Susan Weinroth

Hi, my name is Susan Weinroth, and I’m so excited to be sharing a little bit of both my creative-crafty side and also my everyday life in this article.  I live in northern Florida, in a little beach town, where I spend my days with my 16 month old son, Evan.  He humors my love for photography on an almost daily-basis, and I reward him with lots of graham crackers(!) in return.  I love that since having a baby, I now have all of these photos to use on craft projects and scrapbook pages.  The stories and thoughts that I record on my pages, along with the photos, are priceless to me.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of the Fiskars Design Team for almost 2 years now, since February 2007.  Working with Fiskars has only deepened my appreciation for the quality crafting tools that they produce and the adorable scrapbook products that they design.

One of my favorite elements to add to a page are circles.  The Ultra ShapeXpress tool makes it SO easy to cut perfect circles (and other shapes too!) in no time at all.  I used the Ultra ShapeXpress + circle tempate to create the focal element of this page – the row of four circles running down the page.  I thought it would be fun to turn my everyday 4x6 photo print into a not-so-everyday circle-shaped photo, and so I very easily did so with the tool and template.  Adding Fiskars foam adhesive to elevate the photo on my page definitely enhances the look.  I also love to layer chipboard for dimension, and I did just that here by adding little punchboard hearts to my punchboard title letters…  plus a bit of sparkle with rhinestones!

When I pull product for a layout, I like to grab a bunch of different patterned papers from my stash – both subtle tone-on-tone patterns and also one or two busier more colorful patterns that coordinate, and I prefer that the papers are not all from the same collection.  On the projects in this article I used both Heidi Grace Designs and Cloud 9 Design paper – from 5 different collections.  It takes a little bit more time to match it all up, but I feel like the end result is worth it!  And why stop at only one layout?!  I used the products that I pulled and matched for my “Lucky” layout to create a second page “Newborn Smile” about my new baby niece.

Circle-shaped title blocks are also a favorite technique of mine.  I used the Super-Sized circle templates here (+ the Ultra ShapeXpress tool again) to create this title block.  A large punched seal of approval scalloped circle accents my punchboard tag to create a custom accent for the page with Baby Ellie’s monogram “e”.

After my layouts have been created, my favorite way to “clean up” is to whip up a few cards with my scraps.  After all, the products are still perfectly-coordinated, and I’m putting the scraps to a good use…

Hopefully you’ll take a little bit of inspiration from this article and the projects in it – whether it’s quickly transforming a 4x6 photo into a circular focal point of your page, or layering chipboard on different parts of your project.  And… the next time you’re cleaning up from layout, don’t forget to use those scraps for a quick card or two!

By Susan Weinroth