... just Laura

Updating The School Albums: Part 1

This week is my girl's last week of school. Hard to believe we have knocked out another school year already. With the end of the year, I am seeing lots and lots of papers come through the door lately. Now that they are in the higher up grades, it seems like they don't bring papers home all that often, throughout the year. It's like they save it all up until the end, and then dump it all on me at once. So it's definately time to do a little work on their school albums.

I want to back up just a bit, for anyone new to my blog, or for those of you that havn't read any previous posts about my school albums. I am using the original school kit from Becky Higgins. It's hasn't been available for years, but you can occasionally still find some on Ebay. Although I do know that Becky is working on a totally new school kit, that incorporates a lot of her Project Life system.

THIS is the post where I finally forced myself to gain control over the girls school stuff. I had it organized, but I hadn't really gone through the piles. I then posted about what came out of that, and when I finally put all of these albums together, in this post HERE. This was all back in February of 2009. Ages ago, right? A year and a half later, in September 2010, I posted HERE with an updated look at the albums. In fact, I had a video, walking you through one of Alyssa's albums.

 

So, is anyone still with me, after all that backtracking? LOL. Sorry. Just wanted to cover everything in one post, with all the links and important stuff. Now, back to what I have done recently. The following photos were all taken back in February, of this year. I felt like I had a good amount of papers and school stuff, to spend a bit of time putting some of it away. I find that if I set aside a bit of time, twice a school year (somewhere in the middle, and then again at the end), I am able to keep everything caught up.

When I'm ready to get started, I pull out their albums. I have four albums total set up for Alyssa's school years, and four albums total for Sarah school years. So I just pull out whatever album holds the grade they're in, and the grade I'm working on. I also pull out extra page protectors, in varying sizes. I have the 12x12 pages inside the albums. But I love to add in 8.5x11 page protectors for awards, class photos, and report cards. And I have mixed in the 6x12 page protectors for holding concert programs.

Thoughout the year, I keep two simple folders in a drawer in the kitchen. One for Alyssa and one for Sarah. When they bring home progress notes, report cards, awards, concert programs, school photos, or any random homework or tests, I just toss them in their folder. It's a simple way to keep things in one place, until I'm ready to put everything into their school albums.

Just because I put something in the folder, doesn't mean I will necessarily keep it. The school work, homework, and tests are something I weed though at the end of the year and select just a handful of things to keep.

I always keep the awards, report cards, programs, schedules, etc.

Then I take over the old scrap island (that now resides in the playroom) and spread everything out. I sort papers, trim school photos, put report cards in order, cut out newspaper clippings, and try to make sense out of everything I have saved. It's messy and confusing, even though I'm really only working on one school year at a time. Which I still don't understand. It should be easier, right ;)

The girls have their last day of school on Friday. So my plan is to get everything in order, and then I'll share part two of this school album update. Stay tuned!

Washi Workshop Giveaway *Winner*

Time to announce a randomly drawn winner for a free spot in The Washi Workshop, taking place over at Studio Calico, and being taught by the talented Megan Hoeppner of Creating Keepsakes magazine.

Congrats Laura! Send me a quick email, and we will get you all signed up and ready for class!

I wish I could get you all signed up, but I don't have that much power ;) There's still time to sign up though. Just go HERE to find out all the details and get registered.

The Washi Workshop *Giveaway*

Washi tape. It's everywhere these days. So many of the manufacturer's are adding these fun tapes into their product collections, and there are so many ways to work them onto your projects. I have a great workshop to share with you today, but first, a quick card share.

Yesterday, I took out my stash of washi tape, and decided to whip up a quick card. I dug out an old chipboard heart that I've had for years, and picked out a fun mix of tapes to use. This could not have been simpler to do. I simply covered the chipboard heart with strips of washi tape. What I love about the tapes, is that you just peel and stick. No adhesive needed, no extra steps. It took me about a minute to cover this heart.

Once I had the heart covered, I used my scissors to trim off any excess tape. I adhered the heart to the front of my card, and added some tiny letter stickers for my sentiment. Easy Peasy.

The Washi Workshop is taking place over at Studio Calico, and is being taught by the talented Megan Hoeppner of Creating Keepsakes magazine. This workshop is full of new ideas for digging into your stash and using all of that wonderful washi tape on your projects!

You can also visit the Studio Calico blog and the Creating Keepsakes blog, for chances to win a free spot in this workshop.

And you can continue to hop over to a few more designer's blogs, where you can find even more opportunities to win a free spot in the workshop. Each designer will lead you to a few different designers, so there are lots of chances to win. For your next stops, you'll want to visit Julie Ebersole and Kim Watson.

And last, but certainly not least, I'm excited to be able to give a free spot in The Washi Workshop away to one of my lucky blog readers! Just leave me a comment to be entered in the random drawing. I will announce a winner on Monday.

Bella Blvd & The Twinery Team-Up

This week, Bella Blvd and The Twinery have teamed-up for a special week of inspiration. Both manufacturers have swapped product with each other, and let their designers have fun, creating projects that feature both the Bella Blvd products, along with The Twinery's baker's twine.

I kept looking at the yummy packages of baker's twine sitting on my desk, and all I could think about was THIS LAYOUT that I had created a few years ago, of one of my daycare girlies. I knew I wanted to lift that layout, for one of the girl's albums. I really liked the pink, green, and grey color combo, and knew it would go perfectly with this photo of alyssa. This is an all time favorite shot of her, and oddly enough, I don't think I have ever scrapped it.

I started by picking out some tone-on-tone patterned papers in pink, green, and grey. After I had those narrowed down, I found a few papers that had those same pinks, greens, and greys.

It's such a simple thing to do. Wrap the twine around the patterned paper block. But I think it adds a lot of interest to the page. After cutting the papers into the right size, I used my distressing tool to rough up the edges of the papers. This adds lots of texture, and it also helps the twine to "grab" the sides of the paper, so that it doesn't shift around too much.

I simply wrapped the twine around the paper, very randomly, and then tie a bow in the front when I'm done. I adhered these pieces using pop dots, to add even more dimension to the page.

And the misting. There's a story to the misting on this layout. I created this entire layout, on plain white cardstock. I think that was partly because I was lifting my older layout, and that's how I created that page. But on this page, it needed something. With the lighter colors in my papers, I think it just needed a little something extra.

The problem was that I had already created and adhered everything. And misting should really be done beforehand, since there's not a lot of control over where the spray goes. I got this bright idea that I could just cover everything except the bottom and the top of the page, and just mist those parts. I ended up going right over my title letters, since they were black and wouldn't really show. But I ended up making a bit of a mess on the page.

The top part suffered the most. I had mist on my journaling strip, so I tried to re-print it. My printers can never seem to understand when I tell them I want to print on an 8.5x12 piece of paper. They just assume I mean 8.5x11, and end up cutting off the end of my journaling. After a few tries, I gave up, and just had to use what I had. I did add the scalloped grey dotted border sticker above my journaling, and I think that added a lot to the page.

Take a few minutes, and check out what our designers have been creating with the gorgeous baker's twine on the Bella Blvd blog and The Twinery blog. 

Bella Blvd: Plastino & Mother's Day Project Sheet

Yesterday, on the Bella Blvd blog, we had a new project sheet available for download. For this month, I created a Mother's Day layout, featuring the Plastino collection. 

You might be thinking, "Wow, she's quick. Took a photo on Mother's Day and has it scrapped already". LOL. Not quite. The girls and I took this photo over a month ago, since I knew I had to get this layout done. The way I see it, I never remember to take photos like this ON the actual holiday. So I was just working ahead a bit. Nothing wrong with that, right ;)

The Plastino collection is an older collection, from Bella Blvd, but still a great one. I have always loved the aqua flower patterned paper. I used that as the base of my layout. The other paper I choose to use, was the creamish paper, with clusters of flowers surrounded by dotted circles.

I picked a few of the encircled flower clusters (all from the outside edge of the paper) to use on three different sections of my layout. I handcut around the dotted circles, and then used my distressing tool around the edges of the circles. I adhered these three sections to the aqua patterned paper, in the same exact spots that I had cut them out of the creamish paper.

I added a few scalloped edged stickers, using pop dots for extra dimension. Along with the sticker in the upper left corner of the page, I also added a few Blooms-A-Bella flowers.

I added a piece of my favorite graph patterned paper, from the Family Dynamix collection, on the bottom right side of the page. I needed a more neutral paper, so that my title would stand out. I used some chipboard alphas and letter stickers, to create my title. A chipboard border, some more flowers, a button, and a few stickers finished off the page.

You can download our project sheet, with full instructions for creating this layout, right HERE.

Bella Blvd: Mother's Day Cards

Today, on the Bella Blvd blog, we are sharing Mother's Day cards. I pitched in with two cards of my own, and for once, I have cards made and ready to go, days ahead of time!

When I sat down to create my cards, I had some colors in mind that I wanted to work with. And right away, I turned to the Tail Waggers & Cat Naps collection. Yes, I pulled out a pets collection to make my Mother's Day cards. I love the brown woodgrain paper, and used that as the base of my card. And the circles paper is another favorite. It has random colored hearts in some of the circles.

It also has paw prints in some of the circles. Which I figured I should cover up, right ;) So I took a regular old hole punch, and punched out some of the heart circles from a leftover piece of the circle paper. I used mini pop dots to adhere them directly over the paw print circles. It gave the card some added dimension at the same time.

I used some of the same patterned papers for my second card, but added in a bit more pink this time. I used a cloud border punch from Fiskars on a few of my patterned paper strips, and layered them along the bottom of the card.  

In these photos, the flag appears to be a shade of blue that doesn't really match the aqua patterned paper. Interesting. I'm positive that it matched in person. LOL. I liked the idea of mixing the flag, the chipboard letters, and the mini alpha stickers, to create my card sentiment.

Supplies Used:

So Fast - A Creating Keepsakes Layout

I'll be honest. National Scrapbook Day came and went, and I didn't do a single thing related to scrapping. In fact, I havn't scrapped a thing in almost two weeks. I wanted to throw something new up on the blog, so I figured I would share my other layout from the Simple Scrapbooks special issue from Creating Keepsakes.

As seen in the Simple Scrapbooks Special Issue, from Creating Keepsakes magazine. Copyright Creative Crafts Group. Posted with prior permission from the publisher.

There are a few articles in this special issue called "Keeping Scrapbooking Simple", and they are broken down to how many supplies you used. I created this layout for the "7-9 Supplies" article, and was asked to use just 7 products total for my page. The catch was that each patterned paper counted as 1 product. I love my patterned paper, so right away, I knew that at least 3 of my products would be patterned paper.

I started out with the die cut paper from Studio Calico. I just loved the cut out circles, and thought it would add lots of interest to what would end up being a "simpler" layout. I layered it over a neutral graph paper, so it wasn't solid white peeking out of those circles. Then for my third patterned paper, I choose a bright blue paper from Pebbles, to pick up the blue in Sarah's shirt. My fourth product was the green ribbon, used to seperate the patterned papers on the page.

My fifth product was the corrugated alphas I choose for my title. I choose red alphas, because I knew I would be using the dimensional butterflies, and a few of them were red. The butterflies were my sixth product. They are layered, with 3 different colors/patterns/papers, and come with the rhinestone brads already in the centers. I wanted to add a few matching rhinestone brads to my ribbon, to mimic the butterflies. So those three brads in the ribbon were my seventh product.

If you see this layout in the Simple Scrapbooks special issue, it will look a bit different. You won't see the computer printed journaling, and instead will see hand written journaling strips. Turns out, my computer font was a "product", and I had to switch it out. Bummer, I know. LOL. I know our handwriting is important to see in our albums, but I also feel like my own handwriting ruins the clean and linear look of my layouts. This is still the version that I love, so it's the version I'm sharing :)

Supplies Used:

Kerri Bradford Studio: NSD Week *Giveaway WINNERS*

Look at me. Announcing winners on the day that I said I would announce them ;)

I appreciate all of your comments on my post the other day, and hope you found the video (even in it's blurry state!) a bit useful. And now, I have two of these $25 gift cards to give away, to two lucky blog readers. Here's what the random number generator spit out:

Congrats Amy and Cynthia!!! Send me a quick email, and I will get your info over to Kerri!

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Also, make sure and visit Kerri's blog to check out what she has on sale today!

And make sure and download Shari's freebie shape for today, which you can find on Kerri's blog. There will be even more good stuff going on there tomorrow, including a huge giveaway! You won't want to miss it!

CK Club: NSD Countdown Kitchen Challenge

This week, on both the Creating Keepsakes Blog and the CK Club Blog, we are celebrating the week leading up to National Scrapbook Day with the theme "scrapbooking around the house". Each day this week, we are focusing on one room of the house. There are activities, tips, challenges, and prizes, on both blogs. Today, we are visiting the Kitchen, and I volunteered to do the Recipe Challenge over on the CK Club blog.

If you've never done a recipe challenge before, you're in for a special scrapbooking treat! Sometimes it's really easy to get stuck when you have a scraproom full of beautiful papers and accents. Forcing yourself to use a few specific items on your scrapbook page is a great way to switch your creative gears! Today, we are giving our challenge a little bit of a kitchen twist! Think of your supplies as ingredients. Pull out a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, just like the recipe calls for. Then follow that recipe, as you assemble and mix your ingredients together, to create a perfect layout!

The Five Ingredients:
1. 3 patterned papers - measure out 1/3 of each paper, to use on layout
2. 1 all purpose title - letter stickers or die cut title
3. 1 perfect photo
4. 1 baker's dozen journaling strips/blocks/tags
5. 3 sprinkles of embellishments - button and/or brads

The Recipe:
Step 1: Start with 3 patterned papers. Measure out 1/3 of each paper, to use on your layout.
Step 2: Add 1 all purpose title, using letter stickers or a die cut title.
Step 3: Find 1 perfect photo, and combine with the layout.
Step 4: Computer print or hand journal 1 baker's dozen journaling strips/blocks/tags.
Step 5: Sprinkle on 3 clusters of embellishments, such as buttons and/or brads.

All you need to do for this challenge is to create a scrapbook layout using the five ingredients, and keeping to the basic recipe. Upload a picture of your layout to the Club CK idea galleries and you could win some scrapping goodies! For all of the details and cut off dates, go HERE.

Supplies Used:

Kerri Bradford Studio: NSD Week - Photo Templates

As part of the week-long NSD celebration at Kerri Bradford Studios, today is all about the photos!

Photo templates! One of my favorite things to use on my layouts. I've been using photo collages on my layouts for years and years. I used to sit and create my own collages, which is fun. But takes forever and a day. This is why I am such a huge fan of photo templates. It has all of the design work done for you, and you simply drop your photos into the template and POOF ... you have a photo collage!

I created this fun collage, using some photos I randomly took of the girls and myself, back in January. No big story behind them. I just took my camera upstairs one night, snapped some photos of them where they were, and left. I might not have scrapped these photos together, when originally looking at them. But I had the fun Bright Side papers out, from one of the new My Minds Eye collections, and knew they would match perfectly and tie in the colors in the photos.

I love the simple look of white on white. I don't do it often, but I thought it would be fun to do with these flowers. The larger photo collage has a lot going on and takes up a lot of space on the page. So I didn't want to add to many other elements that would make it feel cluttered.

I like how the white on white adds interest, but also keeps the design clean and easy on the eyes. I added some threaded buttons to the centers of each flower for a fun touch.

I cut my title, using a few of the Bright Side patterned papers. I love Kerri's titles, that allow you to cut a word, or several of the words, from different papers. Adds such interest to the title.

Supplies Used:

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For my tips and tricks part of the week, I created a little video on how you can play with your templates a bit and customize them to fit your different photo needs. The template I used on this layout originally held 11 photos, but I only used 8 photos. You'll see how I did that in the video. A few things I have to say about the video. I thought it would look clearer, but it seems quite blurry. You have no idea how many ways I tried saving this and uploading this, to make it better. Didn't seem to help. It might work better to watch on Youtube, if it's looking cut off here. I've been sick for 5 days, so excuse the voice or any sniffles you hear from me. I'm a rambler, so no matter how many times I did this, I could not get it any shorter :)

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Kerri also asked us to share 5 of our favorite things. Hard to pick just 5 favorite things. But when asked to choose, I made impulsive decisions. Java Chip Frappacino's from Starbucks, which help me get so much done every day. Pinterest, which helps get me inspired, when I'm in a creative rut. Jeans, which are my daily staple to my wardrobe, and I just love a good pair of reliable jeans. Music, because I can't live without it. And Friends, which is my all-time favorite TV show, and one that I have recently become addicted to watching late at night on Nickelodeon ;)

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Now, I'm not quite done. I still have the shape that Kerri designed, per my request, available as a FREEBIE DOWNLOAD today. But only for today. If you don't go and download it today, it goes into Kerri's magic vault (wouldn't that be so cool to see if she really has one ;)), and will be available to purchase, along with all the other daily freebies, at the end of the week.

So head over to Kerri's blog, where you can find my FREEBIE shape, and also enter in her giveaway for the day. It's a gorgeous one, so you'll want to get your name in there!

And there's even more!!! Kerri is so super generous and sweet, that she has given me TWO $25 GIFT CARDS to give away to two of my lucky blog readers! How awesome is that! Just leave me a comment, and I will randomly choose two winners on Friday!

Kerri Bradford Studio: NSD Week-Long Celebration

Did you know that this coming Saturday is National Scrapbook Day? Or NSD, for short. My family still laughs when I try and claim that it's a holiday ;) Big things are going on over at Kerri Bradford Studio this week, in honor of NSD!

All week long, Kerri will be having sales, giveaways, and freebies! As part of her Creative Team, I, along with Nichol, Robyn, Shari, have all came up with some fun tips for you, projects, and a peek at our favorite things. Kerri will also be designing a free shape, inspired by each Creative Team member, that you can download on our featured day. But only on that day, because at the end of the week, they will all go into a kit that will be available for purchase!

Long story short ... you will want to visit Kerri's blog every day ;)

Each day this week, there will also be something different on sale! But if you see something you like, you must get it that day. Because the following day, that item will go back to normal price, and there will be new things on sale! Let's see what Kerri has on sale for today, Monday:

Check HERE for a video tutorial tip from Kerri, her freebie shape for the day, and to see what the giveaway for the day is (hint: project life)!

And check back here tomorrow, to see what I put together for the big week! If all goes as planned, there will even be a video ;)

CK's Simple Scrapbooks Special Issue *GIVEAWAY WINNER*

I'm always, always a day late in announcing winners for giveaways. Not sure why that is. Anyways, I'm back, and ready to announce a randomly chosen winner for a copy of the new Simple Scrapbooks special issue, by Creating Keepsakes.

Congratulations Jennifer! Email me your mailing address, and I will have the CK offices get your copy sent out to you!

Pebbles Guest Designer - Country Picnic

I'm back today, with the rest of my projects that were featured on the Pebbles blog yesterday, as a Guest Designer! I shared my projects with the Hip Hip Hooray collections yesterday, and today, it's all about the Country Picnic collection. 

This collection is gorgeous! I love the shades of greens and pinks, paired up with white and krafts. This was another one of my layouts, that I started to create, without even having any particular photos in mind. When it came time to dig out some photos, I came across these photos I took of my friend Deneen's daughter, Holly. I have already created a layout of her twin sister, Heather, so it was only right that I scrap a layout about Holly as well.

Once again, I started with my favorite paper saving trick (the second trick on that post), to create the base of my layout. I cut out the entire center of the embossed green dotted paper, and the white heart paper as well. I just left the framed around all four sides and layered them together, since I knew my kraft dotted paper would cover the inside parts that were missing. Do you notice anything funny with the hearts? Kills me that once I got to adhereing photos and embellishments, I wasn't paying attention and now the hearts are sideways. LOL.

I love that Pebbles came out with the corrugated alpha stickers! They are available in 3 colors, and are a great size for titles. I trimmed a strip of flowered patterned paper, just a tad bit wider than the alphas, for my title piece. I cut a notch at one end of the strip, distressed the edges, and machine stitched right down the center before adhered my title letters.

Just a little side note. Green is my favorite color, and this shade of green is my favorite kind of green! I have tons of this green in my house, including a lot of the walls :)

The dimensional flowers were my favorite embellishment in this collection. They have thick, canvas-like petals, and a fun button in the center.

I also created a set of cards, using some scraps and the layered kraft tags. The layered kraft tags are so pretty, and have so much dimension to them. I love that it looks like you put a lot of work into creating the tags, but all you had to do was pull them out of the package!

I started each card with a white cardstock base, and I gave each one a light mist of pink misting spray. I used one of my border punches along some green cardstock, and adhered a small strip along the left edge of the card.

Then I dug out a scrap of pattern paper, distressed the edges, and adhered along the bottom of the card.

Then I adhered the layered kraft tag to the card at a slight angle, peeking out from behind the pattern paper strip. I added a few of the masking tape stickers along the side of the tag, and stapled down the tag strings.

I had lots of fun working with the Country Picnic collection! Thanks to Pebbles for letting me work with their super fun products, and for letting me join them on the blog today! Make sure to go over to their blog, and check out the rest of my projects. I also did a fun little Question & Answer thing, where you can read a few fun tidbits from me. AND, there's a giveaway over there, so you'll want to leave a comment for a chance to win! 

Supplies Used:

Pebbles Guest Designer - Hip Hip Hooray

I'm super excited to be guest designing on the Pebbles blog today! I worked with two different collections, so I thought I would share one collection today, and one tomorrow. First up, is the Hip Hip Hooray collection!

This collection is all about birthdays and celebrations. So I knew I wanted to scrap one of the girl's birthday parties. I hadn't done anything yet with the photos from Sarah's 11th birthday party, which was almost two years ago. It was a swimming party, of course (she's a fish!). And the photos all looked great, paired up with the fun, colorful Hip Hip Hooray papers. I choose two main photos for this layout. One group shot, and one of the birthday girl.

I started out by doing my favorite paper saving trick, and framing my page with a few strips of the glittered dotted patterned paper. I trimmed down a sheet of white cardstock, and misting it with some pink misting spray, and adhered it to the center of the page. I knew I wanted to use the glittered flag banners in the upper corner. The banners come with two flags in one, so that you can fold them over, and string them along the cord that is included. Which I think would be cute. But I also knew that if I simply cut them in half, and seperated the flags, I could get even more banners out of it! I added the fun little sequin candy dots inbetween the flags.

For my title, I wanted to mimic the banner in the upper corner. I choose a fun banner "Birthday" title from the Silhouette store, and cut it from one of the aqua pattern papers. I used the pink glitter alpha stickers to add the "Happy" to my "Happy Birthday" title. I really love those glitter alphas. They're thick, and I didn't find glitter all over the place, like a lot of glitter stickers will do.

I adhered my die cut title to the page, using pop dots. Then I tucked in a few of the adorable pinwheels, to embellish the title.

Some journaling. I find that most of our birthday parties have the same stories. There's lots of swimming, games and joking around, eating, presents, cake and ice cream. Just what a party should be about!

The upper corner needed a little something, so I added her age. It's a very important fact to get down on the page, since all of the swimming parties start to look the same ;)

But I didn't want to stop there. If I'm going to scrap some birthday photos, I'm going to scrap the entire party. Even though my two main photos were the focus of my layout, and this one page could easily stand on it's own, I wanted to add all the other photos in as well. I decided to use some divided page protectors, from Becky Higgins.

I'm actually going to have 3 of these pages, to go along with the single page paper layout. So I will have two 2 page spreads in the album, to cover the entire party. This first page has a selection of photos from the swimming fun. The next page will have photos from the games they played out of the pool, and the last page will have photos of the gift opening and cake and ice cream.  

I printed photos in three different sizes. I did a few 3x4", which will fit perfectly in the page protectors.

Then I printed some at 2.5x3.5", which I then matted on white cardstock, and then on some pattern paper.

And lastly, I printed some at 2.5x2.5". For these, I started with a 3x4" piece of white cardstock, which I misted with the pink misting spray. I took a scrap of dotted patterned paper, distressed the edges, and adhered in the corner. Then I adhered my photos using pop dots. I finished embellishing with alpha stickers and other embellishments. This entire page only took me about 20 minutes to throw together. I still need to do the other 2 pages, but I wanted to show what I had so far.

Since I am ALWAYS in need of birthday cards, I decided to use some scraps to make a few cards. I used my Silhouette to die cut "Party" from some pink patterned paper. 

For all of these cards, the thin strips of pattern paper across the bottom or top of the cards, are actually the UPC strips from the sheets of paper.

I had lots of fun working with the Hip Hip Hooray collection! Thanks to Pebbles for letting me work with their super fun products, and for letting me join them on the blog today! Make sure to go over to their blog, and check out the rest of my projects. I also did a fun little Question & Answer thing, where you can read a few fun tidbits from me. AND, there's a giveaway over there, so you'll want to leave a comment for a chance to win! Come back by here tomorrow, and I'll share the rest of my projects using the Country Picnic collection ;)

Supplies Used:

hello spring - a kerri bradford studio layout

i have a layout up at kerri bradford studio today.

i know that pretty much everyone, everywhere, has had some strange weather this past year. just two weeks ago, we had some of the craziest thunderstorms, a bit of rain, and even some hail. not your typical april weather for us here. but the following week, we had some gorgeous weather. it finally felt like spring, with all of us dragging out capri's, shorts, tshirts, and flipflops.

the girls were outside taking photos of themselves one afternoon, using their ipod touch's. it's what kids do, right? sarah alone has over 3000 photos on her ipod. lol! i find some great ones in there though, and i often think that i should save them and use them for something.

i "borrowed" some of their photos from that one afternoon, to create this layout. because the ipod touch's don't get you the best quality photos, i knew i wanted to keep them fairly small on the layout. i choose a filmstrip type photo template from kerri's storyboard #6 kit, and filled 3 of them with photos. because the coloring wasn't the best on a few, and because they changed shirts at some point, i decided to change all of the photos to black & white to keep a consistent look.

i wanted to add a touch of black across the top of the page, and went looking for a border to use. i came across these birds on a wire and had to use them.  

i choose several papers from amy tangerine, along with the black dot paper from crate paper. the colors might not be your typical "spring" colors, but i thought they gave a more funky vibe to go along with my teenager and my pre-teen's photos. i always love to use the titles with different fonts on them, and that i can cut from several different papers. it adds such a fun look to the titles.

i cut several daisies, from different pattern papers, in varying sizes, and added threaded buttons to the centers. to add more color to the page, i dug out some wide turquoise ribbon and adhered it across the page.

Supplies Used: