Have you seen the gorgoeus chances to win a nice gift certificate to celebrate Scrapmuse’ Birthday? Well as you might have seen one is to be picked as a layout of the day (LOTD) through this month.

Here are the ones we had choosen the first week so far:

# 1 - Aida

# 2 Mirimari

#3 - karenwendy81

#4 Audephil

#5 - Lana

#6 - ktimscraps

#7 - Melanie

So give our members some Love and don’t forget to upload your layouts to our gallery.

ScrapMuse is celebrating its 4th Birthday in May, and that’s cause for celebration!

We have some great things happening at ScrapMuse this month.   During the month of May we will be hosting a BINGO game, and a $25.00 gift certificate which will be awarded to the winner at the end of the month.   We won’t begin calling words until May 7th, so it’s not too late to sign up.  See the message board at Scrapmuse for more details, and get your words turned in!

We will also be selecting a “Layout of the Day” from those items which are uploaded to the gallery. So be sure to upload your “new” layouts and projects to the gallery during May. At the end of the month, we will draw a name from all of our daily winners and award a $25.00 gift certificate from the store.   We all love to see your layouts and projects!

And to celebrate our Birthday and National Scrapbook Day, we will also be having a 40% off SALE on EVERYTHING in the store.  Yep, you read it right!! The sale will start at 12:01AM EST on May 3rd and will run until 12:01 AM EST on May 4th.  Just use coupon code “celebration” during checkout to receive the discount!  You cannot beat this deal.  What a great way to kick-off our Birthday Celebration and National Scrapbook Day!

PLEASE NOTE that the May addons are NOT a part of the 40% off sale.  This sale does NOT pertain to the May monthly kits, add ons for May, gift certificates or any item that is already marked down on clearance or sale.  All sale items will be shipped seperately from the monthly kit so please allow us up to 7 business days to ship these out to you. 

So head on over to ScrapMuse and start filling up your shopping cart in preparation for Saturday’s Super Sale, upload some layouts to the gallery, and sign up to play Bingo with us!

This kit was perfect for cards too - as the elements that were provided in the kit were perfect to create a variety of cards. You might ask why make cards? Well…first of all I love to send cards out. I love getting cards and so I do love sending them out too. Second they are an awesome way to use up scraps.

As most of you know I’m a 8.5 x 11 Scrapper by heart and cutting the cardstock into this size always leaves me with a perfect sized stripe for the foundation of a card. Every time I finished a layout I collect the stripe and the scraps and create a card out of them. Mostly the cards are very simple but this way I have them handy when I need them to send them out.

Let look at the cards we did this month:

*Owl Card by Nat* 

For this  card I used the maya road owl as a template with the green paper. I attached the owl on foam pads to give the whole card more dimension and doodled along the edges to bind everything together. The saying is in German and means: Not older just wiser.  A perfect birthday card for my hip friend Christian

*Bird Card by Lucy* 

Lucy used the maya road chipboard bird in the kit as a template and I love how she added a faux stitching to outline the bird. Also the ribbon on the tail is totally cute!

*Bird Card by Nat*

I used the other  the other bird from the chipboards as a template-this way you can use the chipboards on various projects!

*Bithday Card by Nat*

Here I handcut a cirlce from the American Crafts paper and stamped the green stripe with a scripture stamp. It was very quick and easy and waits for the perfect moment I need a birthday card to send out in no time.

Maybe reading this makes you want to create some cards…they are always welcome at my house - no seriously- I can’t wait to see what kind of cards you are creating with those wonderful chipboard templates in your kit!

I’m so in Love with chipboard letters and those in the April Kit by Scenic Route are no exception. I love that chipboard letters give your layout dimension and that they are also so versatile. You can alter them in any way you want to fit them to your page or you can dress them up.

In this layout I decided to dress them up a little. The cute little stamp “Snapshots” which was included in this month’s kit was perfect. I just used Staz On - so that the stamped image wouldn’t smear on the glossy Chipboard letter and dry right away.

Another wonderful way to give those chipboard letters a unique style is to outline them or doodle on them. Outlining is for a long a favorite way for me to draw more attention to the chipboard alphas.

I outlined the chipboard letters this way:

While Lucy took a different approach to the outlining:

You can see what differences you can make with just some small lines.

Valerie painted little white dots on the letters- which totally adds to the dreamy romantic look of her page:

Have you noticed the little circle with the date on it - you can use the insides of the letters - to make your own embellishments!

The easiest way to alter your chipboard letters is to use color on them. The best way to do it, is to sand those letters a bit down- so they get a rougher and the paint will stick better to the surface.

Almost all of us in the DT did this with different colors:

Rebekah used a nice green color:

I used purple acrylic paint and added some water soluble crayons on top - the same I used for the bird in the layout.

Valerie painted them also with acrylic paint and then added some blue Chalk Ink to get a marbled look

Donna inked them with a black inkpad

You see there are gazillion ways to oomph up your chipboard letters. I can’t wait to see your creations and what are you doing with those letters!

Nat

My dear friends,

I am writing to let you know that I have sold ScrapMuse to Traci Murphy from Georgia. While the deal closed earlier in April, we have been working steadily together since February to make sure that this transition is as smooth as possible for you, our wonderful members and friends. The ScrapMuse monthly kits and store products will be shipping from Georgia starting in June. We will soon be holding a moving sale (watch your email for the notice!), and we want to make very clear that there will be no interruption in your monthly kit, no style changes in the kit’s design, and most importantly, NO drop in our high level of customer service - that you have come to expect from us.

Traci has been a member of the ScrapMuse club and online community for over 3 years - you know her as “skooter95″; I had the fortune to meet her in person in February and felt 100% certain that she was the right fit for our club and community! She is so excited to be joining ScrapMuse in this fashion, and she already has some really fun things planned for ScrapMuse’s 4th birthday in May!

I will be working with Traci very closely throughout the summer, and I do plan to remain at ScrapMuse - this is my home on the net! I will be honest and say that I am a little bit sad to close this chapter in my life, but it is to make room for another exciting one - children! My husband and I are planning to start a family soon! Wish us luck, I think we will need it.

If you have any questions for either Traci or me during this transition, or anytime at all - please contact one of us. Traci’s email is Traci@ScrapMuse.com and mine is Amanda@ScrapMuse.com or you may certainly PM us here on the forum. Traci’s new forum ID is ScrapMuseAdmin.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Spring at Scrapmuse contest It’s spring here at Scrapmuse, and we’re all excited to be done with this crazy winter we’ve had!!  Our April kit contains beautiful spring colors and we’d love to see some spring inspired layouts. 

Contest dates:  now until May 20, 2008. 

Requirements:   The theme is spring.  Use any interpretation of the theme that you would like.  Kit items are not required, so use anything that says “spring” to you!!  Layouts (8 x 8 or larger) and altered items will be accepted.  Maximum 3 entries per person, please. Items must be loaded into the Scrapmuse April Contest Gallery by midnight (MST) on May 20, 2008.   

Winners will be announced no later than May 25^, 2008 in our forum.  Designs will be judged by our current design team. Contest is open to US, Canadian and International Scrappers.   

The goodies: First prize: $25 gift certificate from Scrapmuse storefront.  Second and third prize: $15 and $10 prize packs from Scrapmuse’s storefront  (International winners may have a gift certificate substituted for the prize pack, depending on location and shipping costs). We can’t wait to see your creations in the gallery!!!  Link: http://www.scrapmuse.com/   

Those girls at Pencil Lines never cease to amaze me - and they also provide those amazing sketches every month for Scrapmuse. This is this months sketch

And look what Annie and Kimmy did with this!

Annie’s Good Girl 

Kimmy’s The Beach

Come and show us your designs with this amazing sketch!

You might have noticed my non hand written journaling on this Layout “EEK”. And before you are going to tear your wonderful April kit apart to look for those stickers…I will tell you a secret Those are selfmade - and you can make them too!

Typewriters seem to be all the rage right now and though I do have an old Office Typewriter at my Mom’s house, there is no way I will pull this out, and put this in my room again - hey…I’m a computer kind of girl now. I downloaded some typewriter fonts I really liked from this site - I like 1942 Report and Mom’s Typewriter the best.

Then I typed the journaling with this font in Word and added a space between each of the letters, printed the text and cut each of the letters out. Simply glued them down - and done. It is a lot of work but I think it is totally worth it! Go ahead and try it!

Here’s my take on March’s sketch:

Thanks to everyone who entered our February Maya Road Chipboard Contest! We had some great entries!!The winners of the Maya Road Chipboard Contest are:Yazziegirl (Kerry) for All things grow with love:

And third place goes to eyesforscrappin for Precious gift:

Congratulations, everyone, on a job well done!!