Hey everyone! There's been a whole lot going on at Kerri Bradford Studio this past week, as we celebrated (inter) National Scrapbook Day! I had a layout go up yesterday, which was the last day of the celebration. Hopefully, you caught the sale she had going on and her new stamp release.
When I saw Kerri's new Hello Summer stamp set, I was immediately reminded of the photos from an annual family BBQ we had last summer that I've been meaning to create a layout with. While I love physical stamps, I find that I tend to use digital stamps way more often in my projects. So I started with the digital version of her Hello Summer stamp set, and pulled in bits and pieces from a few other digital stamp sets, a printable kit, and even some PNG files from her cut files to create a two page hybrid layout.
I'm a huge fan of pocket pages. I'm also a huge fan of photo collages. Since I didn't want to create this as a pocket page layout (as it will go in my family album, which is all traditional layouts), but I had all of my photos printed as 3x4's and 4x6's, I decided to work them into a "collage" of sorts, using a grid design. I started by arranging all of the photos that I wanted to use, leaving a spot for a title card and two journaling cards. Once that was set up, I knew that I needed to create five 3x4" filler cards to complete the spread.
For my title card, I used the "BBQ heat up the grill" from the Hello Summer digital stamp set, and added "family" above it (from the Giving Thanks kit). I added the striped piece along the left side of the title card by copying and pasting a piece from one of the printable cards.
I also like to match the colors for my digital stamps with the colors on the printable cards, by using the color sampler tool in Photoshop. I just click on the color that I want on a printable image, and then grab the color code to use on whatever digital piece that I want to make that color. If that makes any sense. Lol.
While I could have pulled out some patterned papers to help fill those empty spots, I knew that I could find just what I needed in Kerri's vast collection of kits! Her Simply Summer kit is filled with 3x4" printable cards that were the perfect match for my photos and the theme of the page.
I picked out five cards, printing two of them as-is, and tweaking the other three to add in some additional elements - adding digital stamps and a few words taken from Kerri's cut file kits (the PNG files are great for using digitally). The card above originally had "loving life" in the center of the circle, but I replaced it with "sunny days" from the Hello Summer digital kit.
I created two journaling cards, as I wanted to add one to the first page of the spread and one to the second page of the spread. I added "july" using the About Time digital stamp set.
The printable card above originally had polka dots covering the entire card. I knew that I wanted to add a little something to it, so I deleted a few rows of dots in Photoshop, and added a few digital stamps. The label is from the Label Maker digital stamp set, and the "sunshine on my mind" is from the Hello Summer digital stamp set.
Total side note. I will never, never understand why I can print a bunch of 3x4's and 4x6's - and they do NOT fit perfectly on a 12x12 page. I end up with gaps, and often have to trim parts off that hang over the edge of the page. I really feel like they should magically fit together perfectly. Lol.
I left this printable card as-is, since it was perfect for my page.
Another printable card that fit my page perfectly - nothing extra needed on this one.
This card actually had stripes from top to bottom, but I wanted to add some text to it. So I deleted several rows of stripes in Photoshop, which left me room at the top to play with. Both of these words were done using the PNG files from Kerri's cut files - "pool" is from the Summer Lovin' kit and "splash" is from the Summer Vibes kit.
On my second journaling card, I added the "sun and fun" using the Away digital stamp set, and the year was just typed with a fun font. I love creating hybrid layouts like this - where I get to play digitally, printing my journaling cards and filler cards, and adding them right in with my photos on a traditional layout.
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