Introducing our May Guest Designer, Rebecca Luminarias

It's always a treat to be introduce each month's guest designer and this month is no exception.  Please welcome Rebecca Luminarias to the blog!  Rebecca is such a talented crafter who can do it all - scrapbooking, cardmaking, planners, but her real passion is packaging and she is SO GOOD at it!  Get ready to be wowed, but first here's a little more about Rebecca:

I live in Southern California with my husband (Arvin) and 2 small children (Augustus & Anemone). My crafting obsession is gift wrap & tags; I love to create my own, but I also enjoy seeing how others turn a plain box into a work of art. I'm an introvert who craves quiet alone time, but I also enjoy being around close friends. I have a vivid and very active imagination, which is a gift and a curse, inspiring both passionate creativity and relentless worry. For the last 10 years, I’ve been pushing that imagination to focus more on the creative side, and it just might be working! Currently, you can find me on the Pinkfresh Studio and Make a Pretty Life Design Teams. In addition, I’m the Packaging Ambassador and a Product Designer for Papertrey Ink.

For my first project, I kept the technique fairly simple, just repetitive stamping. One of my favorite project types is gift wrapping and when I can, I make my own wrapping paper with stamps and ink. It's fairly easy but the result can look like you went out and bought expensive gift wrap (when really, it's just ordinary printer paper!).

That's what I've done here, choosing stamps from Neat & Tangled sets that make great modern patterns. I'm using mainly Scandinavian Prints, but I also borrowed the 'x' stitches from Hand Stitched. Practice on scrap paper first, to get a color scheme and design you're happy with. I chose off-set circle blooms and the dotty flower centers stamped in a repetitive form in pink, coral, and chartreuse. Once I had the pattern and colors I liked, I covered an entire 8.5" x 11" sheet of bright white copy paper with it.

After I wrapped a box in my pretty paper, I also created a matching card and tag. The 4" x 4" folded card features the same design with the added sentiment "find joy in the ordinary" matted onto gold glitter tape and a strip of lace for a hint of texture.

On the tag, I stamped "hello friend" near the bottom and then stamped the flower centers all over the rest of the card. I chose not to add the pink circles because the tag was poised to sit right on top of the stamped gift wrap and I wanted it to stand apart from it. I made a pale pink embroidery floss bow and then slipped the tag under gold fuzzy ribbon to keep it in place.

My second pattern has more lines and bolder colors than the first and could easily be turned into a masculine wrap by changing out the coral shade. I love that circle with the lines around it, also from Scandinavian Prints, and I accented it with burnt orange x's from Hand Stitched. The coral flowers in between add an unexpected pop of color and a solid shape to the mix.

While I did mostly stick to laying out the design evenly, it's not perfectly aligned and I'm okay with that. I didn't set out to create a perfectly spaced pattern--I just wanted to create something fun!

I made a matching card and tag for this package, as well, and again made a slight change by opting to stamp "just for you" in coral instead of stamping the semi-circle flowers. The thick brushed lettering still offers a solid contrast to the thin lines in the rest of the pattern but allows me to get a sentiment in there, too. I stamped "just for you" first, from the Sweet Treat Sentiments set, and then filled the shapes in around it.

The tag is the exact same concept as the card, just smaller. I did add a glitter hole reinforcement and some navy seam binding, which I used to tie the tag onto the package.

I hope you'll try some patterned gift wrap if it's not something you've done before! You can use printer, kraft or solid colored wrapping paper if you have a large gift to wrap. I adore the Scandinavian Prints stamps in their flower forms, but they also make really cool modern patterns, too!