Echo Park Fresh Faces

Who loves Echo Park? I do, I do! For the Record, Summer Days, Playground, Country Drive, Everybody Loves Christmas - I pretty much love them all! I know I am totally going to love the new pre-CHA line that was just introduced Victoria Gardens - check out the site or facebook page to see previews! It is amazing!

Since I love everything Echo Park, I thought I ought to throw my hat in the ring for the Fresh Faces call. Here is what I came up with.

1. This card was part of my Guest Design Team work for Scrapdango in April. I used the packaging from some Jillibean Soup cardboard flowers, to create a space in the card to put candy. This card is meant to be put into a lunch box or backpack for the first day of school. I took advantage of the red, yellow, green and blues in the For the Record line, to create a school inspired look.

Instructions:

• Make a 4.5x6 inch card from Kraft cardstock.
• Cut the black magic Coredinations cardstock to slightly smaller than the card and then create fold lines about a quarter inch in on all sides.
• Sand the fold lines lightly to reveal the red core, before adhering to front of the card.
• Cut another piece of the cardstock slightly smaller than the first and mat a piece of Fancy Flora paper slightly smaller than that, onto the red side of the cardstock.
• To create the candy pocket, remove the plastic 'bubble' from the packaging.
• Place the bubble face down on the Fancy Flora paper and trace around it with a pencil.
• Cut the circle out, by cutting just outside the pencil line. (The cut space needs to be just a hair larger than the bubble) Then push the bubble through the hole from the back.
• Cut a piece of the Lace strips paper slightly smaller than the red cardstock piece, making sure that it is slightly larger than the circle.
• Glued most of the bubble down with liquid glue and let the glue dry before adding the candy and gluing it closed.
• Adhere the whole bubble piece to the card and then embellish.

Supplies: Echo Park For the Record Fancy Flora, Lace Strips and Noteworthy papers, Coredinations and Bazzill Cardstock, Echo Park For the Record Alpha Stickers, Cosmo Cricket and My Little Shoebox alphas, Jillibean Soup and Graphic 45 flowers, Prima crystal center, Jillibean soup packaging, Yellow grosgrain ribbon and M&Ms

2. I couldn't resist the bright colors in the Playground line and they went perfectly with these summer pool photos. The pops of black really set off the bright colors and make the title stand out also. The title here is a little ambiguous unless you read all the journaling. She 'invented' a special jump into the pool called the 'mingo' because it was styled after a flamingo's stance, but she couldn't really pronounce the whole word 'flamingo'.

Instructions:

• Cut a strip from the Simon Says Border Strips paper and adhere to the bottom of the Splash paper.
• Machine sew two parallel lines of white stitching around the edge of the page.
• Cut an 8.5x8.5 inch square from the Jump Rope paper and then punch all the way around it with the Martha Stewart Scallop 3 dot punch around the page set before adhering it in the middle of the blue part of the page.
• Cut a square of yellow cardstock slightly smaller than the innermost ring of punched dots, and then round the corners using a corner rounder before adhering it in the middle of the striped square.
• Arrange the photos in a square on a piece of white cardstock and adhere it in the center of the yellow cardstock.
• Add the title in black on a white journaling die cut, popped up on foam tape.
• Add the 3 smaller die cuts on foam tape before journaling around the photo square.

Supplies: Echo Park Playground Jump Rope, Splash and Simon Says Border Strips papers, Bazzill Cardstock in yellow and white, American Crafts black foam alphas, Die cuts from Pretty Little Studio.

3. For this page, I wanted to keep things simple and focus on the photo. I love the face that she is making in this photo, so I wanted it to really shine. Also, I find that Christmas pages are so often busy, with colors and busy photos. The monochromatic color scheme here really helps to calm things down, and still pick up colors from the photo. I distressed the edges to pick on on the distressing in the background paper.

Instructions:

• Cut an 11x11inch square from the Ornaments paper, distress the edges and center it on top of the Bright Strip paper, with the red circles showing on both.
• Machine stitch around the edge of the smaller square.
• Punch 12 1.25inch squares from the candy cane paper and distress the edges.
• Mat the photo on red cardstock.
• Arrange the squares around the photo as shown, paying attention to the direction of the stripes so that they make a pattern that is pleasing to the eye.
• Using a minimal amount of adhesive, glue the squared down before machine stitching lines through each row and column.
• Adhere the photo in the center.
• Add the title and journaling die cuts as shown, placing the title die cut on foam tape for dimension.

Supplies: Echo Park Everybody Loves Christmas Bright Stripe, Candy Cane and Ornaments papers, Echo Park Everybody Loves Christmas Alpha Stickers, Basic Grey Alpha Stickers, Daisy D's and Pretty Little Studio die cuts, Bazzill Cardstock.