Guest Star Summer Fullerton!

I really loved all the papers in this collection but I think the multi colored scallop paper really spoke to me the most. I thought it would be a great piece to use with some swimming photos. I played around with it so much trying different things I was only left with a few scraps left over for the actual layout. I pulled the banner idea straight from the photos. I hope you enjoy.

Awesome work with the patterns! Thanks for the inspiration Summer!

JBS Mercantile News

We thought you might like to see the happy faces of the wonderful women who fill your orders each month here at JBS Mercantile. From left to right: Melissa, Page, Renee, and Terena. I'm sure you will join me in thanking them for alll the hard work they do! (OK, Page doesn't actually fill any orders, but she is our cover girl).

In other news:

Play Date (plus our newest butterfly and pennant stickers, butterfly rub-on singles, and beach bingo cards) are now available for purchase in the General Store.

There's a huge JBS giveaway open at Moxie Fab World.

There's a layout challenge open at Two Peas in a Bucket.

There are giveaway's open for Shimelle's new class on Doris and Becky's blogs.

There is darling baby boy decor up on Betsy's blog.

The July gallery goes live tomorrow night at midnight. Remember you can save on shipping by having Play Date shipped with your monthly kit orders!

JBS has a new Facebook Fan Page.

You can follow JBS on twitter! @jbsmercantile

Guest Star Kerry Lynn Yeary!

Hi everyone!

I'm Kerry Lynn Yeary, but everyone calls me kL and i live in beautiful Sonoma, California with my husband and our two beautiful children, who we affectionately call "the littles". I am so happy to be able to share some work with you using the newest JBS release. Just like you I am {and have forever been} a lover of everything Jenni Bowlin. Not just because I share a passion with her for everything vintage, but also because Jenni is such a kindred spirit. She has such a wonderful heart and is always so inspiring and supportive to others in the paper arts industry.

You can view more of my work and see snippets into my life on my blog live.craft.learn.

I love making eclectic layouts that include fun vintage embellishments, like on "believer". I also love including pieces from packaging as you can see here with the mini cutouts from the back of the journal card packaging, it's a great way to stretch your supplies and use every piece possible.

for this layout i really wanted a fun feel while making sure that the focus was on the sweet photo of my little riding bikes in our backyard. i love adding stitching to layouts and although my machine decided to fight me a little while sewing the title down i decided to keep it as it adds a funky aspect to the lo, something i always love to incorporate.

i adore the new JBS banner stickers but i'm always trying to figure out how to use things like this in more ways than what they were initially intended for, as you can see here when i used the flags to create a flower motif instead.

this wreath actually came about accidentally as i was using my new slice to create some banner tags for a layout idea i had with the mini playdate paper stack. i had set three banners that i had cut with my slice on the table and walked away for a day and when i came back i saw them in a semi-circle and realized they would make a beautiful paper wreath. i all i needed was to cut some more, mount them on a hand-cut circle base and add the flower buttons and butterflies.

Thanks for the inspiration Kerry Lynn!

July Peeks!

The July kit is perfect for summer scrapping! It's filled with hot yellows, oranges, and reds with a cool light blue backdrop that reflects the summer sky. This first layout is from Danielle. Isn't it genious how she punched stars through her layers. Clever girl!

Personally, I (Doris) just couldn't wait to get started with the Bazzill diecut circle strips. I immediately envisioned multi-colored bits of patterned paper peeking through. I love it when what I see in my mind actually blossoms on the page.

From Cheryl we have this darling page with vintage vibe. Simple sweetness.

There's lots more July inspiration coming soon! The gallery goes live next week! Midnight on the 30th! Check back here Monday too. We've got three more guest bloggers lined up. Until then, if you're looking for more inspiration, check out Cheryl's new site Cartwheels in My Mind. JBS was their sponsor this month and you can see many more charming pages there featuring our new release Play Date.

JBS Mercantile July Guest!

Hi Everyone !

My name is Emeline ; i live in sunny Singapore with my wonderful husband and two little walking angels. 6 years ago, i walked into a scrapbooking store and was completely sold.

My paper craft addiction grew and my love for the craft is still growing. I teach and design classes for that same local store and design for a few other manufacturers. I love to create with papers and get my inspirations from colors and all things beautiful...

It's no secret i'm a Huge fan of Jenni Bowlin's and i've been collecting her papers and embellishments since it hit the market! i'm not shy to add i bought every single piece that i could find 'cause they are so hoard worth :) To be given this opportunity to share a little with you here - I am *SO* Over the Moon! Thank you SO Much !

Here's where you can fine a little more about me - www.scrapvilla.blogspot.com



This framed piece speaks of my style.
Dimensional, accented with details, urban chic with a tinge of shabby-ephemeral.



Crafting, to me, leads to a glorious sense of fulfilments and enriches my perspective on my life as a mom. This translates to a more contented and happier me :)

Here is the little heaven where I create. Space is tight, and because i'm space challenged, most of my craft materials are either hidden away in cupboards or organized in clear storage jars.



Being organized helps heaps ! I love that I can see where my craft essentials are.



Thanks for the inspiration Emeline! We are so looking forward to seeing more of your lovely work next month!

Guest Star Celeste Smith!

Awesome! Thanks for the inspiration Celeste!

Guest Star Kayla Aimee Terrell!

I'm a pretty big fan of Jenni Bowlin products in general so when this collection arrived at my doorstep, I was so giddy with excitement I could barely contain myself! Then I had to explain my overzealous behavior to the mailman, who isn't quite accustomed to me gleefully hugging him. Of course, he's normally bringing me bills, so in the end I think he understood.

Here are a few things I did with the Play Date collection. I decided to scrapbook some of our engagement pictures (taken by Shannon Wright - www.shannonseye.net) because they had a fun, playful feel to them and Jeff's shirt matched the bold colors well.

She & Him: I used the full alphabet here and switched the colors out on just our initials. I drew a freehand swirl for the butterfly and outlined it with glue and glitter. I wanted to use the number 22 for our date but the paper just had 24 on it, so I handcut a tiny 2 from another part of the paper and adhered it over the 4.

Engagement: I trimmed each photo and patterned paper to match the size of the JBS tags and then added contrasting elements to each piece. I also trimmed the center out of the bracket paper and some elements out of the JBS tags. I love that there are so many little elements included on the tags that they work well as a whole or divided up into smaller pieces. Glue dots held up the banner and the butterflies are two stickers pressed together, so that their wings are pretty from both sides, and attached with staples so they'll stand up.

Bio: A southern girl through and through, Kayla Aimee likes scrapbooking, Macy's at Christmas time, and really good fitting jeans. By day she is a social media marketing manager but by night she is a blogger and scrapbook teacher at www.littlelightstudio.net. KA's scrapbooking work has been published in several publications including Creating Keepsakes, Memory Makers and Scrapbooks Etc. KA lives in a tiny little town in Georgia with her husband Jeff and their puppy Lucy. You can read about her slightly neurotic life on her blog: http://kaylaaimee.typepad.com

Gorgeous Work! Thanks for the inspiration Kayla Aimee!

Shimelle Laine Joins the JBS Team!

We are VERY excited to announce that Shimelle Laine is joining our manufacturing design team! Now you can look forward to seeing her lovely creations right here on the inspiration blog each month. Welcome Shimelle!

If you'd like to get to know Shimelle a little better, she's got an inspiring class coming up next month that's sure to get your summer scrapping in high gear. Check it out HERE.

JBS Mercantile July Exclusives!

July's kit brings on the summer heat!

Guest Star Jennifer Johner!

"This photo is one of my favourites of my daughter.. and it just so happens that the colours were a perfect match for the Play Date line! Loving the contrast of the feminine butterflies, with the photo of my daughter in the mud lol! I used a combination of butterfly rubons (large red), stickers (small yellow) and punching (medium).. I also took my scissors and cut a border around the remaining punched paper for the outlined looking butterflies."

"Lots of little bits and pieces on this one! Photos are from July 08.. oh how time flies! They both look so little! I also used one of my new favourite techniques.. tone on tone punching and gluing! Love the added dimension."

"One of my favourite parts of playing with these yummy goodies.. all the pops of yellow! Yum! As much as I wanted to use the solid textured cardstock as a background.. I decided to cut into it to spread it across as many layouts as I could! On this one, my favourite part is the thick yellow mat behind the photo.. that texture is so so so yummy!"

"I snapped this pic of my hubby while we were driving one day (with my phone), and as soon as I saw the die cut paper with the sun on it, I knew it was meant for this photo! I ended up cutting a small portion from the large sun, which is great.. because I still have more sun for more layouts! Yes, I love to hoard yummy paper! lol"

Thanks so much for the amazing inspiration Jennifer Johner! :)

Guest Star Waleska Nerris!

I used some mini papers, created a sun with the yellow banners and punched out the circle from the 'bull's eye' journaling card.

It looks super simple but with the embossed cardstock + the patterned papers i didn't want to add anything else and distract from the pictures. I also created a brad with the 'sunny days' paper (see detail shot).

Fabulous! Thanks for the inspiration Waleska!

Guest Star Nicole Harper!

I have been a fan of paper and stickers since the 80s...(only now I fill my stash with old paper things found at antique shows instead of the school supply aisle, lol). I've decided that for me, scrapbooking is about my family's story. Our lives are CRAZY these days, so I do my best to jot down what I can...but am also a huge fan of retelling stories from my past as I remember them using old photos found in my Mom's attic. My daughter Allie and my husband Mike humor me in my quest to get it all down on paper...and I get a kick out of catching either of them smiling while sneaking a peek at a layout I've made about them. (You can read more about our crazy stories at my blog, www.seriouslybrains.blogspot.com).

I collect stuff. old stuff. after coming home from a recent junking trip, i was trying to figure out where to put my latest 'N'...when Allie suggested I should have a pic of myself with one of them. So she told me to choose one while she got my camera out, and this photo was the result, lol. I am in love with the journaling cards for Play Date, so i cut the inside of one of them out to kind of make a frame...and used it to house my title. (I'm a big fan of making 'frames' and filling them with goodies) i have ten thousand sheets of old ledger paper (I can't resist them...I see them, I buy them. End of story. Haha!), so I used one as a base for this page. I LOVE the rub-on butterflies...LOVE. (keep those coming in every color imaginable please, Ms. Jenni!)

Some photos just 'catch you'...this is one of those for me. A subtle reminder of how amazing my daughter is, in every aspect of the word. I used my Slice machine to cut the 'smile' for the title and then stitched inside of it to help it stand out a bit. Mixed a few older JBS products in here, as they seemed to fit perfectly!

You can see more of Nicole's lovely work in her gallery. Thanks for the inspiration Nicole!

Guest Star Chris Dodaj!

"We Love a Photobooth" is displaying some fun pics from a photobooth shoot. I used the textured cardstock with the rub-on butterfly, and one of each of the pp squares for a fun happy background. I used the butterflies to emphasize the colors and the flats to direct you to the photos and the fun circle letters for my title.

For "2 Brothers" I used the die card stock, the round letters and I used the little yellow printed sheets for journaling.

"Brooke" is about my daughter Brooke, at nine months. I adore the flags and reach for them constantly! I accentuated the butterfly by using the red butterfly against the yellow print paper to make it pop. I love how it turned out!!

This birthday card is using my favorite colors together, pink and red. I used the large pink rub-on and a small embellished butterfly for dimension and the red circle letters in two styles for the message.

My name is Chris, I'm 37 married to my best friend Jeno for 11 years and Mama to my two sweet girls, Brenna, 5 and Brooke, 11 months. I've been scrapbooking and making cards since I was married and it became therapy for me after a car accident left me out of work with a brain injury 9 years ago.

Besides scrapbooking, I love to visit estate sales, auctions and thrift shops for fun items. I also love to cook and bake, decorate and organize. When I'm not doing any of the above, you can usually find me and the gang at the beach in the summer. It's my very favorite place to be.

I have a special place for Jenni Bowlin and her products. Last year, we lost our house and everything in it when a tree fell on it during a rain storm. I had to cancel my subscription, and Jenni wished us the best of luck and sent me a kit for free to enjoy. I am still so grateful for that act of kindness.

Thanks for the inspiration Chris!

Butterfly Earring Tutorial by Cheryl Ametewee

Lately, I have been venturing out more and more in my art...trying to find new ways to use my scrapbook products in other areas in my life. And this month has been a big one as far as being inspired to create jewelry. I'm a big jewelry lover, but I like to wear new fresh things...and since that's not exactly conducive to saving money, I decided that I'd try my hand at a few pieces of my own design. (I have to admit, though...my big jewelry obsession this month started when I first laid eyes on the June Mercantile kit that included the Webster's Pages rose trim...I knew the second I laid eyes on it that I had to make it into some kind of jewelry!) So, with absolutely no picture in my head of what I was hoping the outcome would be, I grabbed a couple JBS supplies (black butterfly stickers, cream pearl flowers), some fabric & netting leftover from my wedding dress & the basic jewelry pieces from our local craft store, and got to work.


The actual designing of the butterflies was a fairly simple process...I placed the butterfly sticker onto the back of the fabric (it actually naturally adhered very well to the cotton in the material) and then cut out around the sticker so that the fabric was obviously shaped like a butterfly even when you couldn't see the actual sticker. Next, I added just the 3 individual pearls from the pearl flower and then cut out 3 pieces of netting in the butterfly shape and placed them between each of the stickers to add a little color to and draw the blue of the fabric together with the black butterflies. Then I simply poked a hole through the entire grouping of butterflies and placed it on the earring base with the fabric butterfly facing frontwards. But even with the fabric in front, the way they are hanging on the earrings allows the butterflies to move around, allowing you to see the black patterned stickers through the netting.

Altogether the entire project took only about 30-40 minutes, and the best part is that you can make them in any color to go with any outfit, not to mention comfortably lightweight...which makes them perfect for summer! (and they are even small enough that you can use the extra fabric on the hem of a dress or shirt to match them exactly with anything you are wearing!)

-Cheryl

June Gallery Updates!

The gallery updates are loaded! Lots of great stuff added! The papercrafting kit and project kit are currently sold out, but Jenni hopes to be able to restock a few of those by mid-month. We'll keep you posted! There are still a few of the add-on kit available. The awesome stencil that Doris used came from that. She also has a second layout featuring the stencil added to her gallery.

Jenni has the above layout in her gallery. You can read about it there.

Becky has added layout to her gallery.

Ranjini has three more layouts in her gallery.

Michelle has three more layouts in her gallery.

Danielle has two more cards in her gallery.

Cheryl has two more layouts and some jewelry creations in her gallery.

And Doris has also added this home decor item to her gallery. A few of these 7 Gypsies White Printers Trays are still available in our General Store.