... just Laura

Jillibean Soup: Every Summer Has A Story

Hey everyone! Has it really been almost a month since I've blogged anything? Oh my. I feel like I had a ton to share at the beginning of August, all at once. And it just so happen that all of the layouts I created for Jillibean Soup for August ended up being scheduled at the end of the month. So I'm just now able to share them. And oddly enough, all of the layouts I created for September are scheduled for this week, so I'll be sharing lots of Jillibean Soup layouts over the next week or so ;)

Anyways, I've got a new layout to share that was up on the Jillibean Soup blog last week, so let's get to it.

A while back, my mom gave me a few old albums filled with my childhood photos. I was looking for a photo for a layout idea I had, and came across this photo of myself back when I was eleven years old. It gave me an idea for a totally different layout, and I printed out the other two photos right away.

And then the photos got pushed to the side, and I never got around to making that layout. But since I was asked to make a few summer themed layouts last month, it seemed like a good time to finally get these photos scrapped.

It took me a while to decide on a title. I usually start by looking to see if any of Jillibean's cut files catch my eye. Whether they work as a full title on their own, or if maybe a portion of the title/phrase will work - whether on it's own, or mixed with some die cut alphas or alpha stickers. 

For this layout, I thought the "every summer has a story" phrase would work well. I knew I could work my journaling, and what I wanted to say about these photos, off of that title. I die cut the title from patterned paper and cardstock.

Since the top part of my layout was white cardstock, I wanted to add a little texture and interest. I usually do this by adding a die cut background, cut from white cardstock as well. But I just happen to have a ton of white cardstock circles from one of my other layouts (they were the negative pieces from a circle background that I had cut), so I decided to use a bunch of those along the top of the page. 

I used an embossing folder, and ran them all thru my Cuttlebug. I don't always think to use my embossing folders as often as I should. I love the easy texture they add, with very little effort. 

I thought it would be cool to find photos of the girls, similar to the photo of myself - and taken around the same age that I was in my photo. I was eleven in my photo, and Sarah is eleven in her photo. Alyssa is actually ten in the photo I found of her, but it's close enough. 

I printed the photos as 3x3" pics, and arranged them across the page, adding small pieces of patterned paper below each photo as well. I was looking around for something to embellish those patterned paper pieces, and thought it would be fun to add the two digit year that each photo was taken. I probably should have added an apostrophe after the number, so that you know it's the year. And not just random numbers. Lol. 

Since the photos had different looks to them, and the photo of myself was a much older photo (that I scanned using my printer), I ended up changing the photos to black and white. This also allows you more freedom when it comes to picking out products, as you can use any colors you'd like. 

I actually started by picking out this 3x4" card from one of the Bite Size Bits patterned papers, and then picked out all of my other patterned papers based off the colors in the card. I also added a little puffy "love" sticker to the center of the larger flower on the card. I usually keep my embellishments pretty simple, so that little circle, and a few additional stickers at the top of the page were all I felt the layout needed. 

I'll try and get another layout posted on Thursday or Friday. Hope you're all having a great week!

Jillibean Soup: Sassy Pants

Hey all! I have a new Jillibean Soup layout to share with you today. I created this one way back in June, but it didn't go up on the Jillibean Soup blog until late July, and then I sort of forgot all about it. I guess it's ok that I waited to share this, since I can't share my last set of Jillibean projects until the first week in September. This is why I forget about stuff ;)

I've pulled out these photos of Sarah and I a few times over the last year or so, but always end up sticking them back in the box to scrap later. But when I sat down to figure out what I was going to make for my June layouts for Jillibean, I came across a cut file in their Silhouette store and knew it would pair up nicely with these photos. 

The original title was "fancy pants", but I knew that I would drop the "fancy" part and just work with the "pants" part of that cut file. 

"Sassy" seemed like the perfect word to describe my girl, as we do often call her Sassy Sarah ;) I ended up using some corrugated alphas for the first half of my title, and die cut "pants" from some navy blue cardstock. 

Once I figured out my plan for the page, I ended up having some empty space along the top of the page where I would be adding my title. I'm sure you all know that I'm not always a fan of plain white cardstock. I love to create a simple white-on-white look with a background cut file, and I happen to have a leftover piece of a woodgrain background from THIS layout, so I added that along the top of the page. 

My photos were all 3x4's, so I decided to create four 3" columns across the page. I added a photo to each column, staggering the placement, and then picked out a patterned paper for each column as well. The patterned paper in the column where my journaling is was the first paper I picked out and where I pulled the other colors from for the rest of the page. 

I also found several 2x2" cards, cut from one of the Bite Size Bits patterned papers, and added one to each of three columns that had photos in them. 

I then picked out a few flowers from a Pea Pod Parts package that coordinated with my papers, and added a flower along with each 2x2" card. 

Lastly, I added a tab die cut or sticker to each photo. I often debate over adding additional embellishments to my pages, as I'm not one to force anything onto a page just for the sake of adding product. I don't even think it crossed my mind to add anything else to this layout. I have more layouts these days that are made up of paper, photos, and die cuts, and I'm totally fine with that :)

Kerri Bradford Studio: Making Time

 

Hey all! I'm sharing another new layout that I created for Kerri Bradford Studio. I love that I was so inspired by these sketches, and that I was able to create five new 6x8" spreads for my personal album. 

While these sketches were designed for traveler's notebook layouts and 8.5x11" pages, they can easily be adapted for other sizes - whether 12x12", 9x12", 6x12", or 6x8" - whatever size you're loving right now! For this 6x8" spread, I used sketch #3 as my starting point.

I only had four photos, so I printed them each as 3x3" photos, and arranged them across the spread as shown in the sketch. I've actually created a sort-of simliar 6x8" spread on the topic of reading (seen HERE), and even used a few of these same photos. But every time I would see the bookshelf die cut (linked below), I would think about doing another layout on the theme. 

I have a few books that I've picked up over the last year or so, with the intention of starting to read again. I've seen a lot of people rave about "Girl Wash Your Face", so I figured it was worth a shot. And "Talking As Fast As I Can" was a no-brainer, since I'm a huge Gilmore Girls fan. I also have another book written by Lauren Graham, but forgot that I had it when I went to print these photos. 

The "Home Organization" book isn't really a book you'd read cover to cover, I guess. But it's filled with soooooo many great tips and ideas, and I'm always wanting to really read my way thru it. And I'm a big "Younger" fan (a show on the TV Land channel), so when I learned there was an actual "Marriage Vacation" book (a big part of the story line revolves around this book on the show), I had to get it. 

I die cut the fun bookshelf from black chalkboard patterned paper, using Kerri's A Good Book kit, and adhered it directly above the photos on the first page. 

I cut the word "time", using the Happy Birthday kit, from a pink patterned paper for my title. I die cut it twice, mainly because the first time I cut it, my machine messed it up. Lol. I cut it twice on the second try, to make sure I ended up with at least one good once. I got two good ones, so I layered them together for a little thickness. 

I added my journaling along the top of the second page of the spread, and added a few simple chipboard elements to finish off the page. Super simple and easy, and just my kind of layout :)

Kerri Bradford Studio: So Yeah

Hey all! I'm sharing another new layout that I created for Kerri Bradford Studio, as part of her birthday celebration last week. These are old photos, from years ago, and they tell an old story, from years ago. But I think it's one worth documenting. Since any photos of me taken back in 2006-2007, I'll most likely be wearing a hat (or a fun hair piece added in with my real hair). There's a close up of my journaling later in this post, which explains why ;)

Kerri asked if we'd like to work from some sketches, and provided us with three to choose from. While these are set up for traveler's notebooks and 8.5x11" layouts, they can easily be adapted to work for any size you desire. 

For this 6x8" spread, I used sketch #3, and with the exception of moving my journaling placement and adding an additional photo, I stuck to the sketch as it was. I printed all of my photos in varying sizes, and arranged them across the two pages, overlapping them as needed.

I've had these photos in a folder on my laptop for well over a year, with the intention of creating a layout with them. I often come across photos, while looking for completely different photos, and get ideas for layouts. So I've learned to plop them into a "for layouts" folder, so I don't forget about them - and I don't have to go digging for them again, as they often come from totally different months/years. 

I die cut a flower background from white cardstock, using Kerri's Background Basics #3 kit, and added that along the top of the two pages to create a white-on-white look. I added my die cut title, using the Summer Vibes and Something To Say #2 kits, to the top of the left page of the spread. 

I adhered my journaling along the top of the right page of the spread. Took me a few tries when it came to printing it, as I need to remember to size my font down a bit on these smaller spreads. A few simple enamel dots were all I added to embellish the page. 

After wearing a hat almost every day for that year or two, I have to say, I've never worn a hat since. Lol. I kept my hats for a while, as I had a hard time finding ones that I really liked on myself. But eventually I got rid of them, and crossed my fingers I wouldn't have those same hair issues again.

Kerri Bradford Studio: Mama Needs Some Chocolate

Hey all! I'm sharing another new layout that I created for Kerri Bradford Studio, as part of her 8 year celebration! As I mentioned yesterday, I ended up super inspired and created five 6x8" spreads for my personal album, and today I'm sharing the second of those five spreads.

Kerri asked if we'd like to work from some sketches, and provided us with three to choose from. While these are set up for traveler's notebooks and 8.5x11" layouts, they can easily be adapted to work for any size you desire. 

For this 6x8" spread, I used sketch #1. I kept with a full 6x8" photo for the right side of the spread, and didn't end up adding anything to the photo. 

Have you tried this stuff? Let's just say that if you haven't, you should. It's soooo good. Or maybe you shouldn't. It's also like crack, and you won't be able to stop eating it. Lol.

Instead of an additional photo for the left side of the spread, as shown in the sketch, I used that spot for my title. I printed out the "mama needs some chocolate" printable, from Kerri's Mama Needs Some kit, and used that for my title. I had an extra piece of a circle background that I had die cut for another project, using the Background Basics kit, and it ended up being just the right size to use on that left page.

I was originally going to print my journaling so that I could cut it into two tag shapes (to go with the tag on the sketch), and add one to the top of the page and one to the bottom of the page. But I ended up with too much to say in my journaling and ended up trimming them into blocks of journaling instead. I added a simple tab die cut and a few enamel hearts to finish off the page.  

I'll be back to share my three other layouts next week. Make sure to stop by Kerri's blog, if you haven't already, to keep up with all of the fun stuff she had going on this past week! 

Kerri Bradford Studio: Best Part Of The Routine

It's time to celebrate! Kerri Bradford Studio is celebrating it's 8th birthday! That's right, Kerri has been offering her awesome kits, stamps, and classes for eight years now. And we're celebrating all week long over on her blog. There's a big sale, of course. On purchases of $10 or more, you can save 30% on downloads and classes using the coupon CELEBRATE8. You can also save 15% on stamps–discount already applied. There are a few exclusions to the sale, like the July stamps that just came out. Yep, you read that right - there are two new stamp sets that Kerri released this past Monday.

Kerri suggested that we work with a few sketches this month. Those of us on the design team, along with some special guest designers, will be sharing layouts based off of these sketches. I love having a sketch as a starting point when working on layouts, as it helps take some of the thinking out of the equation for me. Sketches give you guidelines for where to put your photos, title, journaling, and even some extras like embellishments and papers - but they also give you the freedom to tweak the sketches to fit your needs as you start to work on your pages. I didn't set out to create as many layouts as I did, but I was so inspired that I just went with it, and ended up creating five 6x8" spreads for my personal album, which I'll be sharing over the next few days.

For this 6x8" spread, I used sketch #1 and I stuck pretty much to the sketch as it was presented. I almost always take a quick photo at the salon when I go to get my hair cut. It's such a cute little salon, and one of the only things that I do to pamper myself. I thought a few of those photos would tie in nicely with a few photos I had taken of my favorite hair products, as well as what I use to color my hair. 

I recently picked up a few new embossing folders from Joann's (they're from their new store brand, Park Lane), so I used one of those on a piece of white cardstock, before adhering along the top of the page. I added a die cut title, using Kerri's Life Additions #2 kit, along the top of the left page. 

I used a full 6x8" photo on the right page of the spread, and created a small photo collage of 6 photos (using a template from the Snapshots #3 kit) to add to the left page of the spread. I used a few patterned papers on this first page from Kerri's Plan It Fundamentals kit, printing them on white cardstock.

I also printed a few labels from that same kit. I added one of the printed labels to the right side of my 6x8" photo, and embellished it with a stamped image (from the Thankful stamp set), and a puffy heart sticker. The second label was added to the first page, to help complete my title. 

I'll be back to share another layout tomorrow. In the meantime, make sure to stop by Kerri's blog to check out all of the other fun stuff and projects that are being shared this week!

Kerri Bradford Studio: Thank You Cards

Hey everyone! I have a few new cards up at Kerri Bradford Studio today. I realized a while ago, that with all of the handmade cards that I have made over the last year or so, I don't seem to have any "thank you" cards. I thought it might be a good idea to create a few, so that when I have someone that deserves a special "thank you", I'll have cards ready to go. 

I picked two different designs to use for the backgrounds on my cards - a circle design from the Background Basics #2 kit, and a leaf design from the new Leaves kit.

I die cut each one several times from white cardstock, as I planned to layer them over patterned paper.

For the leaves design, I also took the time to remove all of the inside cut lines from each leaf, so that I could have a solid piece to layer behind the intricate design. 

 After assembling the base of my cards, using patterned paper, and the die cut backgrounds, I adhered a die cut "thanks" to each card.

I used two different "thanks" designs, both cut from black cardstock - one from the Hey Mama kit, and one from the Design Team Picks kit. 

For my patterned papers, I turned to my 6x6" paper pads. I love using these smaller papers for cards, as the designs are usually scaled down for smaller projects.  

I used a mix of Studio Calico and Amy Tangerine patterned papers for these cards. 

As always, I like to keep my cards fairly flat in design, to make them easier to mail. I don't tend to add many embellishments to simple cards like these, as I think they're just fine on their own. 

These cards were quick and easy to create (other than waiting for my Silhouette Cameo to finish cutting these intricate designs), but full of texture and interest at the same time. 

Doodlebug Designs: Hello Sunshine

Hey everyone! I'm back to share another layout I created as the recent guest designer for Doodlebug Designs. I love a good girl themed collection, as I have not only two girls of my own, but a ton of adorable little girls that I've had the pleasure of watching over the years as a home daycare provider.

I have a few favorite photos of one girl in particular that I've been wanting to use on a layout, and the Hello collection was perfect for doing just that. I printed my photos as 3x3's and 3x4's, and set out to create a grid of photos and patterned paper along the outside edges of the page.

I wanted to use up 3" of space along the outside edges, so I made sure to keep my two 3x4" photos on either the right of the left sides of the page. I worked the two 3x3" photos along the top and bottom of the page.

This left me with a 6x6" area in the center of the page for my title and journaling. I matted my 6x6" piece of white cardstock with a navy blue patterned paper and then added a scalloped border around the outside edges using my favorite border punch.

I wanted to work "sunshine" into my title, as our nickname for Alora was "Miss Sunshine". I used my Silhouette to die cut the word "sunshine" from a yellow grid patterned paper, and added a die cut "hello" from the Chit Chat package. 

I added some cute die cuts and word/phrase stickers to a few of the patterned paper blocks, using pop dots for a little dimension.  

I created a bunch of cards with the Hello collection as well, and I'll be sharing those later this week!

Doodlebug Designs: Sweet Girls

Hey all! I was thrilled to be asked to guest design for Doodlebug Designs this month.I'll be sharing my projects with you here this week. First up, a new layout! As soon as I saw the Hello collection, I feel in love with it! The colors are so bright and colorful, and they are all colors that I love to work with. I knew right away that this collection would be perfect for documenting a favorite photo of my girls and I, taken back on Mother's Day 2017. 

I was originally going to create a 6x8" pocket page spread, so I had printed my photo as a 6x8". Somewhere along the way, I switched over to a traditional layout. I trimmed a little bit off either side of my photo, to give me a smidge more room for my title. 

There are so many great flower die cuts in the Odds & Ends package, and I thought it would be fun to create a floral border going from the top of the page to the bottom. I started by adhering my photo and a few pieces of patterned paper on the right side of the page, and then started arranging the flower die cuts alongside, tucking them under the edge of the photo and patterned paper.

I combined one of the Chit Chat word die cuts ("sweet") with a word cut using my Silhouette machine for my title.  

I pulled out one of the banner die cut pieces to use, and decided to create a few more banner pieces from patterned paper to add across the top of the page. I traced the die cut banner onto my patterned papers and cut them out by hand. 

In the bottom left corner, I added the yellow "you make me so happy" sticker, and added a few additional die cut flowers. 

I used to print my journaling strips on plain white cardstock, but I found that when I was adhering those journaling strips on white cardstock, it didn't quite match. So I tend to print my journaling on the same textured cardstock that I use for the base of my pages now. 

I'll be back in the next day or two to share another fun Doodlebug layout with you. 

Jillibean Soup: Hello College

Hey everyone! I had a new layout up on the Jillibean Soup blog last week and wanted to share it with you all today. When I sit down to create my layouts each month, I try and look for any photos that are an easy match - whether to the theme of the collections/papers, or to the colors. These photos of Sarah, visiting the college she would later decide to attend, were a match in both ways. 

I pulled a few of my patterned paper from other collections, but most of what's on this layout is from the 2 Cool For School collection. At first glance, this collection is boy themed, but it can most definitely work for girl layouts as well. 

I was originally going to fussy cut a few of the banner flags out of a sheet of patterned paper, until I realized there were a few in the Pea Pod Parts die cut package. I had some small scraps of the brown woodgrain patterned paper, so I used a few thin strips to go along with the banner flags.

Anyone that knows me knows that I love to use die cut backgrounds, and I love to create that white-on-white effect when using them. I have a few of Jillibean's backgrounds cut from white cardstock already, so that I can cut off pieces as needed for layouts and/or cards.

I cut out the "best ever" circle off of one of the 3x4" journaling card on the Bite Size Bits patterned paper and adhered it in the upper corner, trimming off the excess that hung over the edges of the page.

I used one of Jillibean's alphabet cut files, found in the Silhouette store, to die cut the word "college" from both patterned paper and navy blue cardstock. I used some corrugated alphas for the other half of my title, using a smiling emoji in place of the "o" in "hello". 

I used the computer monitor stamp, from the Computer stamp & die set (intended for use with their shaker cards), and stamped it with black ink onto a scrap of aqua dotted patterned paper before die cutting it. I backed it with a scrap of ruled patterned paper and added the "class of 2021" with tiny alpha and number stickers. 

This page design is one that I've used often, and is perfect for those times when you have several 4-5 photos that you want to include. I love to add three 3x4's or 4x4's down the left side of the page, and then add another photo or two across the page. Then I just add strips of patterned paper and journaling above and/or below those photos in the center, adding my title along the top of the page. Easy peasy.

Jillibean Soup: Cheers

Hey everyone! I've got a new layout up on the Jillibean Soup blog today. I didn't intentionally set out to scrap this photo of Joe and I, taken last fall as we headed out to a wedding. But as I was shuffling through the collections, looking for patterned papers that I might want to use, the Flashy Tint paper from the Shades of Color collection grabbed my eye, and I immediately thought about this photo. 

The Flashy Tint patterned paper is on the left side of the page, and the other half of that paper has the same pattern, but in red, orange, and yellow. I knew that if I cut the paper in half, the green, aqua, and gray side would match my photo perfectly.

I then added in some yellow patterned paper to the other half of the layout, using a paper from the 2 Cool For School collection, to tie in with the yellow cardigan I was wearing. 

I wanted to add a larger embellishment/accent in the center of the page, to cover up the spot on the patterned paper where all three colors meet. I found a Jillibean Soup heart cut file in their Silhouette store and die cut it in a variety of sizes. I die cut them from white cardstock first - mainly because I was die cutting my title and all of the stars from white cardstock, so it was easy to just add the hearts on there as well. 

This ended up being an easy way to figure out the placement of the hearts, before I die cut them from patterned paper. Once I had the white cardstock hearts arranged to my liking, I picked out coordinating patterned papers to die cut several of the hearts from, keeping in mind where they were placed on the page. 

The "cheers" die cut is also a Jillibean Soup cut file. It actually says "cheers to the new year", but I only needed the word "cheer". It also came with all of the stars, which were sprinkled above the title, so I used those as well. I added a few adhesive sequins to the centers of the larger stars for some simple embellishing. 

Since I had the white cardstock hearts, as well as the hearts cut from patterned paper, I decided to layer them together. I offset them slightly, to create a shadow effect, and machine stitched down the center of each heart before adhering them in place. 

And a little sad story about the making of this layout. I had machine stitched all of my hearts, and was halfway into adding the zig zag stitching down the sides of the black cardstock in the center of the layout, when my sewing machine stopped working. I'm not super knowledgeable about my machine, but did what I could to try and figure it out. I finally called my mom and asked if she could swing by and look at it (good thing she's only a few blocks away). And she called it. Time of death, Sunday, May 20th, 2018 :(

I'm pretty sure I had that sewing machine for a good 10 years or so, and seeing as how it cost me less than $100 that long ago, it served me well. There's no use trying to get something like that fixed, since you can buy a new one for next to nothing. Well, not exactly. But I did get a new one, super similar to what I had, for under $90 at Target. So I'm back in business with my machine stitching. Which is a good thing, because I think it adds so much to layouts and cards.

Jillibean Soup: Happiness Is Homemade

Hey all! I've got a new layout up over on the Jillibean Soup blog today. I was browsing thru all of the cut files that Jillibean has to offer in their Silhouette store, and came across this "happiness is homemade" title. I immediately thought about pairing it with some food photos that I've snapped over the last few months.

I sized my title to fit across the top of the page, and die cut it from red and green cardstock. I've always been a fan of mixed font titles, especially ones with a great cursive font for one part and a clean, simpler font for the other part. 

I also used a circle background cut file from Jillibean, cut from white cardstock, to layer over the top part of the page which was also white cardstock. I always adhere my background pieces in place, and then add any mist spritzing that I want to do. 

I picked out six food photos that coordinated well, and arranged them in a photo collage using a template from Kerri Bradford Studio's Snapshots #3 kit. I added a small green border to each side of the photo collage, using a scalloped border punch. 

I had decided to use the File Cards to add my journaling to the right side of the page. I picked out three of the cards that coordinated, color wise, and debated on using my own handwriting (I'm so NOT a fan of it most of the time) or trying to computer print my journaling on them. Which I knew would take me forever to figure out and to get lined up right. 

I then decided to just computer print my journaling on white cardstock, and then trim it down to fit on the file cards. This actually worked out well, since the main part of the file cards was a cream shade, and the white works better with my design. 

Once I had my journaling added to each file card, I added a few mini staples to the sides of the cards before adhering them in place. I added some simple wood veneer flowers and adhesive sequins to embellish the right side of the page. 

I've been working on some new layouts and cards for Jillibean Soup, so they'll be coming up over the next few weeks :)

Jillibean Soup: Family Photo

Hey all! I've got my first layout as an official design team member over on the Jillibean Soup blog today. I used the Farmhouse Stew collection to scrap our family photo we took this past Thanksgiving. 

I knew I'd be keeping part of my background white, so I picked out a background cut file to layer over that part of the page. Jillibean Soup has a TON of awesome cut files in the Silhouette store. I thought the woodgrain background cut file would go well with the patterned papers and our photo. 

I cut the entire backgroun from white cardstock, and then trimmed it in half, since I only needed half of it for my layout. I've got the other half saved, as it can be used on another project. 

I also used one of their cut files for part of my title, die cutting "family" from the brown woodgrain patterned paper. I paired it with the Farmhouse Stew die cut alphas to complete my title. 

I picked out several patterned papers to coordinate with my die cut alphas, and cut a 12" wide strip of each paper to arrange along the bottom half of the page. I love this 3x4" "sweet" cut-apart card from one of the sheets of patterned papers, and played around until I found a good way to add it to the page. 

The Pea Pod Parts - die cuts - were out of stock for this collection, so I went looking for some other embellishments that I could add in. I decided to use some of Jillibean's stamps, and loved this simple flower stamp from the Flower: Bloom stamp and die set. I stamped the flowers using brown ink, on white cardstock, and fussy cut each one out. 

I then added a little round puffy sticker to the center of each stamped flower. I love simple embellishments, and these worked out perfectly.

 

Kerri Bradford Studio: That Moment

Hey everyone! Did you know that this coming Saturday, May 5th, is National Scrapbook Day? Yep, it's that time of year again, and over at Kerri Bradford Studio there's lots of goodness going on in the days leading up to the big day. What exactly is going on?

Well, first off, there's a huge sale going on that you won't want to miss. Thru Sunday, you can save 40% on downloadable kits and classes (when you spend $10 or more) using the code NSD18. You can also save 20% on all stamps, including the newest release (discount is already reflected in the prices). You'll also find new projects from each member of Kerri's Creative Team, and each designer is also sharing some favorite tips and tricks.

And today is my turn to share ;)  

I'm sure the image above looks like a crazy mess at first glance. That crazy mess right there is the design I came up with for my layout, and it's pretty much exactly how it turned out. 

One of my favorite ways to plan out my layouts is to play around with ideas using my Silhouette software. Since I usually incorporate cut files into my pages, it's a great way to test out different titles, backgrounds, and other designs and see how they'll work with the photos I plan on using. Did you know that you can pull photos into your Silhouette software? It helps to resize them first, cropping them to the size you plan on printing them and saving them at 72dpi. If you do pull them in at full size, you'll simply need to scale them down until they're the right size. 

You don't necessarily need to pull in every photo you plan on using - I'll often just pull in one single photo, and then copy and paste it a few times (this works great if several of your photos will be the same size), to mimic the photos that I do plan on using. This allows you to play around with photo placement, and it helps give you an idea of the space you have on the page to work in your cut files. I also do this with photo collages. I'll pull in the finished collage, and often times, I will determine the size I want to print it based off how it plays out with the cut files I want to use. 

Instead of guessing what size to cut your title, or any fun shapes you want to use, you can figure out the exact size you need for each cut file, since you know they'll work with the size and placement of your photos. Once I have my page design planned out, I simply delete my photos from the page, sort out the pieces I'll be die cutting, and start the cutting process.  

It's been almost a year since my youngest daughter, Sarah, graduated from high school. While I have lots of photos from that day that I want to get in her album, I have one story from that day that I've been wanting to document. It was "that moment" - the big moment when they call out her name, announce her college of choice, and she walks over to accept her diploma. It just so happened that it was also the moment when my camera froze up, and I quickly realized that my memory card was full. Oh.My.Goodness.

I panicked for about 2 seconds and then got to work digging out another memory card from my purse. I was quick, but not quick enough, since I totally missed capturing her big moment, and I also missed even seeing it happen (since I was dealing with the camera and not watching her). My sister-in-law was sitting next to me, and she yelled out "Sarah!!! STOP!!!". She did, and I was able to capture the photo above - a great photo of her holding her diploma with a big smile on her face. 

Kerri's Click kit was the perfect choice to help document these photos, and this story. The negative strip and the camera fit the theme of my page, so they were obvious choices to work into my page design, and I also picked out my title from the kit as well.

The negative strip comes in several sizes (as far as how many windows each has), and both square and landscape orientation, so I played around with a few sizes as I figured out how many photos I wanted to include. I settled on 3 photos, in addition to my main focal point photo - the two photos I took right before my camera froze and the photo I snapped right after I changed out my memory card. 

Anyone that knows my style, knows that I love white backgrounds for my pages. However, I'm not a fan of plain white cardstock backgrounds, which is why I love to use die cut backgrounds - cut from white cardstock, to create a white-on-white look that's subtle, but adds interest and texture. My favorite backgrounds are circles, so I used a circle background from Kerri's Background Basics kit for this layout.

I knew that I wanted to use a black chalkboard patterned paper for my negative strip (I also used it for part of my title), and remembered that I had a few sheets of it from Echo Park. While I was digging around for that, I came across a few other Echo Park patterned papers that ended up working with my photos. I'm not huge on plaid prints, but this older plaid patterned paper - with the greens, yellows, and a brown that I decided could pass as black ;) - was perfect for the color scheme I had in mind. 

Our high school colors were green, black, and white, so those were obvious color choices. I added in little yellow, since some of the photos had touches of yellow, as some students had yellow cords and sashes. I die cut my camera pieces from yellow and green cardstock, along with some of the black chalkboard patterned paper that I used for my negative strip and title. To add a little extra texture to the camera, I ran the yellow cardstock pieces thru an embossing folder. 

I wanted to print my journaling on the same yellow patterned paper that I used for the camera, but wanted to soften the yellow a bit (and I sort of wish I had softened the yellow in the camera as well, but that didn't cross my mind until I was done). I printed my journaling on a piece of vellum and laid it over the yellow patterned paper, and then machine stitched them together across the top.

When it came time to add a few embellishments, I started poking around in a few baskets and came across some old Making Memories metal flowers. I thought they would be a fun addition, and went looking for another metal piece to add in the bottom right corner of the page. These metal photo turns were perfect. I wanted to add a black brad to each, but apparently I don't own any black brads. Weird. So tiny enamel dots was the next best thing, as I also added black enamel dots to the centers of the flowers. 

If you've never tried planning out your layouts (and cards as well) within your Silhouette software, give it a try the next time you are incorporating cut files into your page design. 

Celebrate Fall Bid Day at Theta

Hey everyone! I wanted to share the second layout that I created for the Jillibean Soup design team call. This layout actually started with the die cut alphas, as I love the chunky shape of them and wanted to play with them. I also loved the color choices within the package.

The pinks, yellows, and oranges reminded me of a few photos that Alyssa had sent me from their fall Bid Day at Theta (her sorority at college), and I knew they would be perfect to use for my layout. 

I printed one of my photos as a 3x4 and two photos as 3x3's, leaving a white border around each when I trimmed them down. I pulled out some patterned papers from different collections in orange, yellow, green, and pink to coordinate with my title letters and the colors within the photos. 

I adhered my photos onto a piece of green patterned paper, and added a fun little tab sticker to the side of each. I picked out a few little word stickers, and added one to each tab sticker as well. 

I used a combination of different alphas - die cut alphas, corrugated alphas, and alpha stickers - and a die cut word, to create my title. The corrugated alphas are an older Jillibean Soup product, and one that I always loved (and still have a lot of in my stash). 

Since I hard worked in some corrugated alphas to my title, I thought I would also add a few corrugated flowers as well. These flowers have holes in the centers, as they're meant to look like buttons. I had a few flower die cuts that I had wanted to use, so I simply added one to the center of each of the corrugated flowers. 

And check out that flamingo. I've seen flamingos a lot on scrapbooking products, and never thought I would have a need to use one. But it just seemed to work with these photos. I actually thought there had been a flamingo somewhere in the photos, but I guess I was thinking of the palm trees. 

Alpha sets that have mixed colors are really fun, but there are occasions where you need a letter in a different color than what's in the package (or maybe you used the one in the color you need already). I ended up cutting two T's out of patterned paper to get the pink and yellow that I wanted, by tracing one of the other T's onto the paper and then cutting them out. 

I've also got a few cards that I created for the design team call that I'll share this week as well. So keep your eye out for those next ;)

Chaos & Cuddles

Happy Friday everyone! I wanted to share one of the layouts that I created for my design team submission for Jillibean Soup. I've used quite a bit of Jillibean's products over the last year. It just so happens that they were projects for things that I wasn't able to share. One of my favorite products are their die cut alphabet packs. I love the larger alphas, and knew that I wanted to use them on one of my layouts. 

I don't do layouts about the daycare kids as often as I used too (personal choice), but every once in a while, I like to add one to my collection. I had a title in mind when I went to pick out my photos - a mix of the good parts of this job, and the chaotic parts of this job. I created a photo collage using a template from Kerri Bradford Studio, and changed all of my photos to black and white.

I knew I wanted to mix a die cut word in with the die cut alphas for my title, so I picked out one of Jillibean's cut files from the Silhouette store. "Chaos & Cuddles" - that's exactly the kind of mix I have here on a daily basis. 

I also used one of their background cut files to create a white-on-white background for my page. You all know that I love a good circle background, right ;) 

The fun messy circles are also Jillibean Soup cut files, and they're a cut file I can see myself using a lot. Once I had my die cut alphas picked out for my title, I then picked out several patterned papers to coordinate with the colors of the alphas. I lined up four pieces of patterned paper along the left edge of the page, and added a die cut messy circle to each of those pieces. 

I added a few super old Jillibean buttons (I still have those from when I designed for them years ago!) to the die cut messy circles, and a die cut heart from their Pea Pod Parts pack. I also added a few small puffy heart stickers here and there. 

I'm so looking forward to designing for Jillibean Soup this year, and have already started working on some new projects for next month. I'll share my second design team submission layout with you next week, along with a few cards :)

Kerri Bradford Studio: Celebrate Birthday Cards

Hey all! I've got a new project up over at Kerri Bradford Studio today. Once a year, I like to create a new batch of birthday cards to have on hand. I never seem to be prepared for birthdays, so I like having a stash of cards that I can pull from that will work for family, family, or anyone celebrating their special day. As much as I would love to create a wide variety of cards, I'm a big fan of creating just one simple design - and then mass producing that one design for all of my cards.

I usually pick 2-4 different patterned paper schemes, making some fitting for the boys/men in my life, and some for the girls/women in my life. For this round of cards, I picked out some patterned papers from Amy Tangerine. I will most likely be making more of this same exact design, but with another assortment of patterned paper. 

I started by die cutting a circle background, from Kerri's Life Additions: Background kit, from patterned paper, and then adhering that to the front of my card, layering it over a white grid patterned paper. I decided to go with a simple "celebrate" for my sentiment, found in the July Four kit.

I added a die cut flower to the girl cards, using the Funky Flower cut file, and a star to the boy cards, using a cut file from the This & That: Family [just shapes] kit. I like to keep my cards fairly flat, so they're easy to mail, so my only real embellishment was adding a black enamel dot to the center of the star and flower.

I never seem to have much to write in the inside of birthday cards. Please tell me I'm not the only one that keeps by birthday wishes simple. Lol. So I stamped a birthday message on the inside of the card using Kerri's For You stamp set. This still allows me room to write the recipients name at the top, and a quick message below. 

I love a great design that's easy to replicate, and mass produce assembly line style. And I think this card works perfectly for just that. I'm so glad my birthday card stash has been replenished for all of the upcoming birthdays on our calendar! 

Kerri Bradford Studio: Color Factory

Hey everyone! I took an unintentional break from blogging, but I'm back today to share a new layout that's up at Kerri Bradford Studio today. Earlier this year, my oldest daughter, Alyssa, and her boyfriend went to check out the Color Factory exhibit in San Francisco. She had shared a few photos from the day with me when I requested photos for my Project Life album, and when I commented about how all of the colorful photos had me thinking about a layout idea - she told me that she had a ton more photos in addition to the ones she had sent me. 

Before I knew it, I had about 60 photos from their day at the exhibit to work with! I had them all printed right along with my January photo order, so I had 3x4's of each photo starting out. But the 3x4's just weren't working the way I wanted, since I knew that I wanted to use as many photos as I could on my two page spread. 

So I ended up printing all of the photos that I wanted to use as 2x3's, since there were so many great ones that I wanted to include. I started by sorting out the photos by color, and decided to arrange them in a grid-like fashion across my two page spread in rainbow order. I won't lie. This part - the arranging of the photos - took me forever. 

There were a few colors, like red (2 photos) and orange (just 1 photo), that didn't have many photos - and a few colors, like yellow and aqua, that had a lot of photos to choose from. I ended up leaving a few spots open as I arranged the photos, so that I could work in a few pieces of colored cardstock, to keep the rainbow pattern going.

I used Kerri's Life Additions: Background kit to die cut small 2x3" pieces of cardstock to add to these empty spaces. I had a 6x8" paper pad from Bella Blvd's Oh My Stars collection that came to mind. The 6x8 pads came out right as I left Bella, so I've actually never used them before. What I do like about them is that they have coordinating solids on the backside of each patterned paper. 

This collection made it super easy for me to get all my rainbow colors in one place. Since there was SO much going on in the photos, I went with the solid sides of the paper, rather than the tiny star pattern that was on the other side. I didn't even think about adding any other embellishments to the second page of this spread, as it had so much going on with just the photos. 

While the second page of my two page spread was completely filled with photos and colored cardstock, the first page of the spread had a little more empty space to fill. 

I die cut a circle background piece from white cardstock to cover the entire page using the Background Basics kit, going with a white-on-white look, which I always love. Actually, if I'm being honest, I didn't even have to die cut that background piece. I use this circle background SO much that I always have pieces on hand. I must have used a small piece of a background at some point, because the two pieces that I had saved were the perfect size to go above and below my photos. 

For my title, I used Kerri's Weathered Door Alpha kit to die cut the word "factory" from my colored cardstock (I guess it's not technically cardstock, since it's the backside of patterned paper). Since "factory" has 7 letters, it was the perfect way to add all 7 colors that are represented in the photos - red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, and purple. I cut the outline for each letter from black cardstock. 

I decided to pull out some older brads (an embellishment that I love, but don't seem to use that often anymore), and added a few coordinating brads to each letter in my title. I can tell it's been a while since I've used brads, since I didn't space my pierced holes far enough apart on the first few letters. Lol. I think I managed to cover up my accident fairly well, but if you look closely, you can see a few of the original holes. 

I wanted to also include the word "color" in my title, since it's all about the Color Factory. Ever since I had to have my hard drive replaced (something I wasn't prepared for and I found out while it was out for repairs), my Silhouette software just hasn't worked the same. It's a long story, but one thing that doesn't seem to work well anymore is the search feature. It took me forever, but I finally found the perfect "color" option in Kerri's All About Fall kit. I simply cut off the "s" at the end of "colors" after die cutting it from black cardstock. 

After adding a few more photos to the first page, I added a few strips of black cardstock and a strip of a rainbow diagonal striped patterned paper above and below my photos and journaling. 

I'm pretty sure this is the most colorful layout I've made in a long time! Granted, it's one of the few layouts I've made in a long time, as well. Lol. And for those of you that have said you missed my layouts, I actually have a few more that I'll be sharing soon ;)

Kerri Bradford Studio: 52 Favorites Travelers Notebook

I've seen so many people doing the 52 Favorites challenge this year (a journaling challenge started by Paper Issues), and I really wanted to give it a go. We're not too far into the new year, so I knew it would be simple enough to catch up.The basic idea is to document one favorite thing each week. Easy peasy, right?

I'm sharing the first five weeks of my 52 Favorites album over at Kerri Bradford Studio. I knew that I wanted to work in a Travelers Notebook for this project, and I knew that I would keep the same overall design for each weekly spread. I've always approached mini albums in that way (and I like to think of Travelers Notebooks as "mini albums"), starting years and years ago when I used to create a ton of mini albums. 

I like the cohesive look to my pages, and it also makes them easier for me to complete. While I might love the idea of every page having it's own unique look, I also know that I'd be less likely to keep up with a project if I told myself I needed to be original on every page. Lol. So the same basic design throughout just works for me. 

I wanted to include patterned paper on one side of the spread, and keep the other side white. I worked on the first five weeks at once, and used Jillibean Soup patterned papers for all of my spreads. I'm not 100% sure if I'll stick to ALL Jillibean Soup papers throughout the entire year. But I just might, if I can make it work. 

Now, I'm not one for solid white background pages. I still like to have a little something-something to my pages, if you know what I mean. I turned to my all-time favorite circle background cut file from Kerri's Background Basics kit. If you know me, you know how much I love to use this cut file with white cardstock, to have that white-on-white effect.

I was able to get four backgrounds from each sheet of cardstock. and they fit perfectly on the right page of each weekly spread. I spritzed each piece with some black misting spray before adhering them. 

To number my pages, I went with Kerri's Brooklyn Etc stamp set. For whatever reason, I was thinking way back to when I would use the large number foam stamps from Making Memories, and I would stamp with paint onto small pieces of cardstock. I thought it would be fun to do the same thing here.  

I really should measure and trim little pieces of cardstock for future numbers, because I wasn't very straight in my cutting when I trimmed them with scissors. Note to self ;) I adhered the numbers, along with a stamped asterisk, to the left page of the spread, and added an enamel/puffy sticker to the top of each piece.

I printed my photos as 3x4's, leaving a white border around the edges when trimming. I adhered the photo to the right side of the spread, adding a torn piece of washi tape along the top of the photo. 

Below each photo, I also added a label that coordinated with my patterned paper for that week, and used some of Kerri's stamp sets to add little phrases to each label. I pulled from the One Fine Day, Gather Together, Thankful stamp sets for the phrases you see on these pages. 

I believe all of the labels that I used on these five spreads are from Elle's Studio, mainly because I had them all out and in one place to trim up. I think I've mentioned that I'm working on corralling a lot of my like-supplies together. For instance, I'd love to get all of my little label stickers/dies into one spot, so I don't spent so much time looking for them.

I'm fairly new to working with Traveler's Notebooks, and it shows. I need to remember to cut my patterned papers a little smaller, so they're not laying so close to the inside of the notebook. You can see the inside edges already curling up a bit, because it was too tight of a fit. 

I also added an enamel heart or star to the top of each label. I don't want to bulk up the notebook with embellishments, so enamels are a great fit since they're relatively flat (if you pick the right brand). 

If I keep doing a 2 page spread for each week, I will actually end up needing 3 Traveler's Notebooks to hold the entire year. Good thing I have 3 of the same style ;) While I am fully aware that I could make my own TN's, I like the ease of having them done for me. I'm using a black and white, polka dotted notebook from Felicity Jane. 

When I die cut my circle background pieces, I went ahead and die cut a few extra sheets of cardstock. So I have several backgrounds all ready to go, which should help me keep up with this project. 

It's such a simple design, and one that will be easy to add to each week throughout the year. I already have my photos printed from weeks six and seven, so I'll be adding those in later this week. 

Kerri Bradford Studio: Hello New Clothes

I've got my first project of the new year up at Kerri Bradford Studio today! I recently shared about my weight loss over the last year. This also meant that I lost a substantial amount of my wardrobe. That's not necessarily a bad thing (unless you ask my wallet), as I got the chance to basically build an entire new wardrobe for myself.

I realized that I had taken quite a few photos of clothes I've bought, or while out shopping, and thought it would be fun to put together a little page to tell this story. I decided to create a 6x8" pocket spread, with one page being a full 6x8" layout and one page being a 6x8" pocket page.

Whenever I'm wanting to die cut a word for my titles that Kerri doesn't happen to have, I turn to her Weathered Door Alpha kit. Which is exactly what I used to die cut the word "clothes" for part of my title. I used the word "hello" from Kerri's Bloom kit, die cut from patterned paper, for the first half of my title. 

My patterned papers are from Dear Lizzy and Amy Tangerine collections. I've had the ruffled paper for years - the ones with 3-4 colors of layered ruffles on one full sheet. I thought it seemed like a fun fit for a layout about clothes.

I printed all of my photos as little 2x2's, and slipped them into the pocket page. I actually had enough photos to fill all twelve pockets, but ended up taking a few out so that I could work in some patterned paper.

There's an older patterned paper from Dear Lizzy that has rows of little polaroid pictures. If you cut out the pattern/picture from the polaroid frame, it's just slightly smaller than 2x2, so they worked perfectly in these pockets. I just matted each one on a piece of white cardstock. The "a whole lotta happy" came from Kerri's One Fine Day stamp set. 

I also ended up adding in a 3x8" insert, which held my journaling and some clothing tags I've been saving from my favorite brands.

I used the "this is just fantastic" design from Kerri's About Town kit digitally to create my 3x8" journaling card, backing it with some black chalkboard digital patterned paper. 

I used a 3x8" digital journaling card from an Ali Edwards Stories Of Life kit. There's a spot to insert a photo, or a digital element like I did, and then type up your journaling. 

I've been holding onto some clothing tags for quite a while, with the idea of working them into a project at some point. I ended up deciding to only use three of my tags, as they're the main brands that I seem to buy/wear. I have a few other brands that I wear a lot (like Old Navy), but they don't have cute tags at all. Lol.

Once I adhered the tags to the 3x8 piece of cardstock, I had some room at the top. I stamped the "grateful for" box using Kerri's Gather Together stamp set. I should have tested it before stamping it directly on my paper, and I'm sure the textured cardstock didn't help, as my stamping didn't turn out all that great. Lol.

It's a pretty simple layout spread, but that seems to be my style now. I would normally add some machine stitching, but it didn't even cross my mind for some reason while working on this. And I didn't even consider adding any little embellishments. There's something to be said for keeping things simple sometimes :)

Kerri Bradford Studio: Twelve Days of Christmas

Have you been visiting Kerri Bradford Studio this month? Kerri has her annual Twelve Days of Christmas going on (it started on December 1st), where her design team, along with lots of guest designers, are sharing holiday themed projects. There's also a fun freebie available each day for you to download, but it's only available for the day. So you need to be stopping by each day to make sure and grab those freebies ;) 

 

 

 

I have to admit, I usually take the easy route when wrapping Christmas presents, keeping my packaging super simple and easy. I'm a huge fan of gift bags, and I never use ribbon or bows. But every now and then, I will get inspired to get a little crafty in my gift giving presentation. This year, I have several people on my list that I will be gifting 8x10 home decor type prints too. I am always on the lookout for fun printable images that can printed, framed, and hung around the house (mostly found on Etsy).

 

 

And so often, I see prints that I know would be just perfect for a friend or family member. Like the vintage blueprints for the blow dryer (found HERE) and hair brush (found HERE) for my favorite hair stylist. I'm also pretty sure I'll be hanging these in one of our bathrooms as well. 

 

 

Or the chalkboard baking conversions (bought on a deal somewhere else, but you can find HERE) and kitchen measurements (bought on a deal somewhere else, but you can find HERE) for a friend that loves to bake. 

 

I had a bunch of these printables printed as 8x10 photos, done thru Costco. I have framed prints like this in the past when giving them to friends and/or family, but I figured this time I would just gift them the prints themselves, and they can use them however they want. I wanted a fun way to package these prints, and found some black envelopes that I ordered off Amazon. 

 

 

I wanted to decorate the front of the envelopes, rather than just scribbling their names with a pen like I would normally do. I started by printing out some smaller pieces of the grey plain patterned paper found in Kerri's Travelers Pack: Splendid kit. I adhered them onto a large piece of patterned paper, and then adhered that to the center of the envelopes. 

 

 

I picked out a few shapes from Kerri's brand new Christmas Calendar kit - the wreath and the "Merry Christmas" - and die cut both from colored cardstock. I adhered the wreath in the center of the grey plaid patterned paper pieces, and then adhered my Christmas sentiment in the center of the wreath. I added a few small silver accent dots to the wreaths to finish them off. Then I just slipped the prints inside and they're ready to go! 

 

 

Kerri also has a great sale going on right now. It's a Jolly Holiday Sale, where you can grab kits and classes for 20% off (use code JOLLY), and all stamps are 10% off. This sale is going on all thru the month of December, so be sure to take advantage if there's kits, stamps, and/or classes you've been eyeing!

 

Kerri Bradford Studio: The Ballpark

I've got a second layout up at Kerri Bradford Studio today! As another part of our family's little stay-cation back in July, one of the other things that we did was take in a minor league baseball game one evening. If you ask me, attending a minor league game can actually be more fun than attending a major league game.

It's a smaller venue. You're not dealing with the massive amounts of traffic, parking, and people. It's just got that small town feel to it, and it's fun to go out and support your local team. 

Joe has been umpiring high school baseball, and occasionally some college, for well over ten years now. Baseball is his thing, so he just loves being out there and watching the sport. I really only took one intentional photo during the game, and that was a photo of Joe watching the game, taken from behind. I knew he was in his element, calling balls and strikes from where we were sitting out on the lawn.

I did snap two very candid photos with my phone  - one of Alyssa, and one of Sarah and her boyfriend. I may have came back with three photos, but I knew it was enough to document the game.  

I kept my page design pretty simple. I started by adhering my three 4x4" photos from top to bottom, along the left side of the page, with a few strips of patterned paper. I don't have many sports themed products, so I pulled out some very old sports patterned papers from Bella Blvd. 

On the right side of the page, I started at the top, and worked my way down, adding in cardstock, strips of patterned paper, my journaling block, and even one of our tickets from the game. I'm glad I thought to save one, since it did cross my mind that I could include it somewhere on either a layout or in our Project Life album. 

If you know me, you know that I love to include some white-on-white action on most of my layouts. It works really well for the space behind my title, since I'm usually die cutting my titles from black cardstock and/or patterned papers. 

I used a piece of a white cardstock circle background, cut from Kerri's Background Basics kit, and adhered it over the top right corner of the page where my title was going to go. I then went straight to Kerri's older The Ol' Ballgame kit for the title, which I cut from black and red cardstock.

I knew I would keep my embellishments super simple, and started out with just a few enamel dots. But I couldn't decide on a third color that really looked right to me. I then remembered having some really old baseball buttons from Making Memories in my stash, and I think they were the perfect finishing touch for this layout. 

Kerri Bradford Studio: Destination San Francisco

Hey everyone! I've finally got a few layouts to share, and the first one went up at Kerri Bradford Studio yesterday. As part of our little "staycation" at the end of July, our family took a day trip to San Francisco. We only live an hour and a half away, and yet I can't even tell you the last time that I have been there. My girls have both gone here and there, on day trips with their friends. But I'm pretty sure the last time I went out that way was back in high school. Lol. I left it up to Alyssa to guide us to a few good places in the city, since she's been there the most.

While there were a few times that we purposefully thought to stop and snap a few photos, we didn't really force the camera on each other that much during the day. So I was pleasantly surprised when, between Alyssa and I, we managed to get a good variety of photos from the day on our phones. 

I do one photo order each month for my Project Life album, and I order just about every photo from my phone (and any the girls send me) as 3x4" photos. I knew that I would only include 2-3 photos from this trip in my actual Project Life spread for the week, so I had tons of photos leftover to create a layout. I did go and print the 3 photos I used in my Project Life album again, so that I could include them on the layout as well. 

Since I had quite a few photos I wanted to include, and they were all 3x4", with the exception of one 4x6" photo, I decided to arrange all of the photos around the outside edges of a two page spread. I've used this page design before, and it's a great way to get lots of photos on a two page layout.

And it's pretty typical that I'll line up all of my photos across the page, and I'm somehow left with a gap. Meaning a few of the photos didn't print at exactly 3x4". Never fails. This is why I simply added the small strips of black and white dotted patterned paper to the outer side of each page - to hide that gap!

I always build my layouts on white cardstock. Sometimes I'll end up covering up all of that white with photos and patterned paper. And other times, I end up letting some of that white cardstock be a part of my page design. Once I had my photos adhered in place, I realized that there wasn't really one or two colors that I could see myself incorporating in terms of patterned paper. I very randomly choose the black and white dotted patterned paper strips, while looking for a potential blue patterned paper, and from there I just gave up on adding anything other than neutral colors. 

After arranging all of my photos on the spread, I was left with a 4"x9" section on each page (or 18" across the spread). Since I decided to keep that middle section white, I knew that I wanted to add a little interest to it. I die cut a circle background from Kerri's Background Basic kit from white cardstock, and adhered it right over that center section. I love the white-on-white effect, and it adds a subtle touch.  

For my title, I combined the "destination" from Kerri's Pack Your Bags kit and "SF" from her Weathered Door Alpha kit, cut from patterned paper and black cardstock.

I finished off the second page of the spread by adding a 3x4" Project Life card and my printed journaling. Normally, I'll add a few simple embellishments, like enamel dots or buttons. But I just didn't feel like the spread needed much more. I added a kraft tag near the title, along with the date, and a little tab on the side of my journaling block as well. 

I'll be back Friday with another layout share. It definitely felt good to do a few layouts, after not doing any for the last two months. I didn't even realize it had been that long since I last made one. But my Project Life album is seriously calling out to me as well. I'm falling further behind, and need to get caught up on that before it gets more out of control ;) 

Kerri Bradford Studio: Senior Year

Hey everyone! I had a new layout go up at Kerri Bradford Studio yesterday, and I'm here to share it with you today as well. Since Sarah just graduated high school a little over a month ago, I thought it would be fun to flashback a bit and scrap some photos that we had taken at the beginning of her senior year. It's crazy how fast the year went by. In fact, it's crazy how fast high school went by. I had several friends tell me that once your child starts high school, the time will fly by faster than ever, and they were right. Sigh.

I love a good photo collage, and this layout was the perfect opportunity to create one. I used a template from Kerri's Picture That [Squared] kit, and collaged five of my favorite photos from that day together. I love photo collages for many reasons. But one of the biggest reasons I love them, is that instead of working with five individual photos and figuring out their placement - I'm working with one larger "photo", and I can basically design the page around that photo/collage. 

I'm a huge fan of white cardstock and patterned paper, so to mix things up a bit, I tried to use mostly colored cardstock on this layout. I do have a hard time using cardstock plain, or as-is. But there's easy ways to add a little something-something to it. Misting always helps, and I love to use my Heidi Swapp mists on most of my cardstock and patterned papers.

I also love to add texture to cardstock by running pieces thru an embossing folder. It adds a ton of texture and interest, with minimal effort. I have a wide variety of embossing folders, and they're something I need to remind myself to use more often.

For my title, I used Kerri's School Years: Add Ons kit, and die cut "senior year" from two colors of cardstock to layer together. I have a bad habit of losing the dots to my i's, which I tend to mention every time I use a die cut title containing an "i", so I added a brown enamel dot instead. 

To break up the heaviness of the colored cardstock pieces, I die cut a circle background on a strip of green cardstock using a cut file from Kerri's Life Additions: Backgrounds kit. This allowed some extra white to come thru, from the white cardstock that I built my layout on. 

I did work in two small pieces of patterned paper, which is the brown and white dotted pattern from Studio Calico. And I also randomly came across an old overlay from Hambly, with the brown leaves, and decided to add a piece of that in as well. 

One of these days, I'll have to finish editing the photos we took at the end of her senior year and then get those scrapped as well. 

Kerri Bradford Studio: Love You Girls

Hey everyone! I've got a new layout up at Kerri Bradford Studio today. I just love these photos my daughters and I took on Mother's Day, and knew I wanted to get them on a layout right away. When I sat down to work on my next layout for Kerri, I knew it was the perfect time to I collaged my photos together using a template from Kerri's Half Pints #1 kit, and got to work designing the page around my photo collage. 

I wanted to keep my background simple, to let the colors in my photos and patterned papers stand out, so I went with a white-on-white die cut background. I die cut a heart background from white cardstock, using a cut file from the Heart Backgrounds kit, and adhered it to another sheet of white cardstock to create the base of my page. I spritzed the entire page with mists in colors that coordinated with my patterned papers, to add just a bit of color to the background.

When deciding on titles for most of my layouts, I start by just browsing thru Kerri's files within my Silhouette library, and I'll usually come up with several options to choose from. For my title on this layout, I combined the "love you" (taken from a freebie "love you mom" cut file) and "girls" (taken from the All In The Family kit), and die cut each from patterned paper. 

While the patterned papers I picked out for this layout are new (all from Shimelle's Little By Little collection), the embellishments I picked out to add to the page are old. I had fun digging thru my stash of embellishments from years and years ago, and pulling out some fun pieces to finish off the page. 

I always loved these plastic flowers from Making Memories, and I remembered that I used to add a flattened metal rimmed tag to the center, finished off with a button. I thought that would be fun to do for this layout, and dug around for some flowers that would match. I have tons and tons of the metal rimmed tags, but turns out I didn't have many smaller sized ones. I had to use a few that had the paper inside the metal rim (like an actual tag, as opposed to just the rim), and take out the paper. 

I also added two pieces of Magic Mesh to the sides of the layout. Such an old product. If some of you aren't sure what Magic Mesh is, it's the pink dotted piece stapled to the right side above. I always loved the dotted mesh, but still have lots of the regular mesh as well. Adds a fun texture without much fuss. 

And a totally random fact. This had to be the hardest layout ever to photograph. I tried three different times before getting some semi-decent pics. I want to say it had something to do with all of the white, but I've had plenty of layouts with lots of white. So that doesn't make much sense. The girls and I look super white, and while I might be white, my girls are definitely dark skinned ;)

Just Because: You Rock

Two posts, in two days. I'm impressed with myself ;) So, I mentioned that a week or so ago, I put together some photo collages to use on layouts. Most of the photos of the girls these days don't really scream "make a layout with us", seeing as how most of them are just random photos, selfies, etc. But I have done little "photo shoots" with both of the girls here and there, and I knew I wanted to get some of those photos scrapped and in their albums. 

These photos of Alyssa were taken this past January, right before she went back to college for the spring semester. I collaged a few favorites together using a template from Kerri Bradford's Picture That [Squared] kit. The template I used actually has six photo openings in it, but I tweaked it to make it five, as I wanted a large square photo. The templates are easy to customize when needed. 

I didn't really have a title in mind, so I browsed thru my Silhouette library, looking for something that jumped out at me. And "you rock" did just that. I knew that I wanted my journaling to be about her college life and what all she was doing when these photos were taken. And since she's in the music conservatory, and majoring in Music Management, I knew the "you rock" title would work well. 

I knew I had to have at least one or two music note patterned paper in my stash. It took me a while to find, but I did find this black patterned paper, from Die Cuts With A View, that I used for the background of my page. Once again, I used some dotted embossed cardstock from Core'dinations. And then I added in the green dot patterned paper and the blue grid patterned paper, both older papers from Scenic Route. 

Since I had a music related title, it was a good opportunity to use some of the music themed cut files I've never had a chance to use. I've always loved the heartbeat music note design, as it's very simliar to a tattoo Alyssa got when she turned 18. It took me several attempts to get it to cut though. I finally had to use the "offset" to make the design a bit thicker, as it was the only way I could get it to work in the smaller size. 

Since I was on this kick to use some older embellishments/products, I went digging around for something fun to use on this layout. I came across these metal grommets from Making Memories. Now, I have the tool to add/attach them to projects, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember how to use it. Lol. What I did remember was that if you use the tool, it would punch a hole from your paper, so that essentially, you'd be able to see thru the circle, or thru your page. And I didn't want that.

So I simply flattened the prongs on the back of the grommets, and added tiny pop dots to the backs to adhere them to the page. I also added a few blue and green brads, and some tiny little silver dots to help embellish the left side of the page.

I also added some of these metal photo turns to the top and bottom of the page. Are they called "photo turns"? I'm not even sure. That's the first thing that popped into my mind, so that's what I'm calling them ;) 

I'll be back next week with another new layout. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Just Because: Cuddly Boy

Hey everyone! After a bit of a creative break here on the blog (since I have been creating lots here in real life), I'm finally back with some layouts to share. Yep, layouts! I know I haven't been making quite as many layouts this year, as I've been focusing more on my Project Life album and other random album projects. But a week or two ago, I was inspired to create a handful of photo collages with the intention of creating some layouts. And this past weekend, I managed to create three new layouts, just for fun.

This layout is kind of an update on a layout I created a little over a year ago. You can see that layout HERE. The photo collage on that first layout was all of the rocking chair photos I had of Derek his first year of life. That year when he would only nap on my shoulder, while I held him, in the rocking chair. It was a LONG year. Lol. Then he was home for the summer (mom's a teacher), and when he came back to me he was super good about napping on the floor with his other friends. He was only 14 months at that time, but napped right on the floor. 

But it never failed. As soon as his little eyes would pop open, he would come straight to me, wanting to get some snuggles in. Every. Single. Day. I'd pick him up, and we would head straight to the rocking chair. Sometimes, he would fall right back to sleep and we would hang out in the rocking chair until his friends woke up from their naps. Sometimes, after a bit of snuggles, he would be energized and ready to play. 

And I found myself, once again, taking those super fun rocking chair photos. The first photo in the collage (upper left corner) is Derek at 14 months, and the last photo in the collage (bottom right corner) is Derek just days after turning 2 years old. Basically, these photos are his second year of life. And I just love it. I love collages like this, that show an assortment of photos taken over a long period of time. And once I realized how many of these photos I had, I knew I wanted to do a second version of that first layout. 

I kept with the same collage template, from Kerri Bradford's Storyboard: Instagram Style kit, as it works perfectly for my square photos. Once again, I ended up with twelve photos. So once again, I left three spaces in the template empty, knowing I would add my journaling there. I arranged my photos by the date they were taken, so they all go in order from oldest to newest. 

This past weekend, I was inspired to dig out some older products when creating my layouts. There's a lot of color going on in this photo collage, so I didn't set out with any particular colors in mind. I think I actually started with the white embossed cardstock, from Core'dinations, as I had also pulled out another color of that same cardstock for another layout. That strip was all I had left, and it ended up being the perfect size to hold my title. 

The green dotted cardstock came just like that. It wasn't something I die cut, although I think most of you know I'm a huge fan of die cutting circle background pieces like that. It was actually a part of a super old kit-of-the-month from Creating Keepsakes, and again, all I had was that strip to work with and the size was perfect. From there, I came across some older Studio Calico patterned paper. The striped paper just seemed perfect to go with my photo collage, as it had a lot of the same colors. 

For my title, I searched in my Silhouette library, looking for something like "snuggles", and while I couldn't find that, I did find "cuddly". That would totally work. I added "boy" from one of Kerri's cut files, to get my "cuddly boy" title. Derek is seriously the cuddliest boy ever. None of these other kids here cuddle, or even sit still on my lap. Except him. He's up for it ALL the time. 

When I went to add some buttons to my layout, I may have said "who has buttons that would match that striped paper" out loud to myself. I had a few jars pulled out, and then remembered that I had some Studio Calico buttons I had picked up on a big sale a year or two ago. Since the striped paper is by SC, it made sense to use SC buttons. 

I wanted to add a little something under my photo collage, and had this yellow tone-on-tone dotted paper pulled out. I punched some quick half circles, and adhered them across, tucking them under the collage. 

Little dude is home for the summer again, and I miss his already. I miss his snuggles. He'll be back before I know it, and I'm feeling pretty confident there will be more of these rocking chair photos to come ;)

Kerri Bradford Studio: Happy Life

Hey everyone! I've got a new layout up over at Kerri Bradford Studio today. Over the years, I've been known to frame layouts for family and friends to display in their homes. My parents recently put in a request for an updated layout for one of these frames that hangs in their hallway. When my mom brought the frame over, I was surprised to see that the old layout was well over 15 years old. Crazy how tiny the girls were in the photos.

I knew I wanted to keep the new layout simple and clean, with one great photo. The first photo that came to mind is one that I took of the girls this past Thanksgiving. I printed it as a 5x7" pic and set out to make a simple layout that would tie in with their home decor. 

I started by die cutting a white cardstock floral background, using a cut file from Kerri's Background Basics kit. I lightly spritzed the background with tan and pink misting spray, before adhering it to an aqua patterned paper from Heidi Swapp. 

My parents have a lot of aqua, mauve, and browns in their home decor, so I knew I wanted to stick to those colors when picking out my patterned papers. I matted my photo twice, using a few patterned papers from Basic Grey and Pebbles. I kept the embellishments simple, by adding some coordinating buttons to the center of the flowers on the background cut. 

I went digging around in Kerri's kits for a good title/sentiment to tie in with the photo, and settled on "happy life", from Kerri's Grateful kit. I die cut it three times from a brown woodgrain patterned paper, adhering the pieces together to add a little thickness to the words.

I love that it's a simple and clean looking layout, that will look perfect framed and hanging on my parent's wall to show off their granddaughters. 

And in case anyone asks, because I have a feeling someone will - the frames are incredibly old, and were custom made from a frame company my mom used at the time. I bought an insane amount of these 12x12" frames back in the day, and have used them a ton. I still have many of them in my own house, but have spray painted most of them black to match my decor better. I know there are other options for 12x12" frames out there, so I wouldn't think something similar would be too hard to find.

Daycare Album Project: Part Two

As promised, I'm back to share a little more more of my daycare album project I've been working on. I won't bore you with photos of all of the pages, since it's 95% photos. But I thought I would just quickly share the divider pages for the three other years I have completed. 

The first two years that I picked to start this entire project was 2007 and 2008. I'm not sure if I had a reason for picking those years. But I do know that between those two years, I had a massive amount of photos. I was really into photography during that time, and I had tons of kids around me at all times. I was also super good about editing my photos, as opposed to a few other years where I'm going to have to stop and edit photos before I can even think about printing them.

I don't think I mentioned this in yesterday's post, but for my 6x12" divider pages, I actually trimmed down large page protectors for these. While there are actual 6x12" page protectors out there, I happen to have a ton of the full 9x12" protectors, and I was pretty sure I would never get around to using that many. So I simply stuck my 6x12" patterned paper inside the protector, machine stitched along the side of the paper, and then trimmed off the excess with my trimmer. 

  

After finishing up 2007 and 2008, my next choice to work on was 2015 and 2016. These years contained mostly phone photos. With a small handful of DSLR photos mixed in. There are definitely some phone photos that aren't the best quality, as it wasn't until a year and a half ago that I finally got myself a real iPhone, instead of using an Android or an older hand me down iPhone. But, photos are photos, and I'll use the low quality ones over not having any photos at all. 

  

So, that's where I left off on this album project about a month ago. I mentioned yesterday that I did just order my photos for 2013, and there are all of 32 photos for the entire year. Kind of sad. Lol. Seeing as how there are so few photos for that year, I'm not quite sure why I haven't taken care of them and worked them into the album. I think 2009 will be my next year to tackle. 

I'll be back on Thursday to share an updated look at my girl's school albums ;)

Daycare Album Project: Part One

Hey all! Hope you all had a wonderful Easter! I've got a few album projects that I thought I would share this week, and I'm going to start with the daycare album project I've been working on. I want to backtrack a little bit, and share what I wrote about this project back in January (in THIS post), when I had just started on the idea. 

I've had this idea in my head for over a year now, in terms of doing something with the years and years of daycare photos I've accumulated. I've been doing daycare in our home for 15 years now. For many, many of those years, I would take photos of the kiddos constantly. And for many years, I also scrapped all of those photos as well. At some point, I made a conscious decision NOT to scrap the daycare kiddos so much. And somewhere down the road, I made the decision to turn a huge majority of those layouts into a digital book (shared HERE and HERE), and gave most of the layouts to the families to keep. 

  

So while I still have three albums that hold layouts of the daycare kiddos, and I have a few digital books of various kinds of them, I can't help but think about all of the photos that are just hanging out on my external hard drive. Or in a box, or on negatives, seeing as how the first five years I did daycare, I was shooting with film.

Just this past weekend, I started working on the plan that I've had in my head. I'll be doing a few 9x12" pocket page albums, and the albums will be 95% photos. I really won't be adding much to them, other than divider pages and maybe a small page of journaling for each section. I randomly started with 2007 and 2008, and put in a huge order for photos from those years that will be here at the end of the week. I hope to share more about this project really soon.

Ok, now that I'm done backtracking, I can get on with what I came up with. As I mentioned, I'm using 9x12 albums, and pocket pages. The pocket pages will consist of ALL photos. I'm not trying to work in cute filler cards, or journaling cards, or any embellishments. This project is all about getting the photos in albums. 

I'm breaking this project down by year, tackling a year or two at a time. And for each year, I'm breaking things down by quarters. I'll share more on that later in the post. I wanted to address my divider pages first, since that's the first I'm sharing in these photos. This post will walk you thru one full year in my album, which is my 2016 photos. 

I created 6x12" divider pages to mark the start of each quarter in the album. I have tons of this white grid patterned paper, so I thought it would be perfect for these pages. I planned out my months in my Silhouette software, using cut files from Kerri Bradford Studio. I die cut the first and third month in each quarter in a larger, chunky word from colored cardstock - and then die cut the middle month of each quarter in a cursive word from black cardstock, along with the year. 

I ran the two colored cardstock months thru my Cuttlebug, using a few different embossing folders. Just to add a little texture. I adhered all three months to the bottom of the 6x12" graph patterned paper. 

I added a large strip of patterned paper along the top of the 6x12" page, matching it to the photos that showed to the right of the divider page. I ended up using all Bella Blvd patterned papers for this project, since I have so much of it in my stash. I also added a scalloped border strip along the bottom edge of the patterned paper. 

I used a second piece of the graph patterned paper on the backside of the 6x12" divider page, adding a large strip of colored cardstock along the top, with a scalloped border strip of black cardstock. 

My thought for the backside of the divider pages is that I could possibly add some journaling at some point. Or notes. Or just little tidbits of whatever I can remember from the time the photos were taken. Could be what kiddos I had at the time, what our schedule looked like, or any funny stories that pop into my head while looking at the photos. Or maybe they'll get left as-is, and I'll never add anything to them. We'll see what happens. 

As I mentioned before, I broke down each year into quarters. Three months worth of photos in each section. I pulled the photos from my external hard drive, and copied them all into new folders on my laptop. I copied over pretty much ALL the photos from each month. From there, I would see how many I had to work with and start narrowing them down if needed. 

There are 3 different styles of 9x12" pocket pages. There's one with a few 4x6's and a few 3x4's, one with all 3x4's, and one with all 3x3's. I decided that my goal would be to use one of each design for each quarter. That would allow me 56 photos total for each quarter - and breaking that number down, I knew I would need (4) 4x6's, (28) 3x4's, and (24) 3x3's. 

There were a few quarters so far (as I've only completed 4 of the 15 years) that didn't have enough photos for the three pages, or that had so many photos that I wanted to include that it required a fourth page, or that needed a different mix of pocket page designs (depending on what my photos looked like orientation wise). 

I took each quarter as it came, even though I tried to stick to my original plan when I could - using three pages, one of each of the three pocket page designs. If I had to adjust the plan, I did. I worked on a few older years of photos, and narrowed down a huge amount of photos to just the 56 photos without any problems. I think I had a tendency to take multiple shots of the same thing back in the day, when I was using my DSLR more. 

I found that when looking thru the photos from the last two years or so, I had a harder time narrowing down my photos to just the 56. While I did have some that were very similar shots, I didn't have the same type of multiples that I found in earlier years. 

I would say that 95% of the photos from the last few years are phone photos, so I think I ended up with a wider variety of shots as opposed to earlier years. When I used to take photos with my DSLR, I would tend to pull out the camera and take a bunch of photos at once. While with my cell phone, I take them more randomly here and there. 

Once I would get my photos narrowed down to whatever number I settled on (usually 56, but sometimes less or more), I would start prepping them to print. I usually started by picking my 4x6" photos, since there was only 4 of those most quarters. It was easy to spot which photos needed that full 4x6" space, and couldn't be cropped into the smaller sizes. 

From there, I would then move on to the 3x3" and 3x4" photos. Some photos will only work as 3x4's, as they're all vertical orientation in the pocket pages. A large majority of my photos can work in the 3x3" size as well, especially since I take most of my photos on my phone as squares. But it's fairly easy to find which photos will work better as 3x4's or 3x3's, and some will work either way.

I've completed four years so far, and I think I ended up with maybe 3-4 empty spots total. Like the page above. I ended up using 4 pages for that quarter of 2016, but was just one photo short of filling the full 4 pages. I figure I'll just add in a 4x6" filler card, or even just a piece of patterned paper. I haven't done it yet, but I'll get to it at some point ;)

When prepping my photos to print, I knew how many of each size photo I needed, and I would work from that list as I went. Once I had my 4x6's picked out, cropped and saved, I moved those original photos to my "used" folder, so I could keep track of what photos were left to work with. I would slowly move photos to the "used" folder as I went, which made it easy to see what was left when picking my sizes. 

 I named my files for printing so that I could keep track of what was what - the photos for this section were named "DaycarePL_2016_Qrt3_1", "Daycare PL_2016_Qrt3_2", etc. I combined (2) 3x4's on a 4x6" print, and combined (2) 3x3's on a 4x6" print. So I ended up printing about 30 photos total for each quarter, since most of the photos actually had two photos, which I cut apart. 

I've used two different sites for my printing so far. The first batch of photos I ordered from Persnickity Prints, as I had a large print credit for 4x6" photos that I had bought when they had a big sale about a year ago. Since then, I've been adding a batch of photos to my FreePrints order each month, since anything over my 85 free prints a month is only 10 cents each (and it doesn't affect my shipping at all). 

Once I have my photos in hand, I sort them by sizes, and then just start slipping them into the pocket pages. I don't over think it, but I do try not to get too many of the same kiddo on one page, and try to split up photos that look too much alike. 

I was looking back at layouts I've made, and I think I've only created 6 layouts in the last year and a half about my daycare kids. I just don't create them like I used to years ago. That's the biggest reason that I wanted to do this album. 

To get all of those photos of all these adorable kiddos off my computer and my hard drive, and into something that we could all look at. If I do get around to getting all 15 years worth of photos in these albums (which will be a challenge, since 5 of those years were film photos and involve negatives), I'm sure I'll end up with more albums that I think I'll actually need.

Then again, I have a few years that have next to no photos at all. Sadly. Those were the years I touched my DSLR far less, and didn't have a cell phone with a camera yet. I just printed my photos for 2013, and I have all of 32 photos total. For the entire year. So that year will only have one section. I think I have two more years that will be very small. 

That wraps up my 2016 year of photos. I'll be back to share a small portion of my 2007, 2008, and 2015 tomorrow. I won't be sharing all the pages, as they're just photos and to anyone but us, they might be a little boring. Lol. But I thought I would at least share all of the divider pages. Plus, it gives me a reason to do an extra blog post this week ;)

I've actually got a similar album idea in the works for my girl's sports photos. I have them both started - lots of photos already printed and in place, and divider pages made up that include team photos, individual photos, and die cut team names. I'll have to see if I can finish up enough of the albums to do a post on those. 

While I love making layouts, or more involved albums, there are times when straight up "photo albums" just work. And this was totally one of those times.