"Love, Elsie" Blog Focus: Day 1

Elsie Flannigan (now Elsie Larson) took the scrapbooking world by storm with her doodled scrapbook papers, and for a few years, she had one of the most popular and talked about scrapbook collections around. As a result, many long-time scrapbookers filled their stash with papers and embellishments from Elsie's collections...and, unfortunately, a lot of these fun and beautiful papers just stayed there...in our stashes! Well, not anymore! I have made up my mind that I have paid for it, and I like it, so I am not going to purge it just because it is an older collection of papers! I am going to use it! And, hopefully, I will inspire many of you to use it as well, instead of allowing it to collect dust and guilt in our stash!  So, every day this week, I plan to share with you my own ideas and pages made with Elsie's fun papers, and give tips for using up any older stash that you may have!

The first way I would like to suggest for using Elsie's papers is; "Loud and Proud"!  Don't try to hide it or cover it, just use it! Here is my example:

 See It On 2 Peas

 

I started with this paper; Love, Elsie Math Class:

This paper was such a fun doodle print that was perfect for the photo of my kiddos coloring! And I had a bit of fun myself coloring in the doodles (my kids noticed and asked my for a sheet of it to color, too!)...and I loved using lots of bright, happy colors on it. I added in scraps of some of my most colorful off-cuts for the layers, and embellished it with twine, washi tape, and a Love, Elsie chipboard button, and did the title with foam Thickers in the doodle-y style Custard font.

Here's a closer look at the button embellishment:

 

My advice for today: If you love it, use it! As scrapbookers that have new and beautiful papers and embellishments made available to us at least twice a year at CHA (and some companies do mid-season releases, as well), it is so easy to get caught up in needing the newest and greatest things. And there isn't any thing wrong with falling in love with a new and beautiful piece of paper or embellishment. But you don't have to feel like you have to have it to have beautiful pages! You can use that older stash, and make pages that are just as lovely and meaningful! Try it out, you just might find a new favorite out of your old stash!

Last but definitely not least... I love these goodies, and I know you will love them too! But you really can't buy them anymore, so I am giving some away for one of my lucky blog followers to play with! All you have to do is leave a comment on any of my Love, Elsie blog posts this week, follow my blog, and you will be entered in the drawing for this prize:

There are a fun selection of Love, Elsie papers for you to play with, a few sheets of cardstock in neutral colors, some chipboard houses from Jenni Bowlin, ribbon and washi, a little chipboard mini album, some die cut tags, die cut letters, and some flair badges!

If you would like to know what is up with Elsie now, check out her fun and very popular blog, A Beautiful Mess ...all about everyday life, fashion, crafts, DIY, photography and recipes