Welcome June Guest Designer Karen Grunberg and Sweet Summertime!

We were so happy when Karen Grunberg agreed to be our Guest Designer for the month of June, using the brand new Sweet Summertime collection! If you are not familiar with Karen's work (gasp!), do yourself a favor and click the link to check out her blog. You are in for a rare treat.

In addition to having a clean, cool, and unique scrapbooking style, you will be wowed by her breathtaking art and art journaling, her daily diary, and her photography of her family and her two beautiful boys. I find myself scratching my head and wondering "how does she fit all this into her day??" She works full time, designs and guest designs, is a mom to two very young boys, creates art, journals, blogs, and exercises every day. So I have to ask ... Karen, do ya ever sleep?

But I digress...and seriously... we just love Karen's work. So here is a little more about Karen!

LYB: What is your ‘go to’ embellishment?

Karen: Alphabets. I use many many of them on my layout pages because I tend to favor very long titles. Other than that, it's anything that's in the shape of a butterfly.

LYB: Do you prefer cardstock or patterned paper?

Karen: My backgrounds are always white cardstock.

LYB: What kind of music gets you in the scrappin’ mood?

Karen: I generally watch TV or listen to podcasts while I scrap. If I am listening to music (which is rare) it's Glee.

LYB: Do you like to go to crops or prefer to scrap alone?

Karen: I prefer to scrap alone. I am very talkative so if I go to a scrap, I often end up chatting and not scrapping.

LYB: What are your favorite types of projects—pages, mini albums, cards, altered projects, etc?

Karen: I used to do a lot of mini albums but in the last year or so I've switched to exclusively creating layouts. I still do a few albums every year and I do a lot of art journaling but, my scrapping projects are most often creating layouts.

So now, here's Karen!!

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Hi everyone!

I am so excited to be here and to get to be a guest designer for Little Yellow Bicycle. I am a huge fan of all their lines but I specifically remember seeing Sweet Summertime during CHA and falling in love with all the bright colors and wonderful designs of this line. So when they asked me to design with it, I was elated.

The first thing I wanted to show you is that this line is definitely not exclusive to summer-themed layouts. While the elements are perfect for summer, the papers and embellishments in this line can be used for just about any theme.

Here's a layout I made about my oldest son:

You can see how I was able to use the canvas letters in my title to talk about my son's personality instead of the weather. I also love those letters because they add so much texture and dimension to my page:

I also used the chipboard and dimensional stickers to add more color to my page and to strengthen the "sunny" theme.

Another thing I did was to layer my embellishments so the main part of the kite wasn't visible and all you see is the string with little bits of color. I even stitched on top of it to add more texture.

Here's the journaling on this page:

There are so many things I love about you David. You're so kind and giving and generous and you're funny and sweet. You always listen to me and do what I ask without complaining, You take walks with me and give me hugs and curl up with me. But what I love the most is how happy you are. How you don't have my sad demeanor. and how you can lift me up with just one smile and you smile a lot! I love you David.

Thank you for letting me share one of my layouts, see you soon with another!

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I don't know about you, but I can't wait! We'll be back later this week with Karen's second post. Meanwhile cyber-RUN over to Karen's blog, and check it out. Tell her we sent you! Then subscribe. You'll be so glad you did!

See you soon!

Peg