October Guest Designer Tania Willis

Hello Simple Stories fans, Layle here with you today :)

I'm excited to introduce you to our October guest designer, Tania Willis!

Here's a little bit about Tania -

Tania is a 36-year-old wife, of 18 years, to her husband, Doug and mama to two spirited girls, Ashlyn Rose and Emma Graces, ages 8 and 11.

She is currently a Lead Fiskateer, leading a community of crafting ambassadors who are crazy about the Fiskars brand. In this role, she frequently blogs tips and tutorials on their blog at www.fiskateers.com. She also finds great joy in contributing design work to Fiskars for their online content as a Crafting Expert—allowing her to create projects and write articles that feature Fiskars tools.

She has been an industry professional for the last 13 years, teaching classes, writing books, and designing for several manufacturers.  Her passion is most definitely teaching her craft to others.

She loves to make things beautifully handmade---making something from nothing. Her style is quite reflective of that, without looking crafty or homespun. She describes it as fresh and comfortable, polished and not forced, and technique driven with a strong focus on layering products. It often exhibits using products in unexpected ways, always with a touch of stitching…most often hand-stitched details. Her layouts follow basic design principles without looking graphic or linear.

Tania has created some really fun projects for us this month using our SUPER popular Say Cheese collection!

As Tania told me,

My family was lucky enough to take a trip to Disney World in July of 2012 and to be honest I’ve been rather stuck on how to deal with the massive amounts of photos we came home with.  I’m talking a couple thousand photos, all of which I consider keepers, because, experiencing Disney for the first time ever makes every moment a Kodak moment, doesn’t it? But, really, how do you scrapbook all those photos?

Well, Say Cheese is making my life so much easier when it comes to figuring out what to do with all these photos!  If you find yourself in a similar situation, let me just tell you that grabbing a 12x12 Say Cheese Collection Kit is the way to go!  I’ve created the following projects, have four more layouts in progress and *still* have GOBS of product leftover to create several more. This collection is seriously MAGIC!

This layout was designed to be the opening page of our Disney album and was created using only materials found in the Say Cheese Collection Kit. I added mist, rhinestones and floss to help pull all the details together.  While it might look like a fussy layout, it was one of the easiest layouts I’ve ever made thanks to the 6x12 Page Elements.  By cutting the sheet apart into separate 6x12 sections, half of my layout was practically finished for me. All I had to do was adhere a photo and play up the embellishing a bit on the insta-camera.

Here's that 6x12 Element Page that made this layout of Tania's so easy to put together!

The background of this next layout happened on accident. I was in the studio playing with different colors of mists and trying to see which ones would react certain ways and decided to spray onto a full sheet of cardstock that was really just going to be trashed after I was done experimenting. Turns out that it makes a very fun layout for this photo!  The mists I’ve found that match the collection best are the Heidi Swapp Color Shine in Black Velvet, Sweet Cherry, Mustard and Chartreuse.

 

This next  layout was one of those 15 minutes or less layouts!  How can you create a layout in 15 minutes or less?  With the 4x6 Vertical Journaling Card Elements, that’s how!  I laid the photos and two journaling cards on the page and filled in the remaining spaces with patterned paper, punched a few border strips using the Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch to add down the sides to help draw the eye to the middle of the layout design and called it good!  I kept the embellishing simple and used some of my favorite techniques to add dimension and interest to the layout.

Here's the 4x6 Vertical Journlaing Card Elements that helped Tania put her layout together in 15 quick minutes!

Lastly, I used one of the 4x6 Horiztonal Journaling Card Elements to pull together a quick card.  I cut the card base to 7” x 10” so it would give me a 5” x 7” card to build my design on.  A simple border was punched from mustard-colored cardstock using the Fiskars Up In The Clouds border punch to frill up the lower edge of the journaling card.  Additional embellishments were added directly on top of the card.

I’m a firm believer in embellishing the inside of cards, as well.  They just look so much more pulled together when you take a few extra minutes to pull elements from the card front in to the inside of the card.  I repeated the same background color as the journaling card, added the same border and same photo corners and used stickers from the Expression Cardstock Sticker sheet to mimic the sentiment on the card front.  Easy peasy, yet looks beautifully handmade!  Just my style.

Thank you so much for allowing me to share the beginnings of my family’s Disney album with you!

Thank YOU Tania for sharing your creativity with us this month and for showing how our readers can quickly and easily create with our products, such a treat!!

 

Comments

[Julie Tucker-Wolek]

Her creations are just gorgeous!!! WOW WOW WOW!!! I am loving that collection!!!!

[Lisa Swift]

So happy to see Tania's wonderful work here! :)

[Kathy P]

As a Disney member, I LOVE what you have done with your pages! And I truly understand how you have to scrap all those photos!@!!

[Jenny Kozar]

I just love all of Tania's work and cannot wait to see what else she has in store with your amazing products! Thanks for sharing.

[Michelle Salazar]

What a great start to the month I adore Tania and her style of scrap booking it was great to see her work on your blog! I love this collection and now have some great ideas or some Disney pages thanks to Tania!

[Vicky #7622]

AWEsome layouts! Love the way Tania puts everything together in such a fresh and fun way!