~ Designer Favorites 2016 ~

Have you ever created a project that instantly became a fave? Maybe your photo spoke to memories past, or your new art supplies really got the creative juices flowing or even the mood you were in  as you created.  But somehow, it became a fave. 

Well, we decided to ask our Creative Team to show us THEIR favorite Blue Fern Studios project for 2016! 

They all agreed it was very hard to choose! 

But here is what they finally settled on  … 

Nicole Doiron - Canada

Here's what Nicole said about her choice:

"I chose this layout as my favorite Blue Fern Studios DT creation because frankly, it is one of my all-time favorite any DT creations! But of course, Blue Fern Studios is the reason why it is so special. I am in love with woodgrain pattern and this one from the Tranquility collection with its teal blue tint is just gorgeous. I love the softness and serene feeling that this layout evokes with a very simple photo and a very inspiring quote. Every time I take a look at the chipboard focal piece, La Plume, I get a sense of peace and hope."

Keren Tamir - Canada

Designer Keren Tamir is a master at doing beach themed projects! Give her some blue and green and she's happy! Here, she took one of our Seaside Cottage papers and created this amazing calm and peaceful scene! Her chipboard choices are exquisite and replicates the ripples of the ocean! Ah, so relaxing! 

  Marilyn Rivera - United States- Video Educator

Marilyn Rivera also found it hard to choose just one project! Her background in fashion design is almost always incorporated in her layouts, most notably her fabulous pleating of her paper. Here, it seems the bride is pulling aside a curtain. Marilyn likes to frame her photos with embellishments, flowers, stenciling, ink and pearls. This is also a favorite photo of hers. 

Renea Harrison - United States

Just one peek at this beauty and you can see Renae Harrison's love for mixing unexpected textures together.  The feminine photo, flowers, pearls and lace work beautifully against her rolled paper pieces, twine and wood sprigs. The chipboard was left almost natural to blend with her theme. 

Pascale Bernard - France

Pascale is a master at making her photos the focus of her layouts. Here she has taken a vintage photo and clustered it with chipboard and flowers while still allowing the paper to shine! We adore the unique circular design. We will miss her amazing sneak peeks of her chipboard alterations. 

Debbie Burns - United States

Here's what Debbie had to say about her fave:

"Here is my favorite from the Seaside Cottage Collection. I wanted to use the picture of my friend's daughter walking on the beach. Everything on this layout came together perfectly. Love the soft colors of the papers, flowers and embossing powders on the chipboard."

Cathi O’Neill - Ireland

Cathi O'Neill is a fan of our older Ombre Dreams collection and it worked perfectly for this beach photo of her daughters! Her cluster of chipboard, flowers and shells are perfect accents. We love that she's including some stamping to create more dimension. Great choice! 

Karine Gagnon - Canada

Here is what Karine told us about her "second favorite" project:

(Her actual favorite was recently used in her December post, so she chose another.) 

"I love this layout because it has everything I love about scrapbooking: memories, texture, chipboards, flowers and beautiful colors."

Marie-Eve Bernard - Canada

Marie-Eve had this to say about this layout of her sweet baby:

"It is My favorite because of the Mémoires collection That i just love!  It also included some texture chipboard , my favorite ones. Finally, It is a picture of my precious baby boy."

Elena Volchkova- Ukraine 

Elena also had a hard time choosing but finally settled on this one. Her style is always soft in texture but she often includes a few bright pops of color as she does here. You might notice this paper is that same one that Cathi chose. 

Sandi Clarkson - United States

Sandi said:

"I finally settled on this layout as my favorite because I loved the grunge-y photo of my youngest daughter and took my inspiration from it. I had so much fun altering the chipboard pieces to complement the photo and the Serendipity paper. Also, because I usually do more shabby, romantic pages, this was an artistic departure for me." 

Maja Nowak - Poland

From Maja:

"I loved making each and every one of my projects for Blue Fern Studion during my term on the team, putting my heart into every creation. So if I have to pick just one most favourite, my choice is based on the amount of fun I had while creating, measured by the amount of BFS products used for it. :) And thus my pick is the mini I made for my June post, Crazy Cousins. It marks my absolute record with 21 chipboard pieced from 14 various sets, 13 embossing powders and 23 motives from 13 stamp sets. Plus fun photos I was working with." :) 

Karolina Czajkowska - Poland

Karolina said this about her favorite:
We agree this is an amazing piece! 

"It was so hard to choose only one, so I needed more time. Here is my favorite. I picked this one because I love a marine style and colors and all details of this layout."

Yuko Tanaka - Japan

How could one ever decide on a favorite of Yuko Tanaka? She is known for  her great use of multiple photos and unique fussy cutting placement. Here she has used one of her wedding photos as well as a more recent one taken at the same chapel.  Her white chipboard just shines against her Timeless papers.   Such a soft, feminine page! 

Jelissa Mei - Singapore - Video Educator

Video Educator Jelissa Mei always wows with her unique backgrounds and great chipboard techniques. We thought this sweet photo of her baby girl with her daddy needed to be highlighted today. Jelissa makes great use of white space (Blush) around the photo cluster to really draw the eye towards it. We will miss Jelissa's great video tutorials but encourage you to visit our You Tube channel (link on the right sidebar)  in case you missed one. 

We have had a great year here at Blue Fern Studios! 

Lots of new products have been released and thoroughly enjoyed. 

We want to thank each and every designer who has been a part of this year for all your inspiration and dedication to the Creative Team.  

Here's to a great 2017! 

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Welcoming In The New Year With Blue Fern Studios~

Welcome to to the New Year and welcome to my very first Blue Fern Studios Post!!!

To kick things off, I would like to tell you a little bit about myself. 

My name is Renea Harrison aka Reneabouquets in the virtual world, a Southern Girl, born and raised in Tennessee. I have been married to my husband, David for over 25 years, and we have one son, Draven, who went off to college last year. I am the bookkeeper for our local business and owner of the Reneabouquets.com Store and Reneabouquets Etsy.

 I don't just love scrapbooking, I am passionate about it. I love every aspect of this amazing multi-media art. I love the art of the creation itself, from taking the design in my head and getting it out onto paper, to the social aspect of it. I love sharing what I know, and learning what others share. 

As a scrapbook artist, I don't really have any one set style. I tend to scrap whatever mood I happen to be in which can range, from Shabby Chic, Girly Girl, Vintage and Girlie Grunge to Masculine, Grunge, and Mixed Media. 

As an artist, I think that one of my greatest hopes is that I can inspire you to create and can teach you something new that you can take and use in your own work, so let's get started!!

Boots, Beauty & Blue Fern:

I love sliding into a comfortable pair of boots, and for this Design Team layout, I couldn't help, but get inspired by the Swirly Circle Chipboard Frame to create something rustic meets beautiful!!

I started with a layer of Blue Fern Studios Autumn Anthology-Newsworthy Paper, I then took another piece of the same paper and used the backside, tearing and inking the edges to fit my design. Next, I added a layer of corrugated board that I heavily inked and added my photo to.

I took the Blue Fern Swirly Circle Chipboard Frame, inked it up and then randomly heat embossed it with some Imagine Ink Oatmeal Embossing Powder to get a wonderful, rustic look, and layered it over my photo.

I added some lace to add a feminine touch, and then took some branches with moss, made a little stack and wrapped and tied it with twine, added some mini pine cones and popped some of my handcrafted butterflies.

I added some cheesecloth, burlap leaf picks, a large chiffon flower and some more flowers to round out my feminine meets rustic look. 

I then crackle painted some areas around the frame, and inked them, then took a Blue Fern Essential Textures Stamp and did some stamping. Stamping can add a lot of texture and dimension on your layouts and the Essential Textures Stamps are so perfect for adding background noise. 

Here is some more detail of the Yumminess of the stamping. 

In the top corner of my layout, I inked a "Natural Beauty" chipboard piece from the Blue Fern, All Natural Set. I inked in a way that let some of the natural kraft color of the chipboard show through to get a variegated color effect. I then added some more twigs wrapped with twine and pine cones. I took some of the paper pieces left over from the tearing I did and rolled and inked them, then tied more twine around them. I fussy cut out a little bird from the paper and glitter painted him up and then popped him on with foam tape for dimension.

And here you can see all the dimension and texture that you can create using  Blue Fern Products.

Blue Fern Studio Supply List:

Paper:

Autumn Anthology~Newsworthy

Chipboard:

All Natural Set (Natural Beauty)

Swirly Circle

Stamp:

Essential Textures

Imagine Ink Embossing Powder:

Oatmeal

Getting Winterlicious With The Blue Fern Sketch:

Each month Blue Fern Studios has a sketch challenge that you can take part in. Here is this month's January Sketch:

And here is my Design Team take on the sketch:

I decided to work with some papers from the Blue Fern Deja Vu line to get a Winterlicious, frosty look!! I started with a piece of Lustre Paper and then used another piece of the same paper, this time using the backside. I distressed the edges heavily and did some grunge punching. I used a stencil and texture paste to create the snowflakes on the background paper, and  I then added in 2 more layers of Tresors paper, adding sand paste and Glitter Glass to create a Snowy~frosty look.

Next, I took a Blue Fern Chipboard French Ironwork, painted it with crackle paint and then clear emboss inked randomly and heat embossed using the Imagine Ink Mystic Plum Embossing Powder, and added a crystal for a little bling.

The snowflakes were created by taking Blue Fern Chipboard Winter Flakes,  painting them with white gesso, and then heat embossing them with Imagine Ink Icicle Embossing Powder.

To add a little more texture and bling, I then added Silver Microbeads to the tips of the flakes and overlaid them with Snowflake Buttons. 

I created a flower layer at the bottom corner of my photo.

I also popped on some of my handcrafted butterflies for some extra sparkle!!

I love that Blue Fern papers are so high quality and thick that they can handle all of my mediums, textures and layering! Just look at all the dimension that they allow you to achieve.

Blue Fern Studio Supply List:

Paper:

Deja Vu-Lustre
Deja Vu-Tresors

Chipboard:

French Ironwork

Winter Flakes

Imagine Ink Embossing Powder:

Mystic Plum

Icicle

I love creating off the page projects, and one of my FAV things is mini albums. I love creating pages that have little tuck ins for storing memories, and all kinds of unexpected treasures!!

 For this mini album, I used the Blue Fern Frolic Paper Collection,  starting with a layer of Friendship as the base layer and then adding a layer of  Petits Moments. 

I then added a layer of corrugated board that I added some beads, Imagine Ink Embossing Powder In Cerulean and cheesecloth to grunge it up a bit. I took some pieces of  the Blue Fern Shabby Brick Pieces Chipboard, textured them and added them to my cover design.

Next, I fussy cut out one of the birds from the Friendship Paper and glitter painted him up, then cut out the rest of the bird design and added it to a Blue Fern Majestic Chipboard Frame.

I painted the frame with a coat of gesso and then heat embossed it with the Cerulean Embossing Powder.

Here is a look at all the layering.

Here I created pocket pages with tags using the following Blue Fern Papers:

Frolic Petits Moments
Frolic Veranda

For these pages, I used:

Frolic Friendship and Frolic Petits Moments Papers

there is a pocket that I created using a cut out of the birds design and then created,

a sweet, little sewn booklet from the Calling Cards Paper, 

and a tag that tucks in at the top from the Dans Le Jardin paper.

These pocket pages were created with the Frolic Adorn Paper.

And all the tuck in and tags were created with the Frolic Calling Card Paper.

The last set of pages were created with the Frolic Dans Le Jardin Papers and feature a pocket,

With Frolic Calling Card tags as well as a large tag, tuck in created with Frolic Friendship Paper.

The back side was created using Frolic Friendship Paper.

Thank you so much for joining me for my first Blue Fern Studios Reveal! I hope that you have enjoyed getting to know a little bit about me and also that you have enjoyed my projects. Here is to a New Year full of Creativity, Inspiration and Fun!! Hugs ~Renea

Blue Fern Studio Supply List:

Paper:

Frolic Friendship
Frolic Calling Cards
Frolic Dans Le Jardin
Frolic Petits Moments
Frolic Veranda
Frolic Adorn

Chipboard:

Majestic Frame

Shabby Brick Pieces

Imagine Ink Embossing Powder:

Cerulean