snowflake?  Maya Road has the best things to use for all of your winter layouts, mini albums and projects.

I made this using the Landscape Binder with tabbed pages album.  Such a sweet little book that you can stuff full of Maya Road embellishments.


On the front I made a snowman using the Alterable Wood Buttons that I painted white and topped off with some clear crackle medium and glitter. The houses are from the Welcome Home Chipboard set and of course there plenty of the Vintage Wood Snowflakes both here and throughout the album.



On each of the pages I used words from the Art Journaling Words Clear Stamp set. 

I love the Sea Blue Zipper Trim with the snowflakes, the reds and the glitter so I also added the color to some of the chipboard pieces like the Hexagons.  The Let It Snow stamps were made using white embossing enamel.



The Red Velvet Pleats add a nice pop of color to the pages as does the Gingham Trims in apple Red and Licorice black.

As always I use lots of Trinket Pins and a Vintage Wood Spool or two. 

Thanks for stopping by and I promise that my next project will have nothing to do with winter... think butterflies and flowers! ;-)  Have a great day!

Everyday Insta Mini Album

Hello Roadies, Ronda here today to share with you one of my favorite mini albums from CHA, Say Cheese. 

I love this adorable mini album that feels like old fashioned instant cameras.  It made me think of how we capture photos today.  I have a great DSLR but these days I am often grabbing my camera phone to take quick photos of daily life.  I also use Instagram a lot for every day photos and thought this album would be perfect to document our everyday life. 

Sidenote: Did you know Maya Road has an instagram account? Click HERE to follow our feed. 

I painted the cover like the vintage instant cameras.  Love how the white acrylic paint really pops the Maya Mist stripes in rainbow order.  I used dragon fruit pink, tangerine, sunflower, leaf green, popsicle, and blueberry.  I wanted to add the little buttons so I painted an alterable wooden bingo piece with dragon fruit pink mist.  I painted a wooden spool with black acrylic paint and added it to the front as well. 

On the inside pages I used lots of stamps including the new picture perfect cameras.  The Say Cheese chipboard cameras and You've been Framed wooden pieces were the perfect accoutrements to this adorable mini album.  Of course you will always find Maya Mist all over my pages from dripping in the background to the spritzed chipboard pieces.  Here's a look at the rest of the interior pages.

Thank you for stopping by the blog today. 

 

 

Bottle Cap Mini

Hey Roadies! Mandy Kay Starner here, to share one of my CHA Winter projects with you.

One of my favorite Maya Road products is the bottle caps. I have quite a stash, especially of the Jumbo caps; I love to use them for all different kinds of projects. For one, they make fantastic mini book covers.

For this mini, I started off by spray painting the outsides of my bottle caps black. I die-cut several 3 1/2" circles to cover the caps, and to use for the interior pages. (I adhered two circles back to back to make stronger pages.) And to mix it up a bit, I threw a page from one of the Canvas Star Coaster Albums in there.

To embellish my pages, I used my favorite stamps, kraft doilies and tickets, trinket pins, tulle and zipper trims. Do you see the new Varsity Letter stamps? LOVE.THEM.

That fuschia colored metal flower is one of my absolute favorite products from the Winter release. Can you spy it in the cluster below? They are so much fun and I can't wait to get my hands on more of them. For me, they are the perfect size for clustering.

And I am certain that I will be NEEDING quite a bit of yardage of that new Vintage Tape Measure Trim.

And If you have been wondering how to get those adorable little houses adhered to you projects, a few little staples seem to do the trick.

Thanks for stopping by the Maya Road Design Team Blog, I hope you've enjoyed my project.

Supplies used:

Jumbo Vintage Metal Bottle Caps

Canvas Star Coaster Album

Star Shaped Metal Bottle Cap

Shot Through The Heart Chipboard Set

Kraft Doilies

Transparent Cameras

Blackberry Twine

Tutu Tulle

Crystal Stars Trinket Pins

Flower Pins

Licorice Tulle Pleat Trim

Ocean Turquoise Double Stitch Velvet Ribbon

Just my type Stamps

Vintage Camera Singleton Stamp

Varsity Uppercase Stamps

Large Kraft Ticket Strips

Kraft Scroll Frame Labels

Love Words Mini Chipboard Set

Kraft Butterflies

Black Zipper Trim

Sea Blue Zipper Trim

Vintage Tape Measure Trim

White Small Organza Rose Trim

 

Our Home Metal

 

 

Make Mine a Mini

Hey Roadies! It's almost the weekend!

One of the great things about working for Maya Road (besides getting to work with all the awesome products!) is working with Caroline. She loves to give the DT assignments for CHA that push us out of our creative comfort zone. While I hate it at the time, she's always right on with the request. I think she has a crystal ball or some such.

For me, that means doing minis. And not just one mini, I got to do multiple minis for this last show. I whined and complained mightily to Ronda--aside: did you know we live just 2.4 miles from each other? I did a layout about that for the show too, I'll share that at the end of this post!

But by the time I was done, I had a couple of minis I was really proud of. I'm going to share one with you today. It's for my daughter, Annie, who will be graduating from high school this year. I put together this mini using the linen 4x6 Art Journal Album from this Winter's new releases. It uses a bunch of quotes that I felt would be good reminders for her of who she really is, once she heads off to college and I'm not around everyday to remind her.

Because I don't really go messy and painty, I needed to find a way to make this album work for me. I do stitch and stamp a lot so I took a bunch of the kraft envelopes (white polka dots, squares, and rectangles) and stitched them into the journal to use as extra pages. I stamped a lot as well using a permanent black ink (worked great on the linen!) and two of our alphabets, the new Varsity Uppercase Letters and a great standby, the Just My Type set. 

To help the viewer move through the album, I used our new Perfect Shot Arrow set. When there's an arrow, you lift the flap to read more.

I misted our Vintage Wood Mini Butterflies with our Maya Mists in Green Apple, Fig Magenta, and Lemon Metallic. I did the same to our large Natural Wood Buttons.  

I trimmed down the frayed edges of our Burlap Trim in Fuchsia and used that throughout the album as well.

 

I love how the flaps of the envelopes make cool design elements, and here, how it supports the jouranling.

I used a Aleene's Fast Grab Tacky Glue to hold everything in place, it worked very well. I also used it as a fray check on the Burlap Trim edges.

 

The last flap encourages her to look forward with faith.

This project was a lot of fun, once I had my idea down and started executing it. I used photos from her senior photo shoot and tried to match them to the quote. I then split up the quote and with sticky notes, I place set everything. The only suggestion I wish I'd thought of was to stamp it all out, THEN add the bumpy embellishments. A few places where I stamped were tricky because I had a button or butterfly on the other side already.

I love how this turned out, I have a wonderful gift for my daughter when she heads off to college, something I hope will bring her comfort as she starts this new journey. I made an art journal work with my style. I need to stop whining to Ronda. And I need to tell Caroline how much I love mini albums. Maybe she'll stop asking me to make them... ;)

Here's the layout about how I get from my house to Ronda's.

Supplies for Directions layout:

• Avocado Green Maya Mist
• Fig Magenta Maya Mist
• Lemon Metallic Maya Mist
• Metal Vintage Trinket--Our Home
• Fabric Leaves--Medium
• Trinket Pins--Vintage Pearl Butterflies
• Burlap Trim in Fuchsia
• Burlap Trim in Smoke (NEW!!!)
• Lisa Uppercase Alphabet
• Lisa Lowercase Alphabet
• Ruffle Blossoms in Turquoise
• Wood Mini Clothes Pins
• Fabric Tape in Sun Yellow Gingham
• Tulle Pleat Trim in Slushie Blue
• Mini Tag Canvas Pieces