Dinner Date| Kelly Purkey

SPECIAL GUEST NSD CHALLENGE : Create a page featuring a photo you have taken with your phone.

We’re thrilled to welcome special guest Kelly Purkey to our National Scrapbooking Day celebration this year!  Kelly has created this layout and challenge just for the BasicGrey blog.

Kelly says, “The PB&J line is right up my alley – I adore the bright, happy colors and the great details.  It was perfect to use for this Instagram of my friend Amanda waiting for me for dinner, the colors worked so well together.  My challenge for you is to scrap a photo you’ve taken with the phone on your camera.  I am an Instagram addict and am constantly snapping photos on my phone.  They’re so easy to scrap and I love the layouts that get made around snapshots of daily life.”

We can’t wait to see what you create for this challenge! Leave a comment below with a link to your project and we’ll select one commenter at random to receive a $25 gift certificate to shop at basicgrey.com. Comment must be posted by May 11, 2012 at 11:59p MST.

Your Smile | Els Brige

CHALLENGE : Create a layout that includes stitching either by hand or by machine.

BasicGrey design team member Els Brige created layout with our Konnichiwa collection.  She explains, ”One of my current favorite techniques is stitching on a layout. Most of the time I pull out my sewing machine, but occasionally I go for handstitching. The handstitching I usually use to make a title, or highlight a certain element of my layout, like the strings of lights at the top of my page. I select a matching color of embroidery floss and trace my word or element with pencil first. For easy hand-sewing it’s a good tip to punch wholes along the pencil lines first. For the machine-stitching on this layout I tried to incorporate straight lines as well as zig-zags for extra interest.”

We can’t wait to see what you create for this challenge! Leave a comment below with a link to your project and we’ll select one commenter at random to receive a $25 gift certificate to shop at basicgrey.com. Comment must be posted by May 11, 2012 at 11:59p MST.

CHALLENGE : Create a layout inspired by this sketch created by friend of BasicGrey, Valerie Salmon.

If giving you one sketch challenge for National Scrapbooking Day is good, then a second sketch is even better!

My Baby | Larissa Albernaz

BasicGrey design team member Larissa Albernaz created this gorgeous layout using Valerie’s sketch as a starting point. Larissa says, ”To create my layout, I simply have chosen some BG Plumeria papers and embellishments and have adapted my photos and embellishments to the arrangements shown in the sketch, without including different interpretations than the one proposed.  It is such an awesome sketch that I didn´t want to change much! I hope this sketch inspire you as much as it did to me!”

We can’t wait to see what you create for this challenge! Leave a comment below with a link to your project and we’ll select one commenter at random to receive a $25 gift certificate to shop at basicgrey.com. Comment must be posted by May 11, 2012 at 11:59p MST.

Come Fly With Me | Wendy Sue Anderson

SPECIAL GUEST NSD CHALLENGE : Use the BasicGrey homepage as inspiration for your layout.

We’re thrilled to welcome special guest Wendy Sue Anderson to our National Scrapbooking Day celebration this year!  Wendy has created this layout and challenge just for the BasicGrey blog.

Wendy explains, “Die-hard BasicGrey fans might recognize this screenshot I took of the BasicGrey home page. It was my inspiration for this layout. The right side of the webpage layout worked as a great “starting point” for the design of my page.  I loved working with the What’s Up line. The soft, subtle colors were perfect for these photos of a local amusement park ride…and the fact that “flying” is the theme of the line AND the ride made it perfect!

We can’t wait to see what you create for this challenge! Leave a comment below with a link to your project and we’ll select one commenter at random to receive a $25 gift certificate to shop at basicgrey.com. Comment must be posted by May 11, 2012 at 11:59p MST.

If you upload your layout to your blog or online gallery, be sure to also upload it to our new BasicGrey flickr page so that other BG fans can find your work easily.