Maya Road Design Team

Look Who's Turning Six!

Today is a very special day because my nephew Skylar turns 6 today! I absolutely adore this little guy and can't believe he's turning into such a big boy.

To celebrate his birthday I started out making one card and ended up with one small banner and card.
For the card, I found this puzzle piece in my stash that has been sitting around for years. It was white and plain so to add some color I used Distress Inks with a blending tool.

I then stamped some fun robot images with the new Maya Road robot stamps.

Now that I am finished I will photocopy in color his puzzle then break up the pieces and mail it all to him.

Now I couldn't stop here because I had to make Skylar something with the Maya Road cupcake chipboard piece. If you like Maya Road cupcakes, snowflakes and the coffee mug you will want to get a Puffy Velvet Fabric Marker. I picked mine up at a local rubber stamp shop.It can create faux frosting, snow, and foam and it adds so much dimension to your projects. Once you apply it, heat set it with a heat gun and watch it rise. I am addicted to it! I also used the word "party" from the cupcake chipboard set and the new orange velvet scalloped ric rac. Here's the birthday banner I made for Skylar.
 

Have a great day!
Sandy W.

 

Using Maya Mist to create painterly hearts...

Did you know you can combine your Maya Mists with acrylic paint to create beautiful effects? I used Maya Mist, gesso (an acrylic primer), and acrylic paint to create this album:

 

 

To create the hearts, you need:

• Gold, Pink and Orange Maya Mist
• Maya Road 5x5 Chipboard Album with Envelopes (or use the new kraft envelopes!)
• Gesso
• Acrylic paint
• Large Maya Road chipboard heart
• Piece of scrap cardstock

1. Take the large chipboard heart, trace it onto the scrap cardstock, and cut it out. What you want is the negative portion of the heart you just cut out.

2. Using the negative portion of the heart as a stencil, paint some gesso into the heart. Let it dry for a few minutes, but you don't have to let it dry all the way.

3. Spray on some orange Maya Mist.

 

4. Next, spray on some pink Maya Mist.

 

5. Last, spray on some gold Maya Mist. The mists mix together and create a very interesting effect.

 

6. Remove the mask/stencil and let the heart dry completely.

 

For my album, I created a heart on the front and back of each envelope, and when the hearts were dry, I painted around them with green acrylic paint and added some blue acrylic paint splatter. The technique is messy and imperfect, but the look is very painterly...people will ask you, "How did you do that?" Enjoy!

 

C is for Cupcakes

So due to my travel restrictions, I am not able to be with the Maya Road Crew this time around at CHA-S. Last night I was watching some Food TV and thinking how much I would like to have some cupcakes. Since I didn't have any around the house, I decided to make a felt one using our Maya Road cupcake chipboard set. I wanted this cupcake to be fun and whimsical so check out this sweet gal:

 I just covered the sweet cupcake topper in bamboo batting. I added some of our new sweet gingham ribbon and added the eyes and cute mouth. Think how cute this would be with our mini cupcakes that are coming out this show! This would be great for cards or a cute mini albums! Enjoy!

Caroline

Stitching on acrylic.....

Yep...you read it right! My tutorial today will show you how to stitch on clear acrylic! I love this techinque and have a project at CHA that you can check out in person that uses this technique. Let's get started!

Supplies: Maya Road acrylic piece ( I chose the house album)

DMC floss

Drill and small drill bit (I used an 1/8 in bit)

A non-permanent marker

Needle

A piece of wood or glass underneath your project to protect your work surface.  ( I used my glass plate for stamping)

First, decide what you would like to write or design on your acrylic piece. I chose to use the word "Home" for my album. Using your non-permanent marker draw your design or spell your word.

Next, using your small drill bit start drilling holes along the word or design,

Now you are ready to use your floss and stitch your design/word.

Make sure you leave plenty of room from the edge of the acrylic for your hole so no cracking occurs!

Viola!! You have done it! You have stitched onto acrylic! I think the result is pretty cool and this is a technique that is really easy. If you don't feel comfortable using the drill have you husband or someone who feels comfortable doing it drill them for you!

I hope  you enjoyed this tutorial! Thanks for stopping by! Shelley Haganman

Sushi

So one of the benefits of being one of the partners at MR is that we can decide what we like to create for each show that suits our fancy. Sushi has always been high on our list of favorite foods so we decided, what the heck, let's see how some sushi stamps would look (and since I am almost done with my pregnancy, I have been eyeing the good stuff but staying away).

Here is a look at our sushi set of stamps (and some cutie pie animals):

My SIL as she just got back a while ago from a trip to Japan where she ate sushi for the very first time. To celebrate her food adventure, check out this humorous card I made for her:

I am sure she will get a kick out of it! So for all of you sushi lovers out there, make sure you check out our new sushi stamps!

A quick and easy mini album

I love the Maya Road Chipboard sheets! This is the Mini 2-Ring Scallop Layer Book. It has 5 mini pages and over 45 other shapes. The other great thing about being mini is that all the photos I have used in this mini book are from.....facebook......So the quality is bad.....but I haven't seen my niece since christmas....and I heard a rumour she had turned into a little round pudding!!! Which she has.

 

Lots of other Maya Road products on here, and I even put in a couple of the new releases

1.    Mini 2 Ring Scallop Layer Book

2.    Sheer Clocks

3.    Scroll Frames

4.   Jonathan Mini Alphabet Chipboard Set 

5.    Jewel Flowers

6.    Velvet Ric Rack

7.    Trinket pin Leaf

8.    Velvet Pleat Blossoms

9.    Buttons

10.    Hearts Chipboard

11.    Black Scroll Rubons

12.    Kraft Journal Cards

13.    Sheer rag tag animal

14.    Mini scrolls

15.    Papers are by October Afternoon

16.    Maya Mist Black

17.    Assorted Inks

To create this album I firstly inked all the edges and the scallops, the last one is glittered. Apply patterned papers as desired and add all the bits and pieces. I have put pictures below of each page in case you want to copy them.

 

 

 

Thats all of the pages. Hope you all have a great day, from sunny Townsville QLD

Sarah M

Yum

I have to say it is strange because this time around in my pregnancy, I am NOT craving sweets really - salty snacks - line them up by the bucketful please.

I will have an occasional cupcake though - can't resist the frosting. When we were working on CHA-S designs, we thought "hmmm what would be a sweet treat that would go great for cards and such in the form of mini chipboards?" and the idea of a mini set of cupcakes chipboard was born.

Check out this sweet cupcake card:

A nice embossed liner and a simple sweet top and how cute is this?

If you want to see more sweet treats, make sure you head over to the Company Blog where we are having  Sneak Peek Week!

Is anyone else counting the days to CHA-S 2009?

... or am I the only one?  Yeah, that's what I thought!  You guys are already looking for sneak peeks, aren't you?  Well, the place to go for official Maya Road peeks is the Maya Road Company Blog.  In fact, you'll find a peek there already.  Look closely and you might see two.

While you're there, check out the giveaway.  We saved TWO warehouse kits and we are just dying to give them away!  But, get there quick!  You have between now and tomorrow to enter.

As is usual for this time of the year, all of our designers have been busily working on samples for the show.  So, when it came time for me to post a project... I got a little stressed out.  Do you know how hard it is to create a project that doesn't have new releases on it (when you have the new releases sitting in front of you)?  Well, after looking at my stash long and hard, I decided that I would just have to show you pieces of my favorite new project.  I can't show you much because it's loaded with new goodies (and it's actually one of the new albums).

When I get permission to show the whole thing, I'll post it here.

For now, here's a couple of parts you're allowed to see.  We'll start with the cover...

and now for a peek at a couple of inside pages...

 

Have a TERRIFIC week!  (and don't forget to visit the Maya Road Company Blog today)!

 

3

My son celebrated his 3rd birthday not too long ago - we got lots of photos of the awesome Robot Swim Party that I wanted to include in his album so I wanted to keep it simple. I was able to create an album that holds 16 photos from the party and it was something I could finish in an evening or two by keeping it simple!

I started with the Scallop Chipboard Binder Album - to keep it simple I inked the edges before adding some patterned paper. The chipboard letters are the Simply Luxe Chipboard that I added stickers to.

In the inside of the album, I added a couple of our small 4" binder chipboard pages (since they fit) to do the journaling. I wanted to keep the larger pages strictly for photos since a 4" x 6" photo fits almost perfectly on the Scallop Binder Album page like this (all edegs were sanded for the photos):

I even had room to put Noah's invitation in the album (since I had designed them to be 4" x 6"):

And finally there is some room for saving the little gift tag from Noah's goodie pail.



Nice and simple! Noah is thrilled with it and looks at it every chance he gets.

Have a great weekend!

Ribbon Wreath

I'm so excited to show you how to make a ribbon wreath! You'll first need to shape some florist wire into a circle...

 

Once formed wrap florist tape around the entire circle...

Tie pieces of Maya Road ribbon around the entire circle, my ribbon pieces were about 3 inches each. This is a great project for ribbon scraps :)

A closer look...

All done...

Hope you are having an amazing summer!
Lots of love,

Make sure you check out Maya Road's amazing Recipe Card contest!!!

Click here to to read more ♥