Guest Designer | Pam Baldwin

We're thrilled to have the lovely and talented, Pam Baldwin, as one of our guest designers this month, and excited to get to know her better today! Be sure to follow Pam here at Studio Calico to keep up with her and see more of her beautiful work.

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Hi, everyone! I can't tell you how excited I am to get to work with the May Scrapbook and Documenter Kits here at Studio Calico! My name is Pam, and I'm a mom, a wife, and a nurse from Ontario, Canada. I discovered the Studio Calico community right at the beginning of my scrapbooking journey nearly six years ago, and I've been hooked ever since—not just for the amazing products and designs, but for the awesome community. You guys are the one's who introduced me to the Pioneer Woman (my family thanks you), some seriously wonderful books ( A Discovery of Witches kept me up waaaay past my bedtime, and Me Before You had tears streaming down my face...you guys always have the best book recommendations), you hooked me up with funny cat videos when I was 38.5 weeks pregnant and MISERABLE, and you always know what to make for dinner when I'm completely stumped! I've learned so much from all of you about more than just scrapbooking, and it makes my heart happy. Thank you, so very much, to all of you!

I am a hybrid scrapbooker, which means that in addition to the awesome paper products and embellishments here at Studio Calico, I'm also in love with the digital designs, and I use both of them when I'm working on my memory keeping projects. I have been a part of Ali Edwards' creative team for the last three years and teach a few classes over at Big Picture Classes about hybrid scrapbooking (with more to come this year, so keep your eye out for that!). So many of my stories include my kids, who are an endless source of entertainment and "learning opportunities." They're still little (seven and almost four), and I sneak in my crafty time after they've gone to bed in the evenings. One day, I expect they'll reach the stage of not wanting me to take their picture anymore, at which time I'll cry a little, then pick myself back up and write more about myself and my work. During the day, I'm a hematology-oncology nurse. My experiences there could be a whole other essay in itself, but I'll just tell you that I spend my days at work with a seriously awesome team, where we perform stem cell collections and transplants for patients with leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma and other blood disorders. When I'm not working or "mom-ing" or scrapbooking, you probably won't find me cleaning—at least not voluntarily. But you'll probably note that my camera is never too far away. I love taking pictures of "real life" and I'm really looking forward to spending more time outside now that the weather is warming up!

Here's what I made with this month's Scrapbook and Documenter Kits:

April Showers - The vellum speech bubbles included in this month's Scrapbook and Documenter Kits are so awesome! I've definitely saved some in my stash for other projects this month, but for this particular layout, I got brave and cut them up into raindrops. I overlapped the big letters to mimic a rain cloud and loved the idea of those soft and colorful vellum raindrops falling from the title. I cropped my photo to focus on my kids playing in the puddles. Although many of my projects include a LOT of journaling, I love that the photo and the embellishments in this one capture this memory perfectly without the need for a lot of words.

See the Beauty - This project was definitely inspired by that awesome pink paper in this month's Scrapbook Kit! My preferred size for scrapbook layouts is usually 8.5" x 11", so I started by cutting the paper down to size. I measured the amount of space I had left to work with at the bottom and cropped my photo to fit in that space. One of the best parts about printing my photos at home is that I can get creative with the dimensions of the photos I use, which is awesome because I LOVE big pictures. The word art from this patterned paper was my jumping off point to look for a photo of an "ordinary moment" with my daughter and write about all the things I can see in it. This type of scrapbooking is so rewarding to me! It makes me pause and reminds me to appreciate the everyday stuff of life.

100% You - Hybrid scrapbooking: using a combination of digital and physical products. This is ME! I'm always excited to check out the digital products and see what kinds of stories they inspire. I especially love the digital stamps! I love being able to resize them to be a focal point or title in a layout, which can be really hard to do with the physical versions of these amazing designs. This hybrid layout features a big photo (again, are you beginning to see a trend here?), journaling from my computer about what I see in this picture (I used a freebie typewriter font called Remington Noiseless), digital stamps for the title and a little added something at the bottom of my journaling, and some super fun die-cuts from the Bistro Add-on that complimented the colors and design in my photo. Super simple but effective!

Little Moments - This page is all about the photo and the journaling. It was the products in this month's Documenter Kit that inspired this 8.5" x 11" layout. The Documenter stamp set is so awesome and the die-cuts are definitely a favorite, too! I loved the "little moments" stamp, and it was my starting point to write about the little things I love about spring right now. I also have to tell you that I LOVE that blue paper with the white daisies, and I'm keeping it safe until I figure out the perfect project to use it on, but I couldn't resist adding a little strip of it here to help ground the long column of journaling.

Right Now (Documenter spread) -  I'm completely hooked on the 9" x 12" format for my Project Life® album. I made the switch sometime last year and can't imagine going back to 12" x 12" at this point. I'm working in a monthly format, with multiple spreads for each month, organized chronologically. The "find time to do what makes your soul happy" was a favorite card, and I knew it needed to be on this page. I also love the digital number hands stamp and used it to make a custom card for this page.

Alfresco Documenter Main - This is the right half of the "Right Now" page, made just with the main Documenter Kit. I prefer to type my journaling (because if you haven't noticed yet, I tend to write a lot!), which lets me fit more words into those little 3" x 4" pockets and keeps things nice and tidy. This is a great reason to use the digital version of the journaling cards (so easy!), but I use both the digital and physical cards in my projects. Best of both worlds!

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See more from Pam:

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