Studio Calico March and Pink Paislee

Happy Monday morning! Today is Payton's 3rd birthday! Last night she rung in her new year appropriately with a colossal meltdown, which is appropriate with the terrible 2's running into the horrible 3's! lol

bah.

I have birthday stuff to share, but I'll do that tomorrow so this post isn't too picture heavy. Today I want to share my Studio Calico April layouts and cards. As of this post the main kit and two of the add-ons are still available. Get them fast, especially if you love Pink Paislee and Studio Calico exclusives! The SC papers in this kit are my favorite to date, and there is a new alpha called Carter available as well.

With this one, I didn't want to just put the brown cardstock on top of the SC tree paper so I cut it up into squares, stitched around them all, and then layered them on my page. It added a lot of texture and made it all a bit more interesting.




These photos were taken in September. I can't believe how different we look already! Both of the girls have changed so much!

With this next one, I decided I wanted to use a die cut paper, so I made my own by turning the Pink Paislee stripe just a bit so it would be horizontal, and then tracing and trimming a scallop on cardstock.

These photos of all the Cooper grandkids cracks me up. Especially Morgan. And isn't Kael, the token boy, such a cutie! He drives the girls nuts but they'll appreciate him when they are older. He's a moose! He'll keep the bad boys away! He's a few months younger than PJ.



I took my title from SC for the next layout. Farm Fresh was the name of their first kit. With this one I was obsessed with the Scallop sentiment punch from Fiskars. I'm also quite obsessed with that little strip of paper you get when you punch through 12 inches of paper, so I had to use it on this layout as well.


My girls are so funny with these chicks. And I do believe my sister is right, and that Princess and Henny Penny are roosters. They are just plain onery. At least the yellow one, Flowerbelle, doesn't mind being held, lol.

This last one was the most meaningful to me this month. A few weeks ago Morgan wanted to take family photos, so we sat together on the couch and posed for a few minutes. Payton eventually got tired of it, but Morgan kept snapping away. I was struck by the photos, especially this one. You can barely see her dad and her sister, who framed the corner of the photo beautifully, by the way, lol, but I thought it was very interesting that you could see all of me, and I was looking right at her. It's par with our relationship. For the longest time, since she was first born, she needed me for everything. She's 5 now and becoming quite independent and opinionated, but I'm touched that despite all the ups and downs, she can still see me. That's good to know. Raising kids is tough!

When I went to stitch on my border sticker, I was waffling about what stitch to use. Hand stitch? No, I did that last month with the Slicker Sister layout. Straight stitch? Zig zag? And then it's like the clouds parted, the sun started shining and the birds began to sing. Is that seriously, a SCALLOP stitch function on my sewing machine? Hallelujah! It worked wonderfully. I'll have to experiment, though. The stitches are very tight together and I wonder if I was just using paper and not the cardstock sticker, would it have perforated my paper? Either way, I LOVE it on this layout. It goes with all the scallops I've been obsessed with lately.

I also made a couple of cards this month.





If you don't normally subscribe to Studio Calico but are in love with this kit, or if you love this kit so much you want two of them, or if you want to get one for a friend, etc., etc., etc., head over to the Pink Paislee blog! This kit was stuffed full of many of the new products from Pink Paislee, so they are giving away the main kit! Comment by the end of the month!

Go here.

Have a great day! Davinie