... just Laura

Kerri Bradford Studio: Family BBQ

 

I've got another new layout for you, which I created for Kerri Bradford Studio. How awesome is Kerri's new Juniper collection of alphabet and number stamps? I'm a fan of tall and skinny letters, and I just love the variety of sizes. There's a size for any project!

 

 

We were supposed to have our annual family BBQ at my brother's last month, but Covid-19 has gone and ruined that :( So I figured I'd make up for it by pulling out the photos I took at last year's get-together and create a layout documenting the day. 

 

 

For my title card, I used the Juniper Alphabet XL and Juniper Alphabet SM stamps to create my title, stamping "family" onto a yellow metal rimmed tag. I added a little date label using Kerri's Today's The Day printable, and scribbled in the date. 

 

 

I had all of my photos already printed as 3x4's and 4x6's, so I went with my go-to grid design, arranging the photos across a traditional, two page 12x12 spread. I pulled out a few coordinating patterned papers (all from Amy Tangerine collections), trimming them into 3x4's pieces to fill the empty spaces, and one 4x6 piece for my title card.

 

 

I printed out my journaling onto two 3x4" cards, adding one to each side of the spread, and added a stamped phrase to the top of each using the new Block of Summertime stamp set. 

 

 

I recently printed out Kerri's Summer Mix printable, and wanted to include one on each piece of patterned paper. 

 

 

I trimmed a small 3x1.5" piece of black/white patterned paper to add along the bottom of each piece of patterned paper, and then adhered the small printed phrases, adding tiny staples where the papers meet. 

 

 

I then added a simple, single chipboard embellishment to each of my patterned paper pieces to finish off the spread. 

 

Kerri Bradford Studio: Bryce Canyon

 

Hey everyone. I have a new digital layout up at Kerri Bradford Studio using her new Utah's Mighty Five digital stamp set. When Kerri first shared this new stamp set with me, my first thought was that I didn't have a need for it.

 

 

But then I thought about all of the camping my family did when I was a kid, and I knew that I could put this set to use with some old photos. 

 

 

I had my mom dig up some photos specific to Utah's National Parks, as we visited National Parks across the states for years, and she sent me these photos from a stop at Bryce Canyon. These photos were from 1983, so they're not the best quality to begin with - and then she scanned them to send to me. I knew they wouldn't print the best, so I decided to go with a digital layout. In my experience, I find that old photos tend to look a smidge better printed when they're worked into collage templates. 

 

 

I settled on an 8.5x11" two page spread, starting with a template from Kerri's Storyboard #4 kit for the right page. For the left page, I used a template from the Half Pints: Wander kit. While the Half Pint templates are 6x8" in size, I was able to easily crop one into an 8.5x11" size. I added my photos into the two templates, tweaking one of the photo openings on the first page to make it longer as I didn't want to crop too much out of the photo. 

 

 

I used the new Utah's Mighty Five digital stamp set to add my title along the top of the first page, as well as the arches, which I changed the color on to make it match the arches in my photos.

 

 

I used the Block Party digital stamp set to add the year, 1983, to the bottom of the first page, and used the PNG file from the Summer Vibes kit to add "summer" next to the year. Lastly, I used the And So The Adventure Begins kit to add a filler card to the center opening of the collage on the second page. 

 

Kerri Bradford Studio: Christmas Day Trip

Happy New Year's everyone! I'm back with my first post of the year, sharing a project that I made for Kerri Bradford Studio. I've had these photos laying around for a little over a year now, taken on a little day trip that my family took the day after Christmas, back in 2018. 

While this wasn't technically a Christmas day trip, we took it the day after the holiday, while my sister was still in town - and the Christmas vibe was still found in the places we went. So I kept that Christmas theme going in my title and the patterned papers I picked out. 

I used one of my go-to page designs, arranging my 3x4 and 4x6 photos around the outside edges of the spread, and adding a white die cut background using Kerri's Background Basics kit across the center part of the spread.

I printed out a filler card to add alongside my journaling block, using the And So The Adventure Begins kit.

I'm loving Kerri's new stamps! Letters, numbers, days of the week, months, years - all of those little stamps are so versatile and I just love how you can arrange them together in different block configurations. Such a fun concept and the possibilities are endless!

I used the Printers Block | Letters stamp set for part of my title, stamping the letters onto cardstock and trimming each letter into an individual block. I then paired them up with my die cut "Christmas" word, taken from Kerri's December Twenty Five kit (no longer available). 

I then used the Block of Time stamp set to add the date to a white shipping tag, adding a piece of bakers twine to the top. 

I die cut a few stars from black cardstock (using the Christmas Calendar kit) to add some simple embellishing to the 3x4" pieces of patterned paper, adding a single button to the center of each star. 

Kerri Bradford Studio: Annual Family BBQ

 

Hey everyone! There's been a whole lot going on at Kerri Bradford Studio this past week, as we celebrated (inter) National Scrapbook Day! I had a layout go up yesterday, which was the last day of the celebration. Hopefully, you caught the sale she had going on and her new stamp release.

 

When I saw Kerri's new Hello Summer stamp set, I was immediately reminded of the photos from an annual family BBQ we had last summer that I've been meaning to create a layout with. While I love physical stamps, I find that I tend to use digital stamps way more often in my projects. So I started with the digital version of her Hello Summer stamp set, and pulled in bits and pieces from a few other digital stamp sets, a printable kit, and even some PNG files from her cut files to create a two page hybrid layout. 

 

 

I'm a huge fan of pocket pages. I'm also a huge fan of photo collages. Since I didn't want to create this as a pocket page layout (as it will go in my family album, which is all traditional layouts), but I had all of my photos printed as 3x4's and 4x6's, I decided to work them into a "collage" of sorts, using a grid design. I started by arranging all of the photos that I wanted to use, leaving a spot for a title card and two journaling cards. Once that was set up, I knew that I needed to create five 3x4" filler cards to complete the spread.

 

 

For my title card, I used the "BBQ heat up the grill" from the Hello Summer digital stamp set, and added "family" above it (from the Giving Thanks kit). I added the striped piece along the left side of the title card by copying and pasting a piece from one of the printable cards.

 

I also like to match the colors for my digital stamps with the colors on the printable cards, by using the color sampler tool in Photoshop. I just click on the color that I want on a printable image, and then grab the color code to use on whatever digital piece that I want to make that color. If that makes any sense. Lol. 

 

 

While I could have pulled out some patterned papers to help fill those empty spots, I knew that I could find just what I needed in Kerri's vast collection of kits! Her Simply Summer kit is filled with 3x4" printable cards that were the perfect match for my photos and the theme of the page.

 

I picked out five cards, printing two of them as-is, and tweaking the other three to add in some additional elements - adding digital stamps and a few words taken from Kerri's cut file kits (the PNG files are great for using digitally). The card above originally had "loving life" in the center of the circle, but I replaced it with "sunny days" from the Hello Summer digital kit. 

 

 

I created two journaling cards, as I wanted to add one to the first page of the spread and one to the second page of the spread. I added "july" using the About Time digital stamp set.

 

 

The printable card above originally had polka dots covering the entire card. I knew that I wanted to add a little something to it, so I deleted a few rows of dots in Photoshop, and added a few digital stamps. The label is from the Label Maker digital stamp set, and the "sunshine on my mind" is from the Hello Summer digital stamp set.

 

 

Total side note. I will never, never understand why I can print a bunch of 3x4's and 4x6's - and they do NOT fit perfectly on a 12x12 page. I end up with gaps, and often have to trim parts off that hang over the edge of the page. I really feel like they should magically fit together perfectly. Lol.

 

 

I left this printable card as-is, since it was perfect for my page. 

 

 

Another printable card that fit my page perfectly - nothing extra needed on this one.

 

 

This card actually had stripes from top to bottom, but I wanted to add some text to it. So I deleted several rows of stripes in Photoshop, which left me room at the top to play with. Both of these words were done using the PNG files from Kerri's cut files - "pool" is from the Summer Lovin' kit and "splash" is from the Summer Vibes kit. 

 

 

On my second journaling card, I added the "sun and fun" using the Away digital stamp set, and the year was just typed with a fun font. I love creating hybrid layouts like this - where I get to play digitally, printing my journaling cards and filler cards, and adding them right in with my photos on a traditional layout.

 

Kerri Bradford Studio: Entertaining With Snapchat

Hey everyone. I've got a new layout up at Kerri Bradford Studio. So, I'm really not a fan of being in photos. And yet, I apparently seem to have no issues taking Snapchat selfies. Especially when I take them with adorable kiddos! Lol. I used to entertain the daycare kiddos with funny Snapchat filters at least once a day, so I've accumulated a lot of photos over the last few years. I decided to pull out some of my favorites and put together a two page spread. 

I printed 14 photos as 3x3" squares, and arranged them around the outside edges of my two page spread along with some 3x3" squares of patterned paper.

I printed my photos in black and white, since there were so many colors happening in them. I love that this allows me to use any paper colors that I want. 

I die cut a circle background from white cardstock, using Kerri's Background Basics kit, cut it in half lengthwise, and adhered the two pieces across the center of both pages. 

I didn't really have any patterned papers in mind when I started this. Not sure how it happened, but I turned towards my patterned papers, and immediately thought about the You Are Loved collection from Bella Blvd & Illustrated Faith, that my good friend Stephanie Buice designed. I never did take the time to use her gorgeous paper designs, and thought this was the perfect time to dig into them. 

I printed out Kerri's "Living Our Best Life" (from the Living Our Best Life kit) on white cardstock, as I wanted a 3x4" filler-type card to go side by side with my journaling card, which I also sized to 3x4". The metal rimmed tags are super old, both from American Crafts and Making Memories.

I had also printed the "Love This" (from the Click kit) circle on white cardstock, so I wanted to have a few additional circles to embellish the page. I arranged them on the left page of the spread, to fill in the empty space.  

This two page design is one that I use quite often. Arranging photos/papers around the outside edges, whether 3x3" in size or 3x4" in size, and then using the space in the center to add my title, journaling, etc. 

I love using the Weathered Door Alpha [All] kit for titles. It's a great choice for words that you may not be able to find specific cut files for, and I just love the chunky font with the option to die cut the outline of each letter as well. I pulled the "entertaining" from the Happy Stuff kit, and paired it with my die cut "snapchat" to complete my title. 

Well, I guess I also added some tiny alpha stickers for the "with" part of my title - so that completed my title ;)

I also added machine stitching around the outside edges of each 3x3" square of patterned paper. I did this before adhering them to my pages, and then machine stitched down the strips of striped patterned paper once the layout was assembled. 

These photos just make me smile. I realize the kiddos may not look all that thrilled in so many of the photos. But trust me, they loved doing them with me.

Seeing as how I actually started this layout last summer (all I had done was adhere my photos to white cardstock), I'm so glad I came across it and took the time to finish it.

Kerri Bradford Studio: Merry Christmas

I've got a new project up at Kerri Bradford Studio this week. While I'm fairly settled into my new scrapbook room, in the new house, I wasn't quite ready to scrap with paper and glue just yet. Things are all put away and the room is clean, but that doesn't exactly mean that I know where everything is or that it's organized the right way ;) So when it came time to create something for Kerri this month, I decided to go digital.

I'll be honest. I'm not one that scrapbooks much about Christmas, other than creating a layout or two each year with any photos that we take at family get-togethers. However, as I was prepping our family's Christmas cards to send out to family and friends a few weeks ago, I realized it was a tradition that was worth documenting. I've made it a habit to make sure that we take a few family photos on Thanksgiving day, so that we would have a photo all ready to go for ordering Christmas cards. I usually end up ordering them that very night, if not the next day. I always love getting our cards out as early as I can. 

I decided to create a digital 6x8" two page layout, as we recently moved and I'm still trying to get situated in my scrapbook room and am not quite ready to play with paper and scissors just yet ;) I used two different templates from the Half Pints: Wander kit to create my two page spread. I included our family photo for this year, along with our photos from the last two years. 

I came across the "did this" image from the Deck The Halls digital stamp kit and knew it would be perfect to include, adding a little digital check mark from the Versed: Note It digital stamp kit. I also added the years to each of the photos, using both the Label Maker digital stamp kit and the Side By Side digital stamp kit. 

I added the wreath above my journaling using a digital stamp from the Bundled Up digital stamp kit. On the first page, I created my title using PNG files from the Christmas Calendar kit.

I typed my journaling on the second page, using the text box that Kerri included within the template. I printed both 6x8" pages of my two page spread. Once I add this layout into my 6x8" family album (or my December Daily - which I have started, but time will tell if I stick with it), I will also be adding all three coinciding Christmas cards that go with those three family photos. 

Jillibean Soup: Beautiful Reasons To Be Happy

Soooo. If you happen to miss this little tidbit of info (I shared a bit about it on both Instagram and Facebook), with the sale of our house, I also made the decision to close my daycare as well. Here's what I shared about a month and a half ago: 

17 years ago, after moving here, I opened up my own daycare business in our home. I love and adore kids, and I knew it would also be a way for me to be home with my girls while they were growing up. Each and every child that came into our home was special and so very loved. Not just by me, but by my girls and Joe as well. Sure, some were more special than others (I can’t lie - it happens). But each and every one will hold a special place in my heart forever. Over those 17 years, I was lucky enough to spend my days with 54 precious kiddos. Babies, toddlers, and school aged children. Some were with me a short time, and some were with me for 4-5 years. I am so thankful that I got to play a small part in all of their little lives, and for their parents trusting me with their babies.

With this move, I knew that it was time to make a change. The decision to close up my daycare was so very hard to make, especially since it meant letting go of the 4 special kiddos that made up my last “squad”. But I’ve felt ready for a change for a while, so I knew the timing was right. Don’t ask me what I’ll be doing next, because I don’t know yet. I’ve been job hunting, since I do have to work. Just one more change that’s happening in our family right now. We’re deep in a transition phase and doing the best we can. But I sure do miss my little friends, as it’s been a really quiet week since we all parted ways ❤

Along with those words above, I also shared several collages of photos that I had put together. These collages were made up of 45 of the amazing kids that have meant so much to our family. There were 9 more kiddos, but they were during my film years, so I couldn’t easily track down their photos at the time I was creating the photo collages. 

I knew that I needed to work those 45 photos, of 45 adorable faces, into a layout. So that's just what I did for one of my Jillibean Soup layouts last month. To start, I used a photo template from Kerri Bradford's Travelers Templates, which held 15 photos, and I created three collages. I knew I would make this a two page spread, so I sized them to fit one on the first page, and two of them on the second page. 

I mentioned in my post yesterday that I created my layouts for last month using very limited supplies, as I was in-between homes for a few weeks and I didn't have access to all of my scrap stuff. I lucked out, in that I had this circle background already die cut and mixed in with my Jillibean Soup papers, since it was created with a Jillibean cut file. I had actually die cut it a few years ago, and didn't end up using it. I think if I had had my Silhouette handy, I most likely would have die cut that circle background from white cardstock, for a white-on-white look. But I love how the kraft looks mixed with the patterned papers and the white cardstock. 

I used patterned papers from the new You Make Miso Happy collection for this spread. This 3x4" card, from the Bite Size Bits patterned paper worked perfectly for my title. I matted it on a piece of black patterned paper, to help it stand out a bit more. I love these floral die cuts, from the Pea Pod Parts pack, and have been using them quite a bit on my projects. 

I've also been using lots of these die cut houses. Without really thinking about it, I used it on a layout this weekend that I created for next month's projects. I added some journaling strips along the bottom of the two pages, but I also added a little journaling block in this empty space on the first page, as I had a bit more to say.

I used that old school paper tearing technique again, just like I did on the layout I shared yesterday, as I didn't have any border punches or special tools - but I didn't want a straight edge, so the tearing adds some texture and interest. 

I've created a few layouts over the years, where I've included a photo of every kiddo that I've taken care of. You can see a few HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE. It's fun to see how the number of faces grew over the years. I won't lie - I miss seeing those little faces greet me each morning. It's been a good change, but a weird change too. I'm so thankful that I still keep in touch with the majority of these kiddos and their families, and I can continue to see cute photos of them, hear cute stories, and watch them grow up. 

Jillibean Soup: Adventure Is Always Worthwhile

Hey everyone! I've got a new layout to share that was up on the Jillibean Soup blog a while back. I've lost all track of time, but I think it was up at the end of August. Since I was asked to focus on summer themed layouts, I had to do some digging for photos to use. My goal was to find photos that I hadn't scrapped yet, and to avoid re-scrapping photos that are already on layouts within my albums. 

I came across these photos from a family trip to my uncle's cabin, way back in 2001 I believe (I had it written down, but failed to add the date to the layout, and now I can't find the info). These were film photos, since this was years before I went digital (was digital even a thing in 2001?). And to make things even trickier, I had already trimmed down some of the photos to random sizes. 

Not having digital images to work with can make things a little limiting, but I knew I could work with what I had to create a great layout. Back in the day when I would use film photos, I would simply start trimming little bits here and there off each photo, working them into a collage as best I could. The photos always ended up being totally different sizes, but they would eventually fit into a grid-like fashion on the page. 

Once I had my photos trimmed down, and arranged across the center of a two page spread, I then knew how much space I would have left to work with. I die cut a circle background from white cardstock for each side of the two page spread, using a cut file from Jillibean's Silhouette store, and adhered those to my white cardstock page bases. 

I kept the patterned paper minimal for this layout, adding thin strips of a floral patterned paper across the top and bottom of each page. I knew I would work some additional patterned paper into my die cut title and some circle accents that I added at the end. 

I also added in this 3x4" card from one of the Bite Size Bits patterned papers that said "the details documented" across the bottom. The orange worked well with my color scheme, and it helped fill in a gap within my photo "collage". I added a small corrugated frame to the card, which I backed with a scrap of white cardstock and added a sticker to the center. 

I knew I wanted to add in some additional patterned papers, and backing some of the circle cut outs in the die cut background seemed like a great spot to add those in. I used the floral patterned paper as my starting point, and picked out a few other papers that tied in with the colors on the floral paper. 

Since I finally got my new sewing machine up and running (which I'm pretty sure only took me about 2 minutes to do), I added my usual machine stitching here and there on the pages as well. On my July layouts, I didn't add any machine stitching and my layouts felt like they were missing an important piece.

For my title, I picked out a cut file from Jillibean's Silhouette store, and die cut it from a green patterned paper. I believe it actually said "Adventure is worthwhile", and I got rid of the "is" part. I can't remember for sure, but I know that I didn't use part of the cut file. 

I used some small letter stickers to complete my title, adding the "is always" to the second half of my title. 

I actually have about 8 more photos that I plan on adding to this spread. Well, not to these two pages, per se. I must have had an idea for these photos years and years ago, since so many of the photos were trimmed down into random sizes, and then some of them were trimmed into circles and ovals. Yes, you read that right. Which means is was forever ago, since the only time I cut my photos into ovals was back when I was only using Creative Memories products. I've done circles here and there, but I definitely got away from ovals.

My plan is to create a 6x12" insert, that will get added into the album, in the middle of these two pages. I already know I can fit those 8 circle and oval shaped photos onto two pieces of 6x12" cardstock. I will most likely keep it super simple, die cutting another circle background from white cardstock and adhering those to white cardstock page bases. And then I'll add the photos to those and call it a day. I meant to get that done before I shared this spread, but life happened and I just didn't get to it. When I do get around to it, I'll have to come back and share ;)

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: Home

Hey everyone! I've got a new layout up over at Kerri Bradford Studio today, and wanted to pop in and share it here as well. So, I'm sure you've all noticed that I've gone back and forth a lot this past year - between making traditional layouts, working in my 9x12" Project Life album, creating 6x12" and 6x8" pocket page spreads, and I even gave the traveler's notebooks a try.

Along the way, I'm finding that I gravitate towards certain formats and certain sizes more than others. After 24+ years of scrapbooking, and focusing mainly on creating 12x12" layouts all those years, the pocket page albums and smaller sized formats really speak to me lately. That's not to say I'm giving up on traditional layouts at all (I know many of you come looking for those). But I have to go with what inspires me, when it inspires me, because that's when I'm creating things that truly mean something to me.

So when I set out to create this layout, I decided to create a 6x8" two page spread. I created a layout recently with a similar design - 6x8" photo on one side, and 6x8" journaling page on the other side - and I really love the way it looked. This design works really well when you have that one special photo, and a lot to say about it!

The photo I used for this layout was taken almost a year ago, as we took it on Thanksgiving day 2016. And I'm planning on having us take another one on Thanksgiving day next week, as a lot has changed since then. And it means I'll get Christmas cards ordered and sent off in a timely matter as well ;)

I wanted to create my title directly on the photo, before printing. Did you know that when you purchase Kerri's kits, you not only get the cut files to use with your Silhouette or other cutting machines, but you also get the PNG files that can be used digitally? I used the PNG file for the word "home" from Kerri's Giving Thanks kit and centered it along the bottom of my photo. I also used two digital stamps for the subtitle, both taken from the Oh Yeah digital stamp kit, to add a subtitle under the word "home". 

There were many things I could have wrote about for this photo. Part of the reason I used the word "home" for my title, was because I knew that I wanted to use the fun house stamp from one of Kerri's newest stamp sets. And I knew I could work my journaling around the theme of home and family. 

I'm sure this goes without saying, but hopefully you all know that all of these digital stamp kits have REAL stamp sets that you can purchase as well. I was actually waiting for the new stamp set to arrive before I started my project, but then decided to switch it up and use the digital stamps. And of course, as my life goes, the stamps arrived in the mail last night, right after I finished this project. Lol.

For my journaling page, I added a few digital patterned paper strips, from A Traveler's Pack: Splendid kit, along the bottom of the page. It's cut off a bit in the photo above, but I added the grey dotted paper, and the black days of the week strip. The scalloped border was from an old digital kit in my stash, which I did in the same green as the heart. 

How cute is that house?! It's from Kerri's new Gather Together digital stamp kit, and I think it's just adorable. I sized it to fit in the lower right corner of the page, and changed it to a navy blue to tie in with the jeans that Joe and I were wearing in the photo. 

The heart and the "this photo" are digital stamps taken from Kerri's One Fine Day digital stamp kit. I kept the "this photo" black, but changed the heart to green, to tie in with all of the green in the photo. I sized them to fit in the upper left corner of the page. I added two grey enamel dots to the heart after I had printed my page out (they look green here, but they're grey). 

 

Once I had my journaling all typed up, I also added one last digital stamp to complete the last sentence. It was a total last minute thought, and I'm glad I did it. I used the "happy place" from the Gather Together digital stamp kit, in green to match the heart and the scalloped border.  

I'm certainly not turning into a digital-only scrapper or anything. Just in case anyone was worried about that ;) I know I've done quite a few projects lately that incorporate a lot of digital elements. But I have to say, I really enjoy it. Sometimes, I just have no desire (or no energy) to go into my scrapbook room, dig through product, and try and create something. But I can totally sit on the couch, while watching my shows, and play around in Photoshop!

This Is Real & Totally So Awesome

A while back, I received a comment on one of my blog posts, where I had shared a layout. It read a little something like this - "I like to see the "real" scrapbook pages you make rather than the project life pages - keep 'em coming". I could really appreciate the comment, and I totally knew it was meant in a good way. Just in case anyone thinks I took issue with it ;) I remember responding to this person, and chatting a bit about how my scrapbooking as changed in the last year or so. What I scrap about, how I scrap, and how much I scrap. 

And that is sort of what this layout is about. It's a layout about layouts, if you will. I wanted to document a little about how things have changed over the last year. Like how I look at it as "quality over quantity". I might be making less layouts, but the ones I'm making are all real and mean something to me. I was creating WAY more in previous years, but so much of what I made was "fluff" layouts - fake layouts that didn't really mean anything to me. 

I decided to go with a 6x8" pocket page spread, to add to my person album. About two years ago, I started a 6x8" personal album, and did two spreads. That was as far as I got, as I then started a 6x12" personal album that I've been doing more in. After working on this spread, I realized how fun this smaller size is, so I have a feeling I'll be doing more of them. 

I knew I wanted to have a full page for journaling. I resized a 3x4" digital journaling card to 6x8" and typed up my journaling to fill most of the page. I've seen other designers use this idea with resizing the digital cards and it's just genius. 

I left some space at the bottom of the page to add a few embellishments. Everything on this spread (with the exception of the pink chipboard circle on the first page) is from Ali Edwards, from either her Story Kits or her digital brushes. There was a 4x6" filler card with a colorful diagonal stripe pattern, and the colors coordinated perfectly with my photo. So I used a thin strip from that card along the bottom of my journaling page.

Once printed, I cut a slit along the top of the striped border so that I could tuck two square "tickets" in. Yes, I used my least favorite tool of all - the exacto knife. Lol.

When I first started thinking about documenting this story, I had no clue what type of photo I would use for the layout. I knew I had several photos from over the years of stacked layouts, since I've shared them when I ended up with huge amounts of layouts to put away in albums. While I could have taken a new photo of some sort, I decided to do a little digging on my external hard drive, and came across this photo. It's actually about five years old, but I knew it would work just fine. 

I cropped my photo to 6x8", and then added a digital brush to the center of it. I thought the "this is real" was a good fit, since my journaling is all about how what I'm scrapping these days is real and authentic. 

After I printed out my photo, I added some simple embellishments to the left edge of the photo. I even used that exacto knife again, to cut around the edge of the "t", so that I could tuck the ticket under it. That's one tool that I'll never get used too. It makes me nervous to use it. Lol.

One last shot of the full journaling, in case you'd like to read it easier. I will most definitely be using this page design again, with one large photo and one full page of journaling. In the 6x8" size, it's a great way to get those stories down that might only have one or two photos, rather than trying to do a larger layout. There's just something fun about this smaller size. 

Craft The Story: Ali Edwards - Lens

Hey all! I'm back to share another new layout with you. So, Snapchat. I'm sure I don't it like I should, as I mainly use it to entertain the daycare kids by taking funny photos with the filters. Lol. Alyssa has been really good at sending me Snapchats these last few months while off at college. Almost on a daily basis. And I started screenshotting them, since I love the peeks into her life when she's not around. And yes, she's totally fine with me screenshotting them ;)

I knew these photos would make a great layout. I gathered up most of the screenshots that I had taken over the first two months of her senior year. Actually, I guess she's in her senior semester, since she'll be finishing a semester early. I pulled out the "Lens" Story Kit from Ali Edwards for this spread, as I knew it would be a great fit, and the colors also worked really well with the photos.  

I cropped and printed out all of my photos as 3x4's, and started arranging them around the outside edges of my two pages. It's a design that I use quite often on two pagers, especially when working with 3x4" photos. 

I mentioned that I also get the digital version of the Story Kits, since I get both the Story Kit and the Story Stamp Kit. I love being able to pull up the digital version of the journaling cards, add my journaling, and print them out. This works well for me, since I'm not big on using my own handwriting on my pages. 

I really liked the "we see" card. Alyssa is Snapchatting me what she's seeing/thinking in photos, and I often see a totally different thing while seeing her photos. If that makes sense. 

A random thing. Have you ever gone to screenshot something on your phone, and the phone just turns off? Meaning you didn't get the screenshot. That happens to me all the time, but it's always so sad when it happens on Snapchat. Since I lose the chance to capture that photo. 

I made sure to leave a few empty spots, to mix in some 3x4" filler and/or journaling cards with the photos. 

The main 4x6" card, "through the lens", was perfect for my title card. I wanted to add a little subtitle, and ended up simply typing it up and adhering it in the bottom corner. 

I wanted to include a few of the chipboard circles along the center of the spread, and picked out a few in colors that coordinated with my photos. Once I knew where exactly I wanted to place them, I made little marks on each side to show where they would meet the edges of the photos/papers. I trimmed off a piece so that I could adhere the circles and they would lay flush against the edge of whatever photo/paper they were butted up too. 

I did add a strip of patterned paper along the center of the spread, to fill the space not being covered with photos, journaling cards, and filler cards.

I typed up my journaling onto two small journaling blocks, and then matted them on pieces of aqua patterned paper before adhering them to the page.

I usually like to add machine stitching to my layouts, but on this one, I really wasn't sure where I would add it. I kind of wanted to do a zig zag stitch along the edges of the filler cards, title card, journaling cards. But then I felt like I'd have to add the stitching along the edges of all of the photos as well. In the end, I actually just forgot to get the sewing machine out. So I ended up with no stitching at all. 

Popcorn for dinner at almost midnight? Yep, I guess that happens. Lol.

I love the story that these photos tell when grouped all together like this. Can't wait to see what Snapchat photos I end up with for the last three months of her senior semester :)

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: Easter Egg Hunt

Hey everyone! Hopefully you have heard by now, that Kerri Bradford Studio is back up and running!!! I know she's thrilled to have her new website fully functioning, and I'm excited to be back to creating for her blog. And today, I've got a new layout up.

When Kerri asked us to focus on spring projects this month, I knew exactly what I wanted to create. Seeing as how my girls are older, it's been years and years since we've colored eggs or had an Easter egg hunt. So I haven't had any Easter photos to scrap in years as well. But what I do have is Easter layouts from my earlier days of scrapbooking that I've been wanting to re-do.

While I have no intention of re-doing all of my earlier layouts - as I think it's cool to show the progression of my style - there are plenty of older layouts that really have no meaning or purpose to them. I pulled out an Easter layout from back in 1998, which was actually a three page layout (guess that was a thing back then ;)), and got to work on re-designing it. 

     

I figured you might want to see the original layout, and for once, I thought to take a photo of it before taking it apart. This was created almost 19 years ago, back when Creative Memories was a huge thing. I won't say they had the only scrapbooking products out there, because I'm honestly not sure if that's true. But I did start out with Creative Memories, and they were really big on only using their products. Which pretty much consisted of colored paper, a couple patterned papers (literally just a couple), a few colors of alpha stickers (literally just a few), and tiny little Mrs Grossman stickers. 

We used templates to cut our photos into shapes. We literally placed the template over the photo, traced it with a black pen, and then cut them out with a pair of scissors. They did eventually come out with a circle cutter (that I still use to this day), but I want to say the circle photos here with made with a template and a pen.

Scrapbooking has come a looooooooonnnnnngggg way since then, thank goodness!

Since my photos are from back in my film days, I had to work with what I had. Which meant lots of circle photos, some decorative cut corners, cut out corners, etc. I also had to accept the darker photos for what they were, as I couldn't just open them up in Photoshop and lighten them up, or fix the colors. 

I removed all of my photos from the previous pages, and cropped them as best I could, and worked most of them into a collage across the two page spread. I decided to keep a few of the circle photos as is, and work them into the design of the page. 

I love to use white cardstock for my backgrounds, but I also love to add some texture and interest to them, so they're not too plain. This is why I'm such a huge fan of using Kerri's background cut files. It's no secret that the circle backgrounds are my favorite, and I love to die cut them from white cardstock, to create my white-on-white backgrounds for my layouts. 

I used one of my favorite circle backgrounds, from Kerri's Background Basics kit, for this layout. I cut two full 12x12" backgrounds, since I knew I'd be using them on both pages of the spread. I trimmed off what I didn't need from one of the backgrounds, and saved it for a future layout. 

For my patterned papers, I used several papers from Paige Evan's collections by Pink Paislee. I can't actually tell you what collections they're from, as that info doesn't seem to be on the papers (unless I'm totally missing it). I also added in the green dotted patterned paper from Jillibean Soup, for part of my title as well as the scalloped border I cut using the This & That: Spring kit.

Gosh, the photos are dark! I'm trying to be ok with it, but it's hard. Lol. I feel the need to point out two things about the photos. You'll see there are rounded corners, but they're not very clean looking. Well, that's because back in 1998, when I created the original layout, we didn't have that fabulous tool called a corner rounder. Back in the day, we would simply use a pair of scissors and make rounded corners freehand. So they never looked perfect or consistent. 

I guess I could have used my corner rounder to give these better looking corners. Not sure why that didn't cross my mind. 

Also, you might notice that two photos on this spread have a weird cut out in the upper corner. There was no fixing that, unfortunately, so I had to just go with it. It was also this thing, back in the day, to cut photos into circles and/or ovals, and then make a little cut out in another photo so that you can sort of butt them up against each other. That probably made no sense. Lol.

For my title, I used a few handwritten words from Kerri's Bloom kit, along with the alphas from the Weathered Door [all] kit. I die cut each handwritten word from patterned paper, as well as black cardstock, to layer together and give some dimension. 

To embellish my pages, I fussy cut some flowers and leaves from a sheet of patterned paper to add to a few spots on the spread. To add some easy texture, I crumbled the flowers and leaves up, and then flattened them back out, before adhering them to the page. 

I know people have different views on re-doing older layouts. I, for one, love it. Like I said, I don't intend on re-doing all of my older layouts. But there's plenty that could benefit from a fresh design. It does make my older albums interesting to look through though. Those old Creative Memories albums were strap-hinge albums. And you literally created the layout on the page in the album. So it's a little trickier to just remove a page. Not like you can just pull the page out of the protector. 

Which means if you were to ever look through my older albums, you would most likely come across pages here and there where all of the photos have been torn off. And what's left is a deconstructed layout, with torn pieces of paper and left over adhesive. Kind of funny to me!

Kerri Bradford Studio: Hello Christmas 2015

 

Hey everyone! I know it's been quiet here. I really do plan to get back to more blogging once we get past the holidays. I do have a new layout to share today. This was created for Kerri Bradford Studio, and I was waiting to share until her new site was up. She's still dealing with issues out of her control, so in the meantime, she's been sharing our projects on Instagram and Facebook this week!

 

 

After working really hard last year to catch up on years worth of Christmas layouts, and with Christmas 2016 just days away, I figured I had better get to documenting last year's Christmas photos. If you know me, you'll know that I'm all about getting as many of my photos on the page as I can. So for something like a Christmas family get-together, I turned to one of my go-to two page designs, getting 22 photos on the spread.

 

 

If this design looks familiar, it's because I have used it more times than I can count! I even used it on a few previous Christmas layouts. I use a full 12x12 photo collage on one side of the spread, and a smaller photo collage on the other side, leaving me plenty of room for my title, journaling, and sometimes, even a few more photos.

 

 

Kerri's Stoyboard templates are my go-to choices for creating photo collages, and the only ones I even use anymore. While I often tend to use the same ones over and over, she's got tons of choices to fit whatever your needs are, as far as how many photos, and size and orientation of photos. 

 

 

I like to keep with a white background on the top half of my first page, since the two page spread is so photo heavy. Rather than a plain white background, I die cut a ton of stars from Kerri's Out Of This World kit, using white cardstock. The white on white adds interest, without being overwhelming.

 

 

Kerri has SO many choices for Christmas titles, so it can be a little hard deciding which to use. I usually start by looking for one that fits the space I have left for my title, as that usually narrows things down a bit. I decided on the "hello Christmas", from the Yuletide Greetings kit, and cut it both from patterned paper and black cardstock, to layer together for a little shadow effect. 

 

When it came to picking out patterned papers for this layout, I came across these super old papers from Making Memories. They matched perfectly, so they were my obvious choice. Sometimes, I wonder why I hold onto things for so long, and other times, I'm so glad I did hold onto them for so long!

 

 

I don't always feel the need to journal on my Christmas layouts, and it's something I've talked before. I guess I feel the journaling would be almost the exact same every year. However, if I find myself with extra space to fill on a layout, I will add some journaling. And that's exactly what happened on this layout. I had a little space to fill, and rather than just filling it with more patterned paper, I added in a journaling strip that went the length of the page. 

 

Just Because: Favorite Little Dudes

Hey all! Back to share another older layout of mine that never quite made it out to be seen anywhere. I created this layout a little over a year ago, using photos of all my favorite daycare boys from over the years. This, of course, was before the three adorable little dudes I watch now. 

I'm trying to go off memory here on these older layouts, as far as what products I used. Just in case anyone is wondering. I know there's some Crate Paper, My Mind's Eye, and I'm thinking a little Echo Park. 

I die cut a bunch of stars (I want to say from Kerri Bradford Studio) to embellish the two sides of the page with. I added coordinating enamel dots to the centers of each star, and also sprinkled some small black enamel dots around the page. 

I used the Weathered Door Alpha kit from Kerri Bradford Studio for part of my title (and one of her hand drawn words for the other part). It's such a good chunky font, and I love to use it whenever I have a word that I can't find as an actual cut file. 

I used two different templates, also from Kerri Bradford Studio, for my photo collages. I made all of my photos black and white, as there were a lot of clashing colors going on. 

I will say, if I could create this layout again, I would have arranged my title pieces a little differently. I would have preferred to have "little' and "dudes" closer together. Just a random thought looking at this a full year later :)

Bella Blvd: Great Outdoors

I'm sharing a new two pager over on the Bella Blvd blog today. Ever since the Campout collection came out, I've been meaning to scrap these photos from way back in 2006. My sister was out visiting from Denver, and her and my dad decided to take Joe and the girls camping for two days. This was right after a family wedding, where I played a big part in organizing the day. And also during a time when I was going thru some chronic pain issues, so that big wedding day totally kicked my butt. Which explains why I didn't tag along on this trip. 

I grew up in camping family. We would take these 2-3 week camping trips, driving hours and hours each day, sightseeing along the way, and setting up camp in a different KOA campground each night. We had systems in place, everything super organized, and we could set up and take down the entire campsite (tent and sleeping bags of course) in record time, over and over. My little family? We don't camp. Ok, we did take the girls camping once when they were little. But it was with a previous daycare family, and they were experts, which made it easy for us. We wouldn't do well on our own ;)

While my go-to way of getting tons of photos on the page is to use photo collages, I've been making an effort to show different ways of including photos on my recent two pagers for Bella. But I just had to re-visit the photo collages for this layout, and looking back to the last time I used them on one of my Bella two pagers (on my April layout HERE), I just now realized that I used the same exact collage template. I guess you can say it's a favorite of mine. 

I'm glad my dad (or my sister) took these photos on their trip. They were taken on a simple digital camera, before I even got into the digital side of photography. They had some pretty funny photos, and of course, Sarah was her hilarious self in many of the pics. 

Alyssa would probably kill me for using this photo of her (second from the left). But the look on her face pretty much sums up how she felt about the entire trip. Because my sister was only in town for a few days, to take this 2 day camping trip, the girls had to miss a day of school. And that one day ended up being the ONLY day of school Alyssa ever missed in 13 years of her K-12 school years, and she will tell you about this trip being the reason for that to this day! 

I like to size my collages so that I still have plenty of room up top for my title, journaling, and often times, more photos! I printed four extra photos, thinking I would add two to each side of the spread. I ended up wanting to include this 3x4" "keep calm and camp on" card from the Daily Details patterned paper, so I decided to mix it in with three of those four photos on the first page of the spread. 

A large majority of the time when creating two pagers, I end up mirroring the two pages design wise. I'll use the same patterned papers, in the same sizes, along the top and bottom edges, and along the sides. This works well for me, as I'm a very linear scrapper. I might have to challenge myself to do something a little different for my next one, just for fun.

Only having one photo to add up top on the second page of the spread allowed me more room for my title, which ended up working out perfectly. I was originally going to die cut my entire title, as I completely forgot the Campout collection had coordinating chipboard. Once I pulled out the "outdoors" chipboard letters, I decided to die cut the word "great" to complete my title. 

In the end, the only embellishments I added to this two page spread were a few chipboard clouds and a tree on the top part of the page, and a few tab and word stickers. Over the years, I've gotten to where I prefer my layouts without a lot of bulk, so simple and clean works well for me. 

Kerri Bradford Studio: Celebrate A Freakin' Awesome Season Lady Buffs

Hey all! I had a new layout up at Kerri Bradford Studio yesterday. I know I've said this a few times lately, but I honestly can't remember where I've said it. My blog, Instagram, in conversations with friends, in my head. Who knows. Anyways. I've had sports on my mind lately, when it comes to layouts and even some album projects!

One layout that I've been wanting to make is this one here, documenting an awesome season - a freakin' awesome season - our high school girls varsity soccer team had. Seeing as how they took home not one, but two major championships, I knew I wanted to create a layout filled with photos taken throughout the season. 

I'm sure you all know by now that I love creating white-on-white backgrounds for a lot of my pages. Since I only needed to cover about half of each page with the die cut background, I was able to use a smaller sized background from the Life Additions: Backgrounds kit. Usually, I just cut full 12x12 backgrounds, and then save the extra parts I don't use for other projects. But it was nice to be able to use just two 8.5x11" pieces of white cardstock for my two background pieces. 

For my title, I turned to the Weathered Door [all] kit for the "Lady Buffs" part of my title. Our school mascot is the buffalo, so the varsity soccer players are referred to as the "Lady Buffs". The Weathered Door kit comes in so handy when you need a word that Kerri doesn't have in kits. I mean, obviously there isn't a demand for "lady buffs", so it's not something Kerri would have ;) I went back and forth on the first part of my title, and finally settled on "celebrate", from the July Four kit. 

I had every intention of using small alpha stickers for the middle part of my title, and it was going to read "an amazing season". I'm glad I stopped, just before adhering my stickers, and checked out Kerri's stamps I have on hand. I came across the "freakin' awesome" from the For You stamp set and it was perfect for this title! I knew I wouldn't be able to stamp it directly to the page, with my die cut background, so I stamped it onto a scrap piece of cardstock and simply cut it out and adhered it in place. 

All but three of my photos are cell phone photos, taken by either myself or my daughter. I had this thing going (which I've mentioned when sharing a previous layout), where at the start of each game, I would snap a photo of the team getting ready to take the field. I would Instagram them each time as well. So I managed to collect a good amount of photos by the end of the season.

I was able to get Sarah to send me some photos she took during the season as well, with a little begging and pleading. I gathered up all of these photos, and arranged them into two collages using a template from Kerri's Storyboard: Instagram Style kit. My two main photos, both taken by the newspaper photographer, were printed as 4x6" photos to include on either side of the collages. 

My journaling took me forever to type up. I started out making it about Sarah and how she did this season, but then realized that with my title, the page was really about the team as a whole. Then I would get to certain parts, and I felt like I should have pulled out the newspaper articles/clippings, so that I could add in the stats and facts about some of these big wins. But those were already put away in her school album upstairs. Let's just say that both of their big wins - the VOL title and the Section title - were huge for the school's soccer program, and the school itself. I did end up adding some tidbits about Sarah and how she did this season at the end of the journaling. 

I also cut a tab using the Simplicities: Best Thing Ever kit to add to the side of my journaling block, so that I could add the year. If anyone is wondering about my paper choices, my green patterned papers came from Simple Stories, and my grey patterned papers came from Amy Tangerine. 

I just love the two main photos on this spread. The one on the left side of the page, with the green jerseys, was from their VOL win. And the photo above, with the white jerseys, was from their Section win. Both such huge moments for these young ladies, for their team as a whole, for the soccer program and their dedicated coaches, and for the school. Once I add this layout to her school album, I will most likely add all of the newspaper articles and clippings directly after it. Just need to figure out how to arrange all of those still. 

Bell Blvd: He Will Forever Love The Game

Hey everyone! I've got a new two pager up on the Bella Blvd blog today. I've had sports on the creative brain lately, and have numerous projects started using sports photos of my two girls. But when a photo of my husband, Joe, popped randomly into my inbox one night, I knew it was time to make a layout about him doing what he loves to do - umpiring baseball. 

Joe has been umpiring for years and years, and I have to admit that I've never been out to watch him in action. He does mostly high school baseball, so I'm usually working when games are happening. So to have a photo of him land randomly in my inbox, sent from another umpire, it's a nice surprise. I have a few of those photos that I wanted to include here, and I also have some photos I took of him and his gear several years ago. I printed my two main photos as 4x6's and the others as 4x4's. 

When it comes to scrapping sports photos, I turn to some simple basic patterns for my patterned papers, as Bella doesn't have a recent sports collection. I'm a huge fan of star patterns in general, and they're perfect for sports layouts. I also love a good grid pattern, and anything with circles. Three of my favorite patterns to scrap with. Although in all honesty, when I set out to pick my papers, I really look for anything and everything that will match my photos. That's my main goal. 

An on-going trend you'll find on my layouts is a multiple font title. I know I've said this before, but I'll say it again. I love to mix a large cursive die cut word with clean looking alphas. And the Sienna chipboard alphas are my go-to pick, as they add a bit of dimension to what is often an "all paper" layout. I die cut the word "forever" using a cut file from Kerri Bradford's Grateful kit. 

Because I often use quite a bit of patterned paper on my layouts, I like to add a bit of die cutting to the background of my page. In this case, I die cut a circle border piece to go on both sides of the spread. Even though I die cut the border from patterned paper, that bit of whiteness that shows thru helps break up the heaviness that can come from covering the entire page with patterned papers. 

I started out having four 4x4" photos, but one of the photos just didn't look right on the page. So I decided to leave that photo off, and added a 4x4" piece of star patterned paper in it's place. To help my chipboard star stand out, I punched a circle from patterned paper to layer beneath it. 

I am a huge advocate for journaling on layouts, and it's very rare that you'll see a layout from me without it. Sometimes, I have more to say than other times, but there's always journaling there. I had more to say for this layout, so I printed out my journaling in a large paragraph, and matted it with some green patterned paper. I took out some of my older Bella Designer Tape to add to the top, and machine stitched over it. 

This photo here is the one that recently showed up in my inbox, and it's such a great shot! It was this photo that inspired me to create a new layout about Joe, doing what he loves and what he puts his whole heart into. I fully admit that most of my layouts are about our girls, my daycare kids, and even about myself. I guess I needed a little nudge from the universe (or whoever sent that photo to me) to get my husband in the albums too!

Bella Blvd: Loving Life With Them By My Side

Hey everyone! I know it's been quite around here, but I finally have a new layout to share. I have a new two pager up on the Bella Blvd blog today. For my layout this month, I thought it would be fun to incorporate an enlargement into the design. When you have a favorite photo, let it stand out on the page, by printing it big. Really big!

This photo of my two girls is one of my absolute favorite photos of them. We were out taking some senior pics of Alyssa, and Sarah was just there to tag along with us. At some point, she wanted in on some pics too, and I mostly captured photos of them being funny and goofy together. But this one photo shows their genuine love for each other. Even though Sarah's eyes are closed in this photo, I absolutely love it. I had it printed 8x12" and adhered it to the right side of the page. 

Since my photo actually had a lot of "white space" to it (meaning nothing important in part of the photo), I ended up adding some strips of patterned paper over the left side of the photo. So my 8x12" photo ended up being more of a 6.5x12" photo. 

I printed five more photos to include, all 3x4" in size. I am a huge fan of lining up photos in rows across the page, as it fits well with my linear style of scrapbooking. I'm also a huge fan of white on white backgrounds, and love to die cut white backgrounds into my pages. Adhering a die cut white background directly to my white cardstock page adds subtle interest to the page, and just the right amount of texture for this clean and semi-simple scrapper. 

For my title, I once again did a mix of die cut words, cut from patterned paper, and chipboard alphas. The Sienna chipboard alphas are by far my favorites of the Bella chipboard alphas, as once again, you guessed it ... they fit with my linear style. 

I printed out my journaling to run under my photos, even adding a bit of the journaling to the second page to make the design flow from page to page. I pulled my patterned papers from both the Hello Autumn collection and the older Birthday Boy collection, as I specifically set out to find good navy blues, and browns, knowing that my chipboard alphas would cover the green I needed on the page. 

And to finish off the page, I kept the embellishments simple, by adding some of the IF enamel hearts to the centers of the circles on my die cut background. If you're looking for a fun challenge for your next two pager, try incorporating an enlargement into your page design. The photo doesn't have to be as big as mine here, but it's a fun size to play with if you're up for it!

Bella Blvd: Pacific Theta's Bid Day

Hey everyone! I'm back with another two pager this month on the Bella Blvd blog, and this time around I decided to scrap some photos of my oldest daughter, Alyssa. She's been living the college life for two years now, and this is the first time I've scrapped any photos from her college days. In a sense, her life is her story to tell now that she's older. I am including bits and pieces of her activities in my project life album that I started this year, so she does send me a handful of photos each month to use. And since I had all of these fun photos on hand from a sorority event earlier this year, they were just calling out to be documented. 

When I have a lot of photos that I want to include on a page/spread, I love to turn to one of my favorite photo sizes, the 3x4" photo. I printed the majority of the photos for this layout as 3x4's, and kept the two main photos as 4x6's as they wouldn't crop well to the smaller size. I then do what my linear-self loves to do, and I line them up across the page, mixing in pieces of patterned paper as well. 

I also pulled out a few of the white Clear Cuts, both stars and hearts, to layer over several of my patterned paper pieces. The white Clear Cuts are by far my favorite, as they layer so well over any and all patterned papers. Since tone-on-tone patterned papers are my go-to papers, they add a nice touch of white to them, and I'm also a huge fan of lots of white on my layouts. 

When I need a little something to fill an empty space, I love to turn to Bella's Candid Cards or our Daily Detail sheets of patterned paper. The 2x2" cards (or even the 3x4" and/or 4x4" cards depending on the space) are usually perfect for filling those spaces. I love to trim the bottom of the cards at an angle before adhering them, so that it appears they're tucked into the papers below them. Unless I was smart enough to plan them in advance, and I really did tuck them under. 

And if anyone plans on going all grammar police on me, I'm well aware that I forgot to add an apostrophe to "Theta's". I left room for it, and planned on finding an apostrophe sticker or something. And then I obviously forgot to take care of that. I make no promises that I will dig out the layout and add it on, since I know myself all too well ;)

Before I adhered my fussy cut flowers, I lightly crumbled them up a bit to add some texture to the page. I used to be addicted to pop dotting everything on my layouts, and now, I can't remember the last time I've used a pop dot. I added a little adhesive to just the centers of the flowers, so the petals all have a little lift on the page. A little dimension, without the bulk. 

I mentioned last month that I really rely on my photos to dictate the colors I use on the page. The 4x6" photo on this page was my starting point, with all of the red, blue, yellow, and white. The girl's shirts also have these super cute flowers on them, so I knew I just had to incorporate lots of flowers onto the page. 

I came across a sheet of patterned paper from a much older collection, Family Dynamix, filled with flowers in just the right colors that I could fussy cut out. Once I had that paper picked out, I went digging for my blue, red, and yellow patterned papers to mix in. I don't usually turn to just a single collection when it comes to finding papers. I like to pull from multiple collections, looking for the best patterns that fit my page/photos. I also ended up adding in a tan and a brown patterned paper, as there were touches of brown in many of my photos. 

Once I had all of my fussy cut flowers adhered to my 3x4" pieces of patterned paper, I adhered some small stickers to each for some simple embellishing. And as luck had it, Alyssa was home from college just in time to help me add the journaling, so that all of my info for her photos/story were accurate!

Bella Blvd: Adventures At Great America

I'm finally back with something to share! I had a new two page layout up on the Bella Blvd blog yesterday. We've changed on the format on the blog a bit, and left the assignments a little looser to give our designers a bit more freedom to scrap what they're inspired to scrap. In keeping a few of the regular features going, one that I felt strongly in keeping was the two page feature. I don't think you see enough two pagers anymore, yet I do believe that there are plenty of people out there looking for two page inspiration. I could be wrong about that, but I like to think I'm on to something ;)

I love to incorporate as many photos as I can onto my layouts, and two pagers are great for just that. I almost always create two pagers for things like birthdays, holidays, family get togethers, as well as vacations and day trips. And this day trip to Great America theme park six years ago on my to-do list to get scrapped and in the album.

One of my favorite ways to work lots of photos onto my pages are by creating photo collages. As a clean and linear scrapper, it's a great way to keep the photos looking organized and clean on the page. I often pick the same template to use for both sides of the two page spread, and I simply rotate the template 180 degrees for the second collage. The nice thing about using collages is that when you sit down to start creating your layout, it's almost like you're only working with 2 large photos as you plan out the design of the spread. Once I figure out where my collages will go, I just start building the patterned papers around them.

Die cut backgrounds are a favorite of mine to use, as it helps break up the look of too much patterned paper on a page (if that's a thing?). This circle die cut background is my go-to background cut, and I use it more than I probably should. I was able to cut the background from just one sheet of the tan arrow patterned paper, as I knew I could then cut that piece in half and use one half for each side of the spread.

I needed a little something in the upper corner of the first page, so I thought I would die cut this funky sun shape. I die cut the sunbeams from black cardstock, orange Strandz patterned paper, and the white stars Clear Cut, and then layered them all together. I die cut the center of the sun from two additional patterned papers, and layered those together.

I tend to keep my layouts fairly flat, without too much bulk. Even with a full seven layers of paper where the sun is placed, my layout is still very flat.

When choosing patterned papers for my layouts, I rely on the photos to dictate the colors I go with. I had a lot of black and tan in the photos, with touches of orange and green. Those colors stood out the most to me, so those are the colors that I went looking for when starting this spread. I tend to stick with mostly tone-on-tone patterned papers, as they don't overwhelm the page as much as busier patterns can do. 

For my title, I used my favorite white text Sienna chipboard alphas, along with one of the new chip script words ("adventure"), which is also white. I'm always a sucker for a title that incorporates a cursive font, alongside a clean, solid font, so I'm really loving the new chip script words.

The last thing I do is add my embellishments. I'm a pretty simple scrapper, so I usually keep the embellishments to a minimum. Enamels and buttons are some of my go-to pieces to add to layouts, as they're fairly flat and super simple to sprinkle around the page.

Bella Blvd: First Day Of School

After a two month break, we're back with the Spread It Out feature today on the Bella Blvd blog, focusing on two page layouts. I went back and forth on what I wanted to do for my layout this time. At one point, I was just randomly scrolling thru my Silhouette library, looking for a fun cut file to jump out at me, and I eventually found one. I've had this circle/star cut file for years (it's from Pink Paislee), and have never used it. I just knew it would be perfect for a school layout. 

And I happen to have some first day of school photos in mind. These photos were scrapped on a layout I created for Creating Keepsakes magazine years ago. It was almost six years ago when I created the original layout, seen HERE, which was for an assignment that led to a very bulky and heavy layout. I actually had it pulled out and in a pile to re-create at some point, because it was just too bulky for my taste in the albums. 

I was able to pull the photos right off the old layout, and use them as is. This saved time, since if I had printed these again, I would have most likely re-edited the photo a bit, or I would have wanted to include more photos than just these four. Any time I can just grab photos and start saves me a ton of time. This also helped with the decision making, as to where the photos would go on the spread, as I kept them pretty much the same design wise. 

I sized the circle/star cut file to fit the left side of the first page of the spread, knowing that it would fill up a lot of the page. I cut it from black cardstock, and also cut out a few extra stars, thinking I would add them to the other side of the two page spread. Once I had most of the page planned out, and I knew where my patterned papers would go, I went back and cut out a few circles from the coordinating patterned papers to add to the large circle/star die cut. 

When it came to picking out my patterned papers, I turned to the Star Student collection first, and pulled out the few patterned papers that would match my photos - the black text, aqua stars, and navy blue dotted patterns. I was pulling my colors straight from my photos, using the colors of the girls shirts and backpacks. So I also added in the green dotted patterned paper and the pink woodgrain patterned paper. 

I also die cut the "first day" from black cardstock, for my title. I knew I wanted a mix of cursive die cut words and clean looking chipboard alphas. Once I had everything laid out, I realized the only way my "first day" really fit was to have the word "first" split between the first and second page of the spread. I don't usually cut things in half, between pages. But it had to be done. And just now, as I'm typing this, I realized that I forgot to dot my "i". Oops.

I knew I wanted to keep the entire center of my spread simple, so that the photos and the circle/star die cut would stand out, but I also didn't want to leave it plain white cardstock. I knew the typewriter Clear Cut transparency would work out great for my background. 

That loopy part of the "y" is part of the reason my title had to be split between pages. I had to find an empty space in my photos for it to fall. Those extra stars that I die cut came in handy too, and luckily, my guesswork on the sizing worked out perfectly.

I used both green and navy blue Sienna chipboard alphas for the rest of my title. It was a great way to work in a little more green onto the page, since I didn't have much green elsewhere. 

My original page had some large silver brads added to the center of punched stars. Since I had pulled them off that old layout, and had them out, I figured I might as well use them on this page as well. It was all the extra embellishing I needed for this spread. 

Just Because: Daily Practice

I'm back to share another "just because" layout with you. I love that I've had more time lately to create ... well, just because. I mentioned on a post last week that I had ordered a bunch of 4x4" photos using the FreePrints app on my phone, and this is another layout where I put several of those fun square photos to use. 

All of the square photos across the top of the two page spread are ones that I have borrowed (aka - stole) from Sarah's Instagram account. It would be awesome if she would willingly send me photos when I ask, but there's a massive lag in her response time ;) So I have learned to just screenshot the photos, and as it turns out, most of them print just fine. 

These photos were all from cross country season at school last fall, and I'm so glad that I was able to get a nice variety of photos. It may have only been six photos (the bottom two photos seen above are ones I took at the awards ceremony), but I'm so glad I have them. She may have more. In fact, I"m sure she has more. But I'll take what I can get for now. 

I had six 4x4" photos, so I decided to line them up across the top of the two page spread. I knew the title I had planned would look better spread out along the bottom of the page, with the photos up top. 

I will say the one thing about screenshotting the photos from Sarah's Instagram account (and even a few that she was conveniently tagged in, and I happen to see them) is that a lot of them ended up with different looks to them. I did my best not to get too hung up on that, and spread them out in a way that spread out the different looks. I like that there's a few photos of them at meets, a few they took after having team photos taken, and even a photo they took after an early morning practice in the rain. 

I started by digging around in my Silhouette library for cut files I could use on this spread. My intention was to use this layout for Kerri Bradford this month, which is partially why all of the cut files I picked out where from her (the other reason is that I'm very partial to her designs!). Then I decided to go with the love theme for my layout for her, so this became a layout just for the heck of it. 

I started with a background cut, as I wanted to add a subtle patterned paper to the pages, but didn't want solid papers. And anyone that knows me, knows how much I LOVE this circle background from Kerri's Background Basics kit. I was looking for a neutral, subtle patterned paper, and ended up using this woodgrain patterned paper from Bella Blvd (from the wedding collection of all places).

It took me a while to come up with my title for this layout. There aren't necessarily a lot of sports themed cut files out there. Although maybe I'm not looking in the right places, or the ones I see just don't appeal to me. So I had to do a little brainstorming. I came up with "Daily Practice", knowing that I would also add a subtitle along with it.

I picked out the word "daily" from Kerri's Grammar School: The Adverbs kit, and pulled the word "practice" from Kerri's Something To Say kit. I cut them both from a green patterned paper from Little Yellow Bicycle (remember them?), as well as black cardstock. It was actually a sports patterned paper (some sort of field), but the main reason I used it was because it was the right shade of green, our school color. 

I eventually figured out what I wanted my subtitle to say, and used some older High Five alpha stickers from Bella Blvd to spell it out. And just now, I'm questioning whether that should have read "lead" instead of "leads", but whatever ;)

To add a little something above the row of photos across the two page spread, I dug up this fun star border from Kerri's Stars & Stripes kit, cutting it from the same green patterned paper I cut my title from, as well as black cardstock. This cut file has a flourish you can use as well, but I left that part off for this layout.

I tucked it down under the photos a bit on both pages of the spread, and then machine stitched across to really hold it in place. I also added a black scalloped border sticker below the row of photos on both pages of the spread, machine stitching across as well. The majority of the time, when I want a scalloped border, I'll simply use my scalloped border punch on cardstock or patterned paper. But I happen to have a large stash of Bella Blvd stickers, and can usually find duplicates when I need more than one. 

I finished the page off with a few small blocks of journaling, each matted on black cardstock to help them stand out. Sarah always comes up with the best captions/quotes for her Instagram photos, and I wanted to include one of them on this page. I also had a few stars I die cut from black cardstock, and added those across the bottom of the two page spread. I'm pretty sure I was going to add some enamel dots or buttons or something to those stars, but I must have forgotten about that idea at some point. 

I really am becoming a patterned paper, cardstock, photos, die cuts, and sticker scrapper, aren't I ;)

Tackling Christmases Past: Done, Done, and Done

Just a little over a year ago, I set out on a mission to tackle 6 years worth of Christmas photos that had never been documented and get them scrapped and in the albums. You can read more about this HERE, if you haven't read it already. I feel like I've repeated a lot of this while sharing each of the layouts I've created over the last year, but I'm going to do a little re-cap anyways! I thought it would be cool to share all of the layouts in one single post.

A quick refresher. I relied heavily on Kerri's Storyboard templates for this project, and created 16 different photo collages, that included a total of 143 photos. These collages covered 6 family get togethers from those 6 years, as well as 3 Christmas mornings with just our little family. In the end, my plan was to end up with 6 two page layouts and 3 single page layouts. Well, it's taken me a full year (and a month, if you want to get technical), but I've finished all 9 of those layouts!

[Post found HERE]

This design was a popular one with me. The full page photo collage, with a smaller collage on the opposite page. I've used this design numerous times for birthday layouts as well. It's just a great design for getting gobs and gobs of photos on the page.

[Post found HERE]

Every now and then, when working on these layouts, I would start to worry that they looked too much the same. With the same basic design, same photo collages, same title placement, etc. I was constantly reminding myself that I went into this project just wanting to knock these layouts off my list. I've mentioned how I don't necessarily enjoy scrapping Christmas's, so I didn't want these to be layouts that I stressed over. If using the same basic ideas over and over helped me tackle something that I don't enjoy, then more power to me.

[Post found HERE]

For most of these layouts, I just dug into my stash of Christmas product to see what I could use up. I did however, dig into my everyday papers as well. This layout is an example of that. I don't believe there's anything on this page that was meant to be a "Christmas" product. I always pull my colors from the colors in my photos, so the photos really dictated my color schemes, even if they weren't the traditional Christmas colors.

[Post found HERE]

Another thing that made these layouts quick and easy, for the most part, is that they're hugely made up of patterned paper, die cuts, and photo collages. I die cut titles with my Silhouette Cameo for every single layout, and on a few of them, I also die cut a few additional pieces for the page. I kept the embellishments super simple, with maybe a few enamel dots, buttons, brads, or pre-made 3x4" cards.

[Post found HERE]

And after looking at all of these layouts together, I guess my love of my scalloped border punch from Stampin' Up really shows! I do love that punch, and it's my go-to border punch when working on projects. I think I used it on six of these nine layouts. I do own other border punches, for the record, so I should show them all some love every now and then.

[Post found HERE]

I keep a 12x12" Iris container that's filled with Christmas themed product and patterned papers. It was so easy to just pull out the box and see if I had anything to coordinate with my photos. I certainly didn't plan on using glittered foam Christmas trees on the design of this page. But as I was digging thru the box, I pulled them out and thought they'd fill in some space on the page. So why not.

[Post found HERE]

I also love that this project gave me a chance to use up some product that I've been holding onto, with only one project in mind. I remember getting this Christmas collection from Chickaniddy over a year ago, when I guest designed for them, and at first glance, I didn't think it was something I would use. But the collection colors worked perfectly with these photos, so I held onto it, knowing I would use it for this layout and most likely this layout only.

[Post found HERE]

This layout looks soooooo similar to the first layout I created for this project, and that's totally fine with me. The beauty of using the same design, is that it saves you time from having to come up with a whole new design, over and over. And because these layouts are all from different years, they're not going to be side by side in any albums or anything. So no one is really going to notice that a few layouts are similar to each other.

[Post found HERE]

I also went into these layouts knowing that I most likely wouldn't include any journaling on most of them. Especially the ones documenting family get-togethers. I don't want it to sound like the holidays are boring and monotonous. Because they're not. However, they usually include the same family members, we're usually at the same house, eating the same foods, opening gifts and doing our pick-a-gift exchange game. So I don't necessarily feel like I need to add journaling to those pages, as it would most likely say the same thing, year after year.

So, what's next? I have Christmas 2014 to do still. I never did edit those photos, so once I edit them, I can get that layout knocked out. And with Christmas 2015 just a few days away, I will have that to scrap as well. I believe I have one more Christmas that was within my "digital years", so that's one more I need to take care of. If I want to continue with the earlier Christmases, it will involve film prints and/or negatives. We'll see how up to that I'm feeling. Otherwise, I'd love to tackle the girls birthday's in the same way, and get those all taken care of. We'll see what I'm feeling inspired to tackle once the new year comes around.

 

Kerri Bradford Studio: Merry Christmas 2011

It's that time of year again! It's December, which means it's time for the Twelve Days of Christmas celebration over at Kerri Bradford Studio. Everything kicked off this past Monday, which you can find right HERE. You'll want to make sure and stop by each day, as she's got one-day-only Christmas freebie designs that you won't want to miss. There will also be other goodies, projects from her designers as well as some other guest designers that are stopping by to visit and share, and of course a giveaway or two.

And today, I've got a new layout up on Kerri's blog. I've been knocking out the last few layouts for my Tackling Christmases Past project, over the last month or so. This layout here is one of the last ones I had left, and it's very similar in design to what a lot of my layouts ended up looking like. The entire reason that I had those 6 years of Christmas's that hadn't been documented (along with a few more years from my film days, which still need to be taken care of) was that I don't enjoying scrapping Christmas layouts. Not sure why. I just don't. Which is why I went into this project knowing that I would keep these layouts simple and quick. 

You know that saying, "if it isn't broke, don't fit it"? Well, I totally apply that to my scrapping. If I have a page design that works, I have no problem using that design over and over again. It simplifies things for me, and lets me get more done. This is one of those page designs, especially for a two page layout, that has always worked well for me. I've used it a ton, whether it was a Christmas layout, birthday layout, or an everyday layout.

A while back, I got to work with Echo Park's The Story of Christmas collection for a layout that is in the winter issue of Scrapbook & Cards Today. Once I was finished with that layout, I figured that I might as well create another layout with it, since I already had all of the products out. The colors in the collection went perfectly with these photos from Christmas 2011.

I combined two cut files to create my "Merry Christmas" title. While the Here Comes Santa Claus kit has a "Merry Christmas" that's all one cut file, I decided I wanted a taller, all uppercase "Christmas", which I found in the Christmas Countdown kit. If I'm being honest, I actually used this same exact title on my layout for S&CT. I used different patterned papers, and did a little layering/shadowing with a second cut, but yes, same title. Like I said, if it's not broke, no need to fix it!

I really liked the border strip with the cute little banner pieces on it, but it was a little too big for my liking. So I went really old-school, and did a little "tearing" technique to make it smaller. Ok, so tearing really doesn't count as a "technique" I suppose, but I don't get all that "technique-ey" anymore, so I'm going with it. I also used one of the 3x4" cards from one of the patterned papers, and tucked the bottom under the top of my photo collage next to the title. It's something I've done on a few of the Christmas layouts and I like the way it looks.

For this layout, I created two separate photo collages. Since I aim to get all of our photos onto the page, I created a full 12x12 collage for one side of the two page spread, and then a smaller collage for the opposite page. Both of the collages used on this layout came from Kerri's Storyboard #7 kit. I stuck with some very simple embellishments, using a few of the brads and enamel dots that came with the collection. And lots of machine stitching of course.

So make sure and visit Kerri Bradford Studio all this week and next, so that you don't miss a thing. And I'll have one more Christmas layout to share for her sometime next week!

Scrapbook & Cards Today: Under The Tree Are Presents For Me

I have a new layout up on the Scrapbook & Cards Today blog today. I do four blog posts a year over there, and when it came time to start thinking about what I was going to create for this post, I started thinking back to the last post I did for the 2014 year, which was in November 2014 (found HERE). I realized that I had shared the new approach I had decided to take to tackling the years of Christmas photos that I had never gotten around to documenting. I had shared my first two layouts (both two pagers) from this project on that post, and I figured with this post being my last post on the S&CT blog for 2015, it would be the perfect time to share another layout from this same undertaking.

Just a quick refresher on this project and my plans for it (you can read more about it in full HERE). My goal when it comes to scrapping holidays and events is to get the entire celebration on the page. I am not one to do a large number of layouts every Christmas, with a single photo, or maybe two or three photos on a page. If I'm going to take the time to scrap Christmas, I'm going to use ALL the photos at once, and "get it done". That just sort of goes in line with my style and how I like to scrap. I had a plan to get all of these photos, from 6 different years, scrapped quickly and without much fuss. And that plan heavily revolved around photo collages. It's the best way to get LOTS of photos on your pages, in a neat and organized way. I like clean looking pages, and photo collages are great for just that.

For this layout, documenting Christmas morning with my girls back in 2008, I had created a large photo collage for one side of the page, and I had two main photos that I printed as 4x6” prints. I’m a firm believer in turning to the colors in your photos when it comes to picking out your patterned papers and embellishments. I’ve been holding onto this older Jolly Good Christmas collection from Chickaniddy Crafts that went really well with these photos. I don’t see pink or even the lighter green pop up in our Christmas photos anymore, so I wanted to make sure and use this collection once I realized how well it matched with these older photos.

Since I fit the majority of our photos into the photo collage for the second page, I choose two main photos to include on the first page. Since they were both 4x6”, I adhered them side by side across the page, which gave me plenty of room above and below to play. Actually, they weren't a true 4x6", since there's a gap in between the photos. Lol. I find it so annoying when things aren't the exact size they should be.

The white and grey circle patterned paper was perfect for the background of this page, as it was subtle enough to let all the other elements stand out against it. This entire layout is pretty much all patterned paper and photos, with a touch of cardstock in my title. I even cut the “Ho!Ho!Ho!” and “The Magic of Christmas” strips from a sheet of patterned paper.

My title is straight from the Silhouette store, and I cut it using both patterned paper and solid cardstock. I love titles that include both a cursive font and a clean font with straight lines, and this title had both.

When it comes to photo collage templates, I think you all know that my go-to templates are from Kerri Bradford Studio, as she has such a wide variety to choose from. I print a lot of my smaller photo collages at home, but anything larger than 8.5x11” I send to Costco for printing, which is super convenient for me as it’s only two miles from my house. And yes, that's a super unflattering photo of me on there. But it's not often I'm even in photos, so I had to include it to show I was there ;)

The only real embellishments that I included on this layout were some enamel dots that I added to some of the flowers on the floral patterned paper. I even fussy cut some of these adorable pink and red flowers to add to the first page of the spread. It’s such a quick way to bring in a touch of that floral patterned paper to the opposite page, without adding a large piece of it.

I'm pretty sure I've said this in every post related to this "tackling Christmases past" project, but it’s worth repeating. I figure if using the same basic design, some of the same elements, and even the same photo templates helps me tackle something that I’ve been avoiding, then it’s all good. I would rather create quick and easy pages and “get it done” … then to keep pushing these photos and memories aside, all because they’re subjects or themes that I either don’t enjoy doing, or am too overwhelmed to dig into!

I have two more Christmas layouts to share during the next week, which will bring this project to an end. Sort of. Once I share the last layout, I'll be doing a post to share the progress I made, some final thoughts on how I went about this, and what comes next related to this same project.

 

Bella Blvd: In My Heart Forever

It's time for another "Spread It Out" feature over on the Bella Blvd blog today, which means that I have a new two page layout to share with you.

I've been a home daycare provider for a little over 14 years now, and have had close to 36 kids (the 36th was actually born yesterday and will be coming here soon!) that I've taken care of throughout those years. There are actually a few more kiddos that have been in the mix, but these are my main ones.

Lately, for different reasons, I've had a lot of these kids on my mind and I felt this need to do a layout focusing on all of the little ones that I've been lucky enough to spend my days with, and to have a small part in helping to raise them during their first few years of life.

The amount of photos I needed worked out perfectly, since I love to line things up and collage photos together. I printed them all as 2x2" photos and they fit across the page in three rows of 12 (minus the one new baby, who I will add in when he gets here).

Finding all of these photos took me forever. Which is crazy, since I did THIS FRAMED PROJECT about two years ago, and I honestly would have thought I had saved all of these photos in a folder somewhere to work from. But I hadn't. So I dug around for hours on my external hard drive, looking for photos of each of these kiddos.

I arranged the photos in sets of four, so they were directly side by side and I could treat them as one "photo" when trimming them from the sheets after printing. I just had to cut some of them in half, since I had 6 kids in each row, on each page. I should have been a little more careful when trimming them, as I left a little white border along the top and bottom, and they're not all even. But they're close enough.

Once I knew where on the pages I would add my rows of photos, that left me the areas to fill with patterned paper. Since I printed all of the photos in black and white, I had way more freedom in choosing my colors for the page. I decided on a black, white, navy blue, green, and yellow color combo, and set out to find patterned papers and other elements in those colors. And I have to point this out, only because I just noticed it. That navy blue 2x2" card says "selfie", and I totally thought it said "captured". My bad. Lol.

I pulled patterned papers from the Daily Chevies, Lucky Stars, Fresh Market, and Whatever Is Lovely collections. I actually had more that I wanted to say on this layout. My original plan was to add my title along the top, and have journaling all across the green patterned paper along the center of the pages. Once I added my title to the center of the page, that didn't leave me with as much room for journaling, so I kept it short and sweet.

I went back and forth for quite a while on my title, finally settling on "In My Heart Forever". Because honestly, every single one of these kids, no matter how much or how little I see of them after they leave me, do have a special place in my heart forever. Ok, if I'm being totally honest, there are 2-3 on here that I haven't thought of since they left. Lol. But that's another story ;)

I kept the rest of the spread pretty simple, since I wanted the focus to stay on the photos, with strips of patterned papers, a few border stickers, and some simple embellishments. I used a few 2x2" cards, either taken from a sheet of patterned paper on the Candid Cards that used to come with some of the collections. I did add a few enamels at the end. But other than those few things, I didn't feel the need to add anything else to the pages.

And that one little spot in the bottom right corner is reserved for the new baby boy, born yesterday morning. Brother to the little girl two photos over. I'll just remove that little square of patterned paper and add in his photo later.

Bella Blvd: Boo-Tiful

It's "Spread It Out" day over on the Bella Blvd blog today, and that means I have another new two page layout to share with you. I had it in my head that I wanted to make a Halloween layout this month, as I had come across these super old photos a few weeks back on a half done layout from years ago.

These are from back in October 2004, so a full eleven years ago. Just like THIS LAYOUT, I simply removed the photos from the previously started layout and did the best I could with them as is (since these are film photos, and not something that I can easily edit/reprint).

It's not often that I actually use typical Halloween colors when it comes to scrapping Halloween photos of the girls. And that's because it was never typical of my girls to choose costumes in typical Halloween colors. But this was one costume, a Spider Countess, that definitely worked with orange and black.

I was able to pull patterned papers and stickers from three different Bella Halloween collections - Too Cute To Spook, Trick or Treat, and Halloween Magic. I started out by die cutting a diamond background from one of the orange patterned papers, and used a piece of it on each page of the spread. I am a huge fan of using die cut backgrounds to break up the "heaviness" of too much patterned paper on the page.

I thought the "too cute to spook" text patterned paper would make a good background for the top of the pages, where I planned on putting my title and some other embellishments.

I came across the "frightfully adorable" sticker, which was the perfect size to fit across my die cut background piece. It ended up working out great, as I needed something to help organize that side of the spread. I fussy cut the spider from the Cute Cuts patterned paper and added a piece of string to the page for him to hang from.

I also fussy cut a few words from another patterned paper to add to the layout, like the "beware" seen above.

The one thing that I do miss about film photos is that you could simply have the camera set to add the date to each photo. I mean, looking at these photos now, it's extremely distracting. Lol. But it takes the thinking out of trying to remember (or having to look up) when the photos were taken.

For the title, I die cut the word "BOO" from the same orange patterned paper that I used for the diamond die cut background. I then added letter stickers to finish off my "boo-tiful" title.

I added some chipboard clouds, all taken from one of the Halloween chipboard sets, to embellish the page, along with a few other chipboard pieces and some enamel dots.

Hope everyone has a safe, and fun, and candy-filled Halloween this weekend!

Scrapbook & Cards Today: Lakeside Water Fishies

I somehow never got around to sharing this layout that I created for the Summer issue of Scrapbook & Cards Today. One of my assignments for that issue was to create a two page, summer themed layout. Easy enough. 

I knew that I wanted to incorporate the Campout collection from Bella Blvd, so I went with these photos taken years ago on a family trip to my uncle's cabin up by the river. I have scrapped them before, but not on any particular layout that I loved. So I didn't mind scrapping them again.

I believe my original plan was to arrange the 3x4" photos, along with some 3x4" pieces of patterned paper along the outside edges of the page, leaving the center part open for my title and journaling. I'm glad I changed my mind along the way, going with this design instead.

I love mixing fonts for my titles, so I went with a die cut word using my Cameo, and some chipboard alphas and letter stickers. I mentioned that my uncle cabin is on a river, right? Well, this title might lead you to believe that we were on a lake. We weren't. But the sticker I used on the second page refers to a lake, and I just figured it was easier to go with the river for my title, since I was set on using that sticker.

For the longest time, I've been printing my journaling in strips. Which I still love. But I'm finding myself printing it in smaller blocks more and more lately. I matted my journaling blocks on a tone-on-tone orange patterned paper to add more color to the page.

I wanted to keep the background of the page simple, so that my photos would stand out, but I still wanted something of interest there. So I went with my all-time favorite circle background die cut from Kerri Bradford, using a summer themed text patterned paper from a super old Bella Blvd collection. I spritzed them both with brown misting spray before adhering them to my white cardstock pages. 

I had to use the little chipboard fishies from the Campout collection. Luckily, I had several packs of the chipboard, since each one only had two fishies. I added some navy blue enamel dots for the bubbles.

When the majority of my background is white, I like to add thin pattered paper strips along the top and bottom of the page. If I'm doing a single page layout, I will often add a scalloped border sticker along with a strip of patterned paper. But when doing two page layouts, I usually pull out the scalloped border punches, and just use a second patterned paper.

If you never got a chance to check out the Summer issue of Scrapbook & Cards Today, you're not too late. You can find all of the previous issues on their website, for viewing and/or downloading.