Write. Click. Scrapbook.

"You're turning violet, Violet..."

"It's all there, black and white, clear as crystal!" Two references to the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, possibly one of the greatest movies ever!

Okay so indigo is technically a really really dark blue, but to my eye it reads almost black so I’m going to talk about black today. Black is the color of authority and power. It is popular in fashion because it makes people appear thinner. It is also stylish and timeless. Black also implies submission. Priests wear black to signify submission to God. Some fashion experts say a woman wearing black implies submission to men. Black outfits can also be overpowering, or make the wearer seem aloof or evil.

Black and white conversions really help me put a layout together sometimes. If I need to use a specific color or patterned paper on a project and the photo doesn’t match, I convert it to black and white. A free b/w conversion action that I love is from the Pioneer Woman. She offers the actions in both Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CS versions. So head on over and download them today!

I love how these ladies embraced black and used the color as the main color on their layouts. Some scrapbookers use black backgrounds a lot, it really makes the color elements on the page pop. Give it a try sometime!

Jody Wenke used primarily black on this Halloween layout - I love how her black alphabet letters look so bold against the white background.

Tina Cockburn created a large black matte for her photo and title. The black makes the colors in the photo really pop!

I love this digital layout by Micki Devries from the Flickr gallery. Just some black lettering was all she needed to make her photo shine!

Next up violet! The color of royalty, purple connotes luxury, wealth, and sophistication. It is also feminine and romantic. However, because it is rare in nature, purple can appear artificial.

Today I’m sharing this printable purple faux bois (wood grain) paper from Paper Crave with you. How cute would that look on a page?

When asked which color they use least, most scrapbookers will say purple. However, this past season purple has been creeping into products and designs everywhere. Here are a few layouts from the Flickr gallery and the fabulous ladies in the collective.

Erin Sweeney used a pretty lavender as a background for this fun birthday page!

Karen Glenn used this oh-so-creative color palette - bright yellow green with purple - in the first Write.Click.Scrapbook gallery - Why We Scrapbook.

Lisa Kisch embraced the wonky colors in her childhood photos and pulled the out for this great Halloween page!

I’ll be going through the Flickr gallery tonight and choosing some layouts to showcase. Tomorrow I’ll pick a name for a little RAK. So if you want to play, show us a rainbow page today!

and the giveaway goes to . . .

Thank you, My Little Shoebox, for creating papers and embellishments that make us smile. Thank you for collecting talented designers to help showcase your whimsical delights. And thank you for sharing your products with us at Write. Click. Scrapbook. And I know Tanya is about to be even more thrilled with you!

Tanya, congratulations on being the lucky number! We are excited for you to get to create magic with you very own My Little Shoebox. Please email us at writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com and we will get your product to you!

Thank you to everyone who stopped by. We appreciate your loyalty!

Up next, Celeste is back with the end of the rainbow!

give.away.day. featuring MY LITTLE SHOEBOX

We are All A Flutter to share with you more than just a Li'l Critter, so without any delay, Away We Go!!!!!!!!!!

This week our

is brought to you by the delightfully whimsical, colorful, and darling

With six lines on current release, My Little Shoebox has papers, overlays, cardstock chipboard alphabets, tiny alphas, glittery letter stickers, and diecuts in every line. Look what happened when Beth, Candice, and Marnie had a chance to try three of the new lines.

AWAY WE GO

First up, Beth works her magic with Away We Go!

ALL A FLUTTER

Marnie happily dove into flowers and butterflies in the All A Flutter line!

LIL CRITTER

Candice's projects are as sweet as the hedgehogs in the Lil Critter line!

The My Little Shoebox design team has also been hard at work, providing you many ideas for layouts, cards, and home decor projects. You can see their work on their blog where you can also search for projects by product name. And don't forget to follow them on facebook!

For our giveaway today, My Little Shoebox is generously providing a tremendous product basket including papers from each of the lines, diecut papers, overlays, chipboard alphabets, mini alpha stickers, and Sprinkle Glaze alphabet stickers. All the My Little Shoebox product you will need to create all of the projects shown here today and so many more!

If you would like to be considered for our giveaway today, please hop on over to their blog, and look around. Don't forget to pop back and tell us what project, or product, you loved best. Comments will remain open until 8:00 pm PST. One lucky number will be drawn at random and post tomorrow. Please stop back as it is your responsibility to claim your lucky number via email before midnight Saturday!

While you are on the My Little Shoebox blog, take note that there is one day left for design team applications! Can't think of anything more fun than a goodie box arriving quarterly!

Green with Envy, Feeling Blue...

Today we are going to focus on the cool and soothing colors of blue and green. As a mother to boys, you can imagine that these colors show up on many of the pages I create!

Lime, jade, emerald, olive, sage. Green is a color that symbolizes nature, regeneration and vitality. It soothing and calm. It is a go to color for many scrapbookers and manufacturers. I’ve sorted my scraproom by color and green takes up a whole heck of a lot of room.

Today I’m sharing these Green Vintage Labels from Cathe Holden at Just Something I Made. Use them on pages, to get organized or as address labels. I think they are loads of fun!

One of my besties, Paula Gilarde is a huge fan of green and says “It's a happy color, lively and it goes with everything :) I think of it as almost a neutral for some strange reason. Here's one of my favorite layouts, which of course has green in it.” Secretly, I think Paula likes green so much because she's Irish! ;)

Speaking of Irish, here's a layout I did for a St. Patrick's Day challenge a couple years ago.

Here's a layout that the lovely Wendy Smedley did for the April Connections gallery. I think that background is such an interesting shade of green!

Next up - blue! The color of the sky and the ocean, blue is one of the most popular colors. It causes the opposite reaction as red. Peaceful, tranquil blue causes the body to produce calming chemicals, so it is often used in bedrooms. Blue can also be cold and depressing. Fashion consultants recommend wearing blue to job interviews because it symbolizes loyalty. People are more productive in blue rooms. Who knew?

There are so many shades of blue that invoke so many different emotions. I love this mosaic – it makes me want to try a blue monochromatic layout!

My fellow collective members and the Flickr gallery were brimming with examples of blue. Blue is such a versatile color and it really goes with most other colors. It’s a great choice when reaching for a background for a page!

Sara Winnick used this lovely soft blue on this page. I love how the blue goes so well with the black and white photos.

Rebecca Cooper let her photo shine and chose this muted, soft blue for her page.

Katie Scott used this teal blue to match the pool in her photos. I love that her journaling is unexpected!

I hope you’ve been working on your rainbow layouts. Be sure to upload them to the Flickr gallery. I’ll showcase some of them on Saturday. Take some time and look through the replies from the last couple days. There has been some absolutely amazing sharing of color going on. It will be worth your time I promise! Tomorrow is giveaway day, so I’ll be back on Friday to talk about Indigo (well I’m going to call that black) and Violet. See you then!

Think Orange (and Yellow)

The sunshine colors!

Today we are going to talk about orange and yellow.

Orange is my absolute most favorite color. I would have never in my life thought I would say that. I definitely would have said green before I started scrapbooking. I went to Catholic School and Sister Mary Ellen used to say “Think Orange” all the time. I swore off orange after spending a year in her classroom! Now it shows up on my pages a lot and next month (let’s hope) I should be moving my studio into a space with an orange wall! I’m so excited. But I digress...

Orange, a close relative of red, sparks more controversy than any other hue. There is usually strong positive or negative association to orange and true orange generally elicits a stronger "love it" or "hate it" response than other colors. Fun and flamboyant orange radiates warmth and energy. Interestingly, some of the tones of orange such as terra cotta, peach or rust have very broad appeal. Orange is often used to draw attention, such as in traffic signs and advertising. Orange stimulates activity and appetite. It is a color that encourages socialization.

Today I found this really cute orange printable pillow box to share. If you are an orange hater (how could you be?), feel free to print it and use it as a template with other colors!

In scrapbooking, I like to think of orange as pink for boys! I don’t have girls so I have to reach for something. ;) Orange looks great paired with almost any color. When paired with black and purple, it can start to look a little too much like Halloween though.

Like me, our own Marnie Flores is a lover of orange. She says, “For me, it is not only happy, it is almost joyful. I dress my kids in it whenever I can (while I still get to choose!) which makes for an easy page when I am coordinating paper to the photos.” I’m guilty of the same – I always try and pick up a couple of orange shirts for the boys at the start of any season.

Here are some orange layouts from the Collective and the Flickr gallery to get your orange juices (get it - orange juice - ha!) flowing.

Here's one from me. Can I tell you how happy I was that he decided to make an orange colored soda?

Here's one from Marnie. I love how she softened the orange which made it more pretty and girly.

And from the Flickr gallery, this one from Avital Gertner. Could it be anymore orange? I'm in love!

Cheerful sunny yellow is an attention getter. While it is considered an optimistic color, people lose their tempers more often in yellow rooms, and babies will cry more. It is the most difficult color for the eye to take in, so it can be overpowering if overused. Yellow enhances concentration, hence its use for legal pads. It also speeds metabolism. Who knew?

Yellow is a color that really pops in a bouquet of flowers and in nature. As this gorgeous photograph from Frank Wuestenfeld shows.

In scrapbooking, yellow is underused. You don’t see a lot of yellow pages in galleries, but when you do - they stand out. I notice when I use yellow I get comments about the yellow, blue not so much! Here are some layouts that use a lot of yellow. I love how it’s so bright and cheery.

Here's some yellow scrapbook inspiration. I drew from my older son's yellow shirt for the background on this page. I have to really try and remember to use yellow once in awhile!

The Flickr gallery has a few yellow examples like this one from Simply Autumn. The yellow here just screams spring!

And this one from meastmanak is just stunning. I love the yellow background with pops of red!

Come back tomorrow and we’ll talk about the favorites of many – blue and green. Be sure to work on your rainbow layout and if you have any great examples of orange or yellow to share, link me up in the comments!

Happy Tuesday!

Why are there so many songs about...

Hello there! Can you guess what the theme this week is going to be by the title of this post? Yes, it's that song we all sung in grade school from the Muppet Movie! This week I'm going to focus on color and we'll take a walk through the colors of the rainbow.

Color really drives my scrapbook pages. I tend to pull from the colors in my photos. My process is so color centric that I've organized my stash by color.

I thought I'd start with a challenge. Here's the challenge. Use all the colors of the rainbow on a page! I can't wait to see what you come up with. Post your layouts in the gallery by Friday afternoon and I'll highlight a few of them on Saturday. I’ll draw a name on Saturday too for a little RAK from me!

Let’s dive right into red!

The most emotionally intense color, red stimulates a faster heartbeat and breathing. It is also the color of love. Red clothing gets noticed and makes the wearer appear heavier. Since it is an extreme color, red clothing might not help people in negotiations or confrontations. Red cars are popular targets for thieves. In decorating, red is usually used as an accent. Decorators say that red furniture should be perfect since it will attract attention.

Every day this week I’m going to try and share a printable with you or a photo for inspiration or maybe both! Today I found these awesome red printable labels from Creativity Prompt. These labels will add a little pop of red to your layouts.

In scrapbooking, you see red a lot on pages. Red is bold, bright and happy! Red is a great accent - it provides little pops of color. It works with most of the other colors in the spectrum. Red can be a little overwhelming if a lot of it is used on a page. I tend to use red in little pops and bursts – rarely do I dig out a sheet of red cardstock to use as a base for my layout.

The Write. Click. Scrapbook. collective members chimed in on the color red. Sara Winnick’s favorite color is red because it’s so attention grabbing. Cheryl Overton says, “Red is my go to colour - it just makes me happy and it goes really well with my other go to colours - tea green and teal.” (She’s Canadian, she’s allowed to spell color that way! ;))

Here are some layouts that use red as an accent or a main color.

Here's one of my big boy - while there is a lot of red here it isn't solid and it matches his red sweatshirt!

The collective knows how to use red! Here's one from Cheryl that has pops of red. I love how the red heart above ties in the patterned paper below.

This is one of Sara Winnick's favorite red layouts and I can see why. The red just goes so nicely with that old barn door.

I popped into the Flickr gallery and found this one from Alexandra. Her layout really shows how a little red can go a long way. The red just draws my eye right to her title. Such a fabulous layout!

Get started on your rainbow layouts and be sure to upload them to Flickr. I’ll be back tomorrow to talk about underused yellow and my favorite orange!

Mother's Day

Use What You Have: Rub-ons

Good morning! Welcome to the 5th and final day of "Use What You Have" week! Today’s focus is rub-ons, and I’ve gathered some fun ideas for use with this versatile product. 

Celeste Smith dresses up the simplest of tags with a sweet rub-on title:

And Sara Winnick uses circular rub-ons to frame her photos and journaling:

Lisa Dickinson uses a brown paper bag as the backdrop for that gorgeous butterfly rub-on:

…and Jody Wenke proves that a simple rub-on image can add just the right amount of character to a title:

Personally I think rub-ons and treat bags go perfectly together:

And they’re especially fun to use on CD sleeves:

They also look extra sweet on a little girl’s handbag (3 for $1 at Michael’s)…

…and are the perfect addition to a simple block of paper…

…or a $1 water bottle.

What have you created with rub-ons? Show us by downloading your work to our Flickr group!

And thanks for hanging out with me this week. I hope you’ve found inspiration in using what you have!

Use What You Have: Buttons and Brads

Good morning! Welcome to day 4 of "Use What You Have" week! Today’s post is brimming with simple ideas for utilizing buttons and brads, so let’s get right to it!

First Cheryl Overton, Candice Palmer and I show that sometimes all it takes is a single button or brad to put the finishing touch on a layout…

…while Celeste Smith makes small clusters of buttons and brads look adorable...

 

...and Emily Pitts makes lots and lots of buttons look really REALLY cool:

Lisa Dickinson arranges a collection of brads and buttons in a simple grid for a fun and unified look…

…and Jody Wenke’s use of brads adds the perfect pop of color to her title.

Rebecca Cooper uses brads to anchor her title…

…and I strategically place a few buttons in a visual triangle to “frame” my photos.

It’s also fun to use buttons/brads to accent a border…

(Beth Proudfoot)

(Marnie Flores)

...or journaling...

(Marnie Flores)

…or flowers…

(Tina Cockburn)

(Ann Costen)

…or snowflakes…

(Cheryl Overton)

…or trees:

(Lisa Dickinson)

(Beth Proudfoot)

And what little girl wouldn’t love an embellished pair of flips ($1 at Michael’s!) with a matching ponytail holder:

(Beth Proudfoot)

Now let’s see what you can do with a handful of buttons! Don’t forget to download your designs to our Flickr group.

And join me tomorrow for one more day of “Use What You Have” week—I’ll be talking rub-ons!

Happy Friday!

and the giveaway goes to . . .

First, thank you to Mama Merit Badges, not only for sponsoring our giveaway, but also for creating a product that celebrates motherhood in all its dirty glory.

Second, congratulations to all of you for surviving motherhood (and aunthood!) and for being a card carrying member of the village who raises children. Thank you all for wiping bums (even with plastic bags!), feeding hungry babies (even in the grocery store!), hugging them tightly (and not just in an effort to keep them off the subway rails!), and loving them until the tears run.

And a quick note for those struggling with the role and tasks and weight of motherhood, hang in there. Though our pages may make motherhood seem like a sweet and lovely walk in the park, there are times of tears, frustration, and overwhelm for all of us. Kids are kids and are not sweet 24/7. Hang in there! Buy a badge! Make an album of the struggles. But most of all, be kind to yourself.

Have a terrific day. And an especially terrific Mother's Day! We honor and admire you all!

Erica, please send us your contact information to writeclickscrapbook at gmail dot com so that we may get you your badges!

Stay tuned for buttons and brads and Beth, oh my!