Paper Made Bakery: June Kit Reveal + Blog Hop + Giveaway

The Hop:
Konnichiwa and welcome to Paper Made Bakery's June release blog hop! If you've just arrived from Ryann's site, then you've come to the right place. If you would like to start from the beginning, please hop on over to Paper Made Bakery's blog. If you are lost, this the blog hop order:

Paper Made Bakery

Stephanie

Savannah

Ryann

Michelle (←you are here)

Lisa

Ashley

The Kit:

June's Fresh Baked Kit entitled Cherry Blossoms features an exclusive stamp set by Sweet Stamp Shop made especially for our kit this month. The kit also contains Basic Grey's Konnichiwa paper pack, as well as some of their coordinating die-cut paper and canvas flowers and stitched brads. In addition to the Konnichiwa embellishments, there are also various buttons, May Arts ribbons, and some unique findings like a tiny bunch of red paper flowers, a butterfly and an Asian coin. 

June's Fresh Baked Kit

The Reveal:

I was inspired by the love stamp from the Cherry Blossom stamp set above to make an Asian themed layout. Luckily I was just in Taiwan last month so I had a few photos of visiting my Dad there.  

I Love Taiwan Layout

The Details:
Even though this is a Japanese themed collection, the character for love is written in Kanji, which is the same character for love in Chinese. I decided to write my layout title in Chinese to match the stamp. I went to an online Chinese dictionary and printed out three more characters, so my title reads, "I Love Taiwan". 

Vertical Title: I Love Taiwan

In terms of the layout design, I was imagining a smattering of small Polaroids. I used my design program, QuarkXpress and made some rectangles for the Polaroid film. I made smaller rectangles for the photos in the middle. I typed a description below the photo in a handwriting font to simulate writing captions on the Polaroid photo. I was looking around online and I saw lots of free downloads of Polaroid frames, like this one. 

Making my own Polaroids

I checked in the Silhouette Store and they did have an image of Taiwan which I purchased. I cut it in a 2" size and adhered the butterfly embellishment from the kit on top. 

Taiwan Die Cut with Butterfly

The cardstock background looked a bit plain to me so I made my own patterned paper by adhering the flower die cuts plus a few more punched flowers in the background. I anchored the Polaroids by placing them over three strips of the May Arts ribbon, so it continues the vertical look of the title. 

String of Polaroid Photos

The only thing I added to this month's Cherry Blossom kit, were my photos and a piece of 12 x 12" cardstock for the background. I encourage you to also try making a layout using 6 x 6" papers. It is kind of fun to try to think of ways to fill the larger page with smaller papers. 

The Giveaway:

As a way to say thank you for participating in today's blog hop, Paper Made Bakery is giving  a sumo sized goodie bag to one lucky participant. You can enter by using the Rafflecopter widget or by leaving a comment below. 

You have until midnight of Sunday, June 3rd to enter and a winner will be announced on PMB's blog on Monday, June 4th, 2012.

Good luck to all! Your next stop is Lisa's blog. Remember there are daily inspiration projects and tutorials on the PMB's blog all month long. 

Thanks for hoppin' by,

a Rafflecopter giveaway