Guest Designer - Allison Payne

Good Morning Polly! lovelies,

On the blog this morning we have Guest Designer Allison Payne joining us with not one, not two but SIX projects created from the March Spearmint Leaves kit!!

Please join me in welcoming Allison to Polly! this morning.

Hi I am Allison and I have been paper crafting for many years now. I live in Hobart, Tasmania having moved here several years ago and love it! I teach primary and enjoy my job along with renovating, cooking and of course crafting!

Currently I love making cards for all occasions. I find the small card face great for smaller paper pieces and embellishments and enjoy thinking up creative ways to fit elements onto the smaller format. It is for this reason that I also enjoy the whole move to project life scrapbooking its fast and fun and with work taking up a lot of my time I needed a quick way of putting pages together that would be less work.

I also scrapbook in A4 size or the old 11 x 8 which is almost the same. This size is smaller, more challenging in some ways and the albums can fit on a standard bookcase much easier! I also have to think more carefully about how I am going to tell the story on the pages rather than just fill with product for the sake of using up the space LOL !  I was very excited when I discovered the poly scrap kits both the project life and the main kits have just what I need to complete projects and everything is coordinated together so I don't have those moments of procrastination as I scour the shelves of archived goodness.

For my guest design spot this month I have use the March Project life kit to create 4 cards. I like to layer papers and have used the word stickers and alphabets for the sentiments. I started with the words and worked out what theme I wanted each card to be about and then sorted parts of the project kit to match. I try not to embellish the cards very much so that they fit into the envelopes OK. I really like to use geometrical blocks or shapes for card fronts and loved how the colours and patterns worked so well together. These four cards really just scratched the surface there is still so much left I could dozens more.






I found that the design pieces in this kit also went perfectly with a photo I had of my niece so it also put together an 8x11 page. I usually find myself assembling the page glue free with as many elements as I can and then removing them until I feel I have the perfect fit. I enjoy journaling and sometimes my page is just that no photos depending on what I want to tell a story about. I also like to use different coloured pens to border the page. I did this on pink and added smaller hearts that complimented the stamp. The stamp set that came with the kit was awesome and I loved the speech box and the ability to use a variety of words. This one will be used again for sure. The little arrow stickers also make a great border.




I also used elements from the March Main Kit to create my page "Festivale". This page is the beginning of a series about our trip to this festival and lucky for me the theme of the kit really matched the event which is set in the gardens and quite colourful. Again I cut strips of pattern paper to form geometric shapes across the page and complimented this with the stickers. The cutlery embellishment was a sweet touch so too were the tiny stars which helped to frame the photo. 



It has been a pleasure as a guest this  month and feel very privileged to share some of my pages and cards with everyone.

To see more of Allison's work check out her blog and youtube channel!

Love,
Carol xo