Orange? Seriously?

Anyone know knows me, knows that I have my go to colours. And orange is not one of them. At all.

That said, I specifically ordered this Basic Grey paper package because it contained colours that were so outside my box. And I felt creative today, so I grabbed it. I flipped through the paper and this striped paper caught my eye. I put it on orange paper because I didn't think I could go crazy with colour. Baby steps, right?? I kind of liked it. I pulled a darker purple from it to mat the photos so they didn't get lost in the psychedelic paper and I really liked how it looked, so I did lettering in the same colour (I cut the title from chipboard and then from the purple and just glued the purple onto the chipboard so I could have custom coloured raised letters).

The package comes with embellishment stickers, so I just added one. This particular package has stickers that I can't see myself using (some owls and orange trees and such), but that's OK. I love that everything goes together. I added another purple accent piece under the sticker.

I love the look when people write and doodle on their pages. Unfortunately, I hate my writing and I can't doodle to save my life. It's really bad. I do keep reading how important it is to write on at least some of your layouts and so I try. I wrote a little bit along the top of the paper and then just added dots around the striped paper. It turned out adequate and even looks good from far enough away. I used my Copic Multiliners which I love. It's a set of 7 black pens ranging from micro to thick. And they're black. Really black, which I love. I brought them in last fall and have sold quite a few sets (they're $22).

I don't know that I'll be filling my album with a bunch of orange and lime green layouts, but who knows what will happen when I sit down to scrapbook again. Overall, I really like the layout even though it is so outside my box. It's fun to push the limits.

Flourished Hearts

I have all these photos of Nathalie and thought I would just put a bunch of the really early ones together on a layout. I figured I didn't need a lot of journaling (and I had just finished her birth page and wrote enough on that to get me out of journaling for a few pages). I was originally going to copy this one layout in a book, but in the end, it didn't turn out anything like that layout which was fun. Sometimes, I just need to look at something and then I can turn it into something totally different. It doesn't need to look like a picture.

I had a friend years ago who knew a group of guys who lived together. They used to cook for each other and the only rule was that if you made something from a package, you needed to make it look exactly like the picture on the package. I know a lot of people who try to do the same thing with stamping and scrapbooking; they see a picture but don't know where to start because they don't have the same paper or embellishments. I try explaining that it really is just a guideline. Get some inspiration from it and then make it into whatever you want.

I got the pictures arranged and needed to figure out what I wanted to fill in the empty spots. I often find that the hardest part. I get sick of the same embellishments and so I get stuck. This time, I cut some hearts out of chipboard (I love my Cricut; I can cut whatever embellishments I want and I can make them any size I want). I inked them with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink using my Ink Blending Tool and then stamped my favorite flourish (Magenta) in black. I loved them and they looked great on my pages. But there was still empty spots and I was going to cut out a bunch of flourishes, but instead, I just stamped them in the empty spots and I loved it. It's so simple, which I love.

Collage

I love when people do these layouts with a ton of the same sized pictures on them. It looks so cool. Unfortunately, I can seldom get my photos to work. I can't seem to cut them down enough and get them lined up evenly!

Then one day I had an epiphany. I created the collage page digitally and then just had it printed. And I did the other page traditionally. I like to see different layers and mats and the depth of traditional scrapbooking, but like the versatility of digital. This way I can have both.

I opened up the 16 photos and cropped each of them to 2.75"x2.75" which meant I could keep much of the photo (as opposed to getting it printed as a 4x6" photo and then trying to crop it down). I then created a new file in Photoshop (but you can use any photo editing program; I've heard good things about Picasa by Google which is free). I then just started adding photos and lining them up until they were all there. It was very quick and simple. Costco will print 12x12" photos so, I just uploaded it to them and picked it up the next day.

I really like the other page too. It's basically just paper layered on top of each other and then glitter letters. The letters were plain chipboard and I used heat and stick powder and then added glitter when it was hot and sticky. It worked great. Some of the glitter has come off part of the one letter as Kayla kept touching it, but the rest is still going strong.