First Layout of the Year!

 

What a thrill it was last night as I put on my finishing touches and completed (in one afternoon) my first layout of 2014! Excuse the poor picture quality, but I love the page so much I had to post it asap.

 

I was inspired by Sketch number 32 on Shimelle.com - her "sketch to scrapbook page" series always gives me a pattern to follow as closely as I want. Sometimes I completely reinvent my look, but this time I stuck to the pattern and I love the way my page turned out.

The main idea behind stacking all the photos, journaling, title, and embellishments on one side is that it leaves plenty of room for a gorgeous patterned background paper to show. Since I never seem to know what to do with those prints, I have practically eliminated them from my purchases in recent years. Which I realized as I went searching for one lol. The B sides of these larger patterns is usually something much more basic and that's what I tend to feel comfortable using. So what seemed like a really easy page to build actually took  me two or three dashes between chores into my scrap space to locate a background by Creative Imaginations,  and two photos that I could crop and stack.

These photos of the girls playing with Spunky the dog after mixing up some all natural, no sugar cookies are so fun and I love the expressions on all the subjects.  As Shimelle does on her example, I stacked some layers from an Echo Park pattern. That sheet is neat- on one side there are four patterns in 6x6 blocks, so I just used the two that seemed to go best. Under those I layered a beautiful peach woodgrain by SEI. I know you can't really see it, but it seemed to help bring all my colors together in a very unobvious way, Plus, I love woodgrain and SEI so its lovely just to have it in there for me :-)

Keeping my embellishment areas simple, a few pieces of  two border stickers from the same sheet the title came on look a bit like washi tape layers. I only added a few enamel baby themed dots and a couple twirls of bakers twine. Using a dot roller adhesive over the top of my twine before looping it onto my layout is an easy way to get my loops to stay put and not have to worry about messy glue getting all over the place.

For my title sticker, I had to use a bit of glue to get it to stick down.   To be honest, it's one sticker, that's been cut in two, and so you see part of the title on the left and the rest under the photos.  To be even more honest, it is a sticker Rainier and I used on a project a month ago, covering a Hubs peanut box with washi tape to brighten up the kitchen shelves a bit. Cause that's where the box is. Anyway, the stickers came off right away and I've had that Homemade Memories sticker stuck in a crack against the wall. Decorations in the kitchen! lol, I'm glad it has a home now where it won't get junked up.

So, what are your scrappy resolutions (if any) for this year? I'd love to hear of them!

 

Finishing Touches

How do you make use of the beautiful paper getting
"lost" between pages in your albums? I'm talking about the backsides of those gorgeous, eye catching designer papers we love to use.
In this example, I covered the brad tines that poked through from my previous post's layout with a few of my many washi tapes in different patterns and widths. This is something I often do; since I have a lot of tape, and I tend to pull pages in and out of the protecting sleeves more times than I maybe ought to. The tape is great for covering seams, too, since I usually cut the majority of background papers out as well. I'm such a paper hoarder!
After I laid my strips of tape down, my eye happened to fall on the stack of dollar bin embellishments I've been whittling down. I realized, I can use these Right Now! and with a few peels off their protective backings, a new page layout was in its early stages of development.
One of the main "problems" with using the backside of an already made layout is that, without proper planning i.e. almost every page I make, you are left with a page that NEEDS to have a consequential set of pictures on it in your album. If you are scrapping a series of photos, this usually will work out pretty well, you just put the next set of pictures down and boom, you're on to the next page! On the other hand, if you scrap -and print photos- out of order like I do, then often times that plank page will sit, basically forgotten, until the next time your album is looked through. With this in mind, I added a simple title that I figured could end up to be applicable to any photos of my girls that might end up being put in place at a future date.

Am I worried that the page will never be completed? NO! because, a)I used the embellishments I wanted to in a design that I'm happy with, and now I can buy more, b) I can always use the page for jounalling if I never find or print photos that "go" here, and c)whocares! Another page is completed and it looks like I had fun making it. Which I did!

Just Be Yourself

Isn't part of the fun of having children, that you can identify yourself in their features and actions!? I love seeing my little mini-me strike a pose, whether she looks like me ( right hand picture) or Ray (squinty eye on the left side). However she looks, she's a doll in my opinion!