Hello everyone! Polly Melanie here.Do you use Pinterest? I am a Pinterest junkie! I think it's an amazing source of inspiration for scrapbookers!For those of you who are not familiar with Pinterest, it's a popular social media site that lets users collect & pin photos to virtual pin boards! Each pin can be "re-pinned" by other users to their own boards. Also, each pin usually includes a link to wherever someone found the image on the internet.The Lilypad has a very active Pinterest site with boards dedicated to all forms of scrapbooking, ways to improve your photography & all kinds of inspiration to get your creative juices flowing!We have a huge vault of blog posts, forum posts & gallery uploads here at the Lilypad! When I was looking through the analytics for the Lilypad Pinterest account, I noticed there were a lot of things from the vault that were popular … [Read more...]
June Challenge Spotlight
Hello everyone! Polly Karen here, bringing you the June edition of the Challenge Spotlight. Once a month I have the privilege of looking through the challenge galleries to find just a few of my favorite layouts and shine my spotlight on them here.If you aren’t familiar with the challenges, here’s a little information about them to get you started. If you play along with our 7 monthly challenges you can earn yourself a coupon to use on your next Lilypad shopping spree. You will earn as follows: 2 challenges = 10% off, 4 challenges = 20% off and 6 challenges = 30% off. Also if you finish all 7 challenges, in addition to your coupon, you will be entered in a drawing for a chance to win 1 of 2 guest spots on the Creative Team (be a Polly) for a month! Now let’s look at some of the standout pages created for this month’s challenges:1. Take Two Challenge - Take a page … [Read more...]
Choosing Pictures for PL in Lightroom
Over the last two years, I have come up with many ways that I make my life easier when I am trying to put together my Project Life layouts. Last year, I posted about how I use Dropbox and Lightroom together to organize my photos by week. That work has made a world of difference in my life. Today, I want to share with you how I go about choosing the pictures I want to use for each Project Life layout, using Lightroom to make the process easier.Step 1: I navigate to the folder for the week I am working on. Under "Collections" in Lightroom, I go the the PL 2015 stack and select the week folder. Because of the set up work I've done, all of the photos that I have from that week show up on my screen.Step 2: Instead of looking at the thumbnails of all of the photos for the week, I double click on the first photo and that brings it up as a single photo that I am looking at. You … [Read more...]
Homemade Honey Butter
Hola Happy Scrappers!Polly Liana here, with a quick and easy recipe that will give you a great bicep workout and something yummy for breakfast. Sound too good to be true? Check this out...First, you will need four things: 1 cup heavy whipping cream 1 cup honey 1 tsp cinnamon a mason jar or container with tight lid First, combine the ingredients in the jar. Then, shake the daylights out of it.It will seem at first like it's not making any progress because it expands for a while but after some time it will start to harden. You want to shake it until it looks like, well, like butter! There should be very little liquid left in the container.That's it! Spread it on something warm and admire your new biceps. :)Have a great start to your weekend, … [Read more...]
Using SVGs to Print and Cut
Recently I have been using the MPM(Memory Pockets Monthly) to work on my backlog of pocket pages that need finished. I was excited to see that the MPM’s came with SVG cut files. The cut files have been designed to work as a print and cut! I knew that my Silhouette Studio Designer Edition software was meant to handle this. However when I tried to use the SVGs I couldn’t figure out how to use them. I took my problem to the designers of the MPM. They quickly taught me how to use them and it was so easy! Today I want to share how to use SVGs to print and cuts in Silhouette Studio software.1. Open up the SVG file in Silhouette Studio. Typically you will know you have the right file because all the shapes are black. (Please note: This will only work if you have the DESIGNER EDITION!)2. Open the Cut Settings window and change the setting to Cut. Now you will see the red cut lines … [Read more...]
Meal Planning for Two Weeks
Hi, everyone! Sarah here, and I thought it would be fun to share with you how I menu plan. This spring the amount of money I could budget to spend on groceries was greatly decreased so I had to figure out how to meal plan and grocery shop in a way that worked best for our family. Since we live about 30 miles from the grocery store and it's not always easy for me to get there, I began shopping for two weeks at a time.My first step to meal planning is to look at the sale ads and mark down anything that is an amazing deal. I also make sure I know what staples we are running low on so I can add these to my list. At this point I don't really do any further planning. I take my list and hit the store. I'm mostly shopping for meat, produce and dairy as I keep a good stock of grains and other staples in my pantry. One of the reasons I don't menu plan before I head to the store is that I'm … [Read more...]
Polly Picks – Lori
Every two weeks we ask one of our staff members to choose their favorite products in the shop. Then we put those products on sale! Our latest Polly Picks sale includes products chosen by the fabulous Lori (lcpereyra): Lori (lcpereyra) is one of our newer Pollys, but certainly not new to The Lilypad. Her gallery is piled full of amazing pages. I just had an amazing time browsing through her pages from the last several years and they are all like a breath of fresh air. Lori's page are very strongly designed and her photos are just stunning too! Lori even completely amazed me with the speed and quality of pages that she recently cranked out from a trip to Disney. She posted an encouraging thread in the forum about it to get some of the rest of us inspired to complete our own vacation page. I asked Lori to describe her style, and this is what she had to … [Read more...]
Catching Up on PL 2015 in One Hour a Day
Like everyone else, I get behind on my Project Life. Sometimes there's too much going on, or I don't have time to sit and put the pages together, or I'm finishing a good book and want to focus on that - whatever the case may be, I end up with weeks and weeks of Project Life to put together. Once I'm pretty far behind like that, it starts to bother me and I want to pick up the slack fast. Over the last two years, I've come up with a plan that helps me catch up on my Project Life by just dedicating an hour a day for five days. Here's the breakdown of what I do.Day 1: Get the photos readyOn day 1, I sit and go through the photos I have for each week. You may remember, I have it set up so that Lightroom sorts them by week for me. So when I sit down I pick the photos for each week. It's at this point that I also do any editing I need to do. I try to keep my photo editing for PL pretty … [Read more...]
Need a last minute Father’s Day present?
Did Father's Day just sneaked on you? I have a simple but WOW project and it gets the kiddos involved in the present. Mind you, this is a quick project if you are enjoying some dry and warm temperatures. We did ours inside and it took a bit longer because you MUST wait for each step to dry before you start on the next one. NOTE: All the painting was done by my 8 year old. I only helped with the cutting of the template and outline with the permanent maker.Materials: 12x12 canvas (you can vary this depending how big you can print or copy the digital element) acrylic paints paint brushes contact paper (I used a shelving plastic cover with sticky back) printer, paper, scissors, x-acto knife (or blade) Father's Day by Kate HadfieldInstructions: Download your digital kit into your computer. Open the desired element, in this case I am using the element … [Read more...]
Mermaid Bingo – Preschool Enrichment Activity
Summer break has begun at our house. With that comes lazy mornings sleeping in, swim lessons, slushy runs, playing at the playground, building forts, and other summer adventures. Along with all the fun I also make sure my kids do a few educational things throughout the summer. For my school age kids I gather a few worksheets from their textbooks they brought home from school. My little kids who aren’t in school yet want to do some “homework” just like their siblings too. I don’t want to disappoint them, so I create educational games for them to play while their siblings are doing homework. Today I’m going to share with you one of these games I created.My preschool kids are working on mastering their alphabet. With this in mind I created a game that would appeal to them, but also work on their letter recognition skills. I call it “Mermaid Bingo.” Using MERMAID LIFE Papers and MERMAID … [Read more...]