Doll Up Your Planner
Hello, Daisies! This month’s Love Notes kit is so fancy! February is the month of love. It’s something to celebrate. Let’s get our planners dolled up for Valentine’s Day and beyond! I created my doll...
A Heart Within a Heart
Hello and Happy Friday!
Let’s talk hearts, the concentric kind. Concentric is defined as “of or denoting circles, arcs, or other shapes which share the same center, the larger often completely surrounding the smaller.” Paper crafters create this effect by layering the same shape in progressively smaller sizes on top of one another. Today we are sharing two very different concentric heart designs. Let’s begin with Audrey’s traditional 12x12 layout.
“For this Valentine's Day layout I wanted to celebrate my parents and what is a better way to do it than with a concentric heart: a heart inside a heart inside a heart inside... well you get the picture. I made this 12x12 layout over two days. I designed my concentric heart on my Silhouette and using the Silhouette pen to sketch it out. I used my paper piercer to make holes around the sketched design of the heart for the embroidery. Then I stamped the background with heart stamps from the kits to break up the white background. When I was done, I used embroidery floss from my stash to embroider the concentric heart.
The embroidery took a few hours so I enjoyed some Netflix while I worked. When I finished the heart I was ready to start placing the photos and embellishments. This layout has two photos of my parents, one when they were first dating and a current one. I backed them with some paper from the kits and purposely created the same design for both to keep the layout cohesive and allow the concentric heart to shine.
I used puffy hearts, chipboard pieces, stickers and die cuts to embellish the photos. I also used some pocket cards behind the photos to lift them up from the page. For the die cut tags, I repurposed the string from the bag the kits come in. When I was done with embellishments, I placed a few staples in each picture using my tiny attacher, to give the layout some texture, but also to make sure the photos and embellishments stayed in place on top of the embroidered heart.”
“I finished the layout by adding the title "Mom and Dad" on the bottom right and added more puffy hearts on the top left to balance the design.”
“This layout was time consuming, but totally fun and worth it to document the timeless love of my parents.”
We can’t stop looking at Audrey’s beautiful stitching! You can see her process video by clicking here.
I am sharing an 8.5x11 layout with the heart puffy stickers as my concentric shape. This design came to me while listening to the radio on the way to work. When “Your Still the One” started playing I knew I wanted to create a layout for my husband with the heart puffy stickers in the kit. BTW, I made this design before I found out the word paper in the Love Notes memory keeping kits are actually song lyrics. As Emily noted when I shared this story, “Serendipity!” I started my layout by cutting out 2x2 squares from the kit papers and did some hand stitching on the ones that wouldn’t hold the hearts. Next I distressed the edges of the squares that would hold the hearts by folding them in a bit toward the center of the paper on all four sides of the square.
Then I printed out the song and staged the title and my squares to decide where I wanted to add flicks of watered down paint and texture paste on my background.
Next, I searched through the kit ephemera and found phrases I wanted to add to the stitched squares. I put some tissue paper under the photo of my husband and popped it up with foam and included some thread to highlight the photo. Here is a close up of the photo and some stitching.
I glued all the other pieces in place then added the puffy letters “XO” and the title. I love the pops of darker color the puffy stickers bring to my design.
The concentric hearts add texture and help draw the eye up and down the page. This was a labor of love and I am really happy with the result!
We look forward to seeing what you do with the Love Notes kits this month! Please share with us in our Memory Keeping Facebook group or on social media by tagging us (cocoa_daisy).
Have a wonderful weekend!
~Robin
The embroidery took a few hours so I enjoyed some Netflix while I worked. When I finished the heart I was ready to start placing the photos and embellishments. This layout has two photos of my parents, one when they were first dating and a current one. I backed them with some paper from the kits and purposely created the same design for both to keep the layout cohesive and allow the concentric heart to shine.
I used puffy hearts, chipboard pieces, stickers and die cuts to embellish the photos. I also used some pocket cards behind the photos to lift them up from the page. For the die cut tags, I repurposed the string from the bag the kits come in. When I was done with embellishments, I placed a few staples in each picture using my tiny attacher, to give the layout some texture, but also to make sure the photos and embellishments stayed in place on top of the embroidered heart.”
“I finished the layout by adding the title "Mom and Dad" on the bottom right and added more puffy hearts on the top left to balance the design.”
“This layout was time consuming, but totally fun and worth it to document the timeless love of my parents.”
We can’t stop looking at Audrey’s beautiful stitching! You can see her process video by clicking here.
I am sharing an 8.5x11 layout with the heart puffy stickers as my concentric shape. This design came to me while listening to the radio on the way to work. When “Your Still the One” started playing I knew I wanted to create a layout for my husband with the heart puffy stickers in the kit. BTW, I made this design before I found out the word paper in the Love Notes memory keeping kits are actually song lyrics. As Emily noted when I shared this story, “Serendipity!” I started my layout by cutting out 2x2 squares from the kit papers and did some hand stitching on the ones that wouldn’t hold the hearts. Next I distressed the edges of the squares that would hold the hearts by folding them in a bit toward the center of the paper on all four sides of the square.
Then I printed out the song and staged the title and my squares to decide where I wanted to add flicks of watered down paint and texture paste on my background.
Next, I searched through the kit ephemera and found phrases I wanted to add to the stitched squares. I put some tissue paper under the photo of my husband and popped it up with foam and included some thread to highlight the photo. Here is a close up of the photo and some stitching.
I glued all the other pieces in place then added the puffy letters “XO” and the title. I love the pops of darker color the puffy stickers bring to my design.
The concentric hearts add texture and help draw the eye up and down the page. This was a labor of love and I am really happy with the result!
We look forward to seeing what you do with the Love Notes kits this month! Please share with us in our Memory Keeping Facebook group or on social media by tagging us (cocoa_daisy).
Have a wonderful weekend!
~Robin