Stylin’

I absolutely adore this photo of my niece.  She is in single digits, and yet, she has a far cooler look than I had as a teenager.  (Why were we in pastel Garanimals at this age?)  The filter on this photo also brings back memories of photos taken in the 70’s.  Mix that with that cute little face, and you get a picture that just has to be scrapped… in style.

For this layout I started with a page I found on Pinterest.  You can find it here, at the “A Cherry on Top” website.  I don’t have any affiliation with them, but they are one of the handful of online scrapbooking sites that I purchase from occasionally.  Debbi did a beautiful job on the original.  It is full of so many fantastic details.  It is amazing!

For this layout, I chose to simplify the original.  What can I say?  I am a simple scrapper.  Since I generally scrap 4 x 6 pictures, I replaced her 2 smaller photos with my single photo.  I also used fewer embellishments.  (Is anyone surprised?) Instead of going around each piece of paper drawing a black outline, I opted for inking the edges.  I omitted some small strips of paper at the bottom left of the layout because I didn’t think it needed anything there.  It isn’t as fancy as Debbi’s, but the design is still fantastic!

One thing that I really enjoyed about this layout is that I was able to use up some old products and scraps.  The star papers along with the berry colored paper are all scraps.  All of the embellishments on this page are several years old.  I completely forgot that I even had those sunglasses.  I just happened upon them as I was searching through my dimensional stickers.  The only thing new on this page is the berry and gold letter stickers.  It just goes to show that you don’t need new products to make amazing pages.

Keeping It Simple

I find that when I am working, sometimes I like to create two similar pages that will be placed into different albums.  No one will ever know that this wedding page shared the same inspiration as a page in the Disney album.  Honestly, I doubt they would even notice if they were in the same album.  Once you change color palettes, it’s just not that obvious.

If you haven’t guessed yet, this layout and my castle layout from the last post were made in the same week.  Where the castle page featured a purple geometric paper, this one focuses on a pink and blue floral.  The other big difference is the placement of the patterned paper.  I moved it over to the edge, rather in the center.  Many of the other elements are similar.  I switched out the silver title and embellishments for gold.  Both pages include flowers and hearts.

I wanted this layout to have a softness to it.  The floral paper with the pink cardstock help create that feeling.  The embellishments were also chosen carefully in order to convey the mood I desired.  Pastel flowers, a doily, and hearts are all romantic… perfect for a wedding.  I also knew that I wanted to use that oversized “love” as the title.  A girl deserves a little bling on her wedding day, right?  That led me to choose a few gold accents as well.

I really wanted the photo to be the focal point of this layout.  Wedging it between the title and the flowers helps give that part of the layout weight.  The photo being black and white also helps draw the eye.  I have to admit, that this photo was less than perfect.  Though the part with my husband and I is wonderful, the right hand side was a bit of a disaster.  People were all over the background, distracting from that magic moment.  I thought about cropping the photo, but then it wouldn’t have the presence I wanted it to have.  Instead, I covered up most of the distraction with the flowers and heart.

This layout came together rather quickly, since I was reinterpreting a design I had just utilized for another page.  Not every page has to be unique.  Ultimately no one will notice that you took a shortcut… unless you want to blog about it!

The Castle

Hey, remember how I said I was trying to use my Disney themed papers and embellishments?  Well, that flew out the window as soon as I went to scrap this photo.  Do you see those beautiful blue and purple tones?  They were screaming out for papers that could live up to their elegance.

I recently received the purple, blue, and teal geometric paper from the Bloom Street collection.  (I’m kicking myself for not ordering that collection.  It’s incredible.  And yes, I am aware that I keep posting that I am not a collection scrapbooker.  The paper… it calls to me!)  I thought the colors were a great match to the castle.  So I went through the remainder of my purple papers and pulled out that purple/pink background paper as well as the dark purple that I border punched.  I liked the contrast while staying within the same color family.

For the design, I took inspiration from a layout by Mandy Melville that I found on Pinterest.  She has a blog that you can find here.  I really like how it shows off both the photo, and the paper.  The design is super simple, without looking plain.  I did find that I had to mat the photo in order to give it more weight and have it stand out from the paper.

The embellishing went rather quickly for once!  I chose to go with some new die cut florals.  Most are from Shimelle’s Never Grow Up collection.  They were rather large, which worked well for this layout.  I did do a bit of layering, so there are multiple floral or leaf pieces in each cluster.  Some are popped up with foam squares to give a bit more dimension.  I also added in some silver foam hearts and leaves to go with the silver title.

This is one of my favorite layouts in my Disney album.  Sometimes you just need an exquisite photo and a simple design.

Using Disney Themed Collections

Before we left on our Disney trip, I purchased a ton (okay, 3 or 4) paper collections that were Disney themed.  I thought for sure that this would make scrapbooking our vacation so much easier!  The supplies would be ready, and the pages would flow since the color scheme would be consistent.

What could go wrong?  I forgot to take two things into account when making these plans.  First, I didn’t think about the colors in the photos not matching with the colors in the collections.  Let’s face it… light blue, yellow, red, and black just don’t go well with purple and pink photos.  The other element I forgot about was the scrapbooker… me!  If you have followed me for a while, you know I am not a collection scrapbooker.  How could I possibly think I could stick within multiple collections with the same basic designs?

Now that I am about halfway through scrapping our vacation photos, I realize that I have hardly touched the collections I purchased.  When you’ve done 30 layouts and only about 3 use papers from the Disney themed collections, well, it’s not good.  I’m only using the supplies I bought for this album about 10 percent of the time.  (I’m a math teacher.  The percentage is important to me!)

So what do I do?  I am making a concerted effort to pull those Disney collections.  Today’s layout was the perfect opportunity to use up some Disney papers.  The colors of the tile in the Morocco pavilion, along with my husband’s shirt (wasn’t it nice that he matched the background so well?), went along perfectly with the color scheme in the collections I had.  In this case I pulled the yellow chevron for the background as well as the red polka dot paper.  I wanted to use a darker blue than what was in the collection, so I used that lovely navy tone-on-tone scrap.  I also decided to use a pale cream piece of cardstock, so that the yellow paper created a frame and kept this layout from becoming too busy.

I love the overall design of this page.  I started with a sketch by Jennifer Shaw, simplifying it a bit.  She included some circle elements that I omitted because… um… I am a lazy scrapper.  Though I love the added interest circles provide, I didn’t want to deal with cutting and placing them.  She had a filmstrip piece as well, but only included a bit on the right side.  I decided to place it all of the way across.  (Let me tell you, I was doing a happy dance when I was able to use that film cut apart strip.  I have SUCH a hard time using cut aparts in collections.)

The embellishments for this page except for the “explore” are completely from the Disney themed collections.  I am super happy with how the embellishment cluster at the top right turned out.  I stacked a couple of 2×2 cut aparts to make it look like I had paper strips.  Then I added a couple of die cuts, a piece of chipboard, and some yellow enamel dots.  It’s nothing fancy.  It just looks balanced.  I think keeping the materials pretty narrow on this page helped me create something that I love.  Maybe I should limit my supplies more often!

I am not including any Disney tips for now, as the world is currently in a state of flux.  Advice that I have from our trip won’t reflect the current reality.  For now, I will just keep scrapping.

Simplicity

I am currently on a simple scrapbooking kick.  My layouts are almost never too complicated.  I just don’t have the time or patience to work on anything overly elaborate.  Let’s be real, I DO pin elaborate designs thinking that some day I will do one.  That day just never arrives!  Right now my focus is to get my large backlog of photos scrapped and into their appropriate books.

This layout is an extraordinarily simple grid design.  There are no fancy techniques or flashy new products on this page.  The embellishments are minimal, even for me.  In part, because of the design, I didn’t have a lot of room to add a lot of embellishments.  There could be more decoration down in the bottom left hand corner, but I also didn’t want to distract from the beautiful photos.

I will be honest, this layout didn’t turn out like I had originally pictured.  My original vision had a background paper that was much more beachy with waves.  I scrapped (pun intended… Yes, I am a geek.) that idea, when it made the whole page look washed out.  That bottom square was originally slated to hold a banner and the title.  However, nothing I tried looked right.  So, I had to go with plan B there as well.

Since that square is so large, I had to find a large embellishment to fill the space.  I discovered that wood heart in my stash, and it was a perfect fit.  It was much too plain by itself.  I didn’t want to cover up that beautiful wood with paper or paint, so I decided on just placing a flower in the upper left hand corner.  Then I chose the butterfly, and another small wood veneer heart.  Since I am terrible at using those tiny word stickers, I pulled the “beach” sticker as well.  I finished off the embellishment on the page by mirroring the butterfly, wood veneer hearts, and word sticker in the upper right hand corner.

I know this page isn’t anything super eye catching.  It’s still a scrapbooking win.  I got 3 beautiful photographs scrapped.  I also got to use some older products.  Both the light blue photo mats and the background paper are from paper stacks.  I don’t often use those stacks because the paper is so thin.  The butterflies are also about a decade old.  My goal is to use up the supplies I purchased years ago.  By mixing them in with newer supplies, I will be able to save money.

Another Hidden Surprise

I know that this layout is fairly simple.  Honestly, that’s what I like about it. It’s bright and cheery, without taking hours to produce.  I love the contrast between the lime green and turquoise.  To add in a bit of interest, I did break it up with that black and white floral.  It just makes me so happy.

You will see me use this basic design quite often.  Really it’s just a slight modification of placing large bands of paper all the way across the layout.  I like to cut them down a bit and have them flush to one side.  It’s a small thing, but it really does give a layout a different look.  Because there was so much room with only this one photo on the page, I paired it with the “Dream” journaling card.

That card along, with some of my other embellishments have been in my stash for quite a while  The apple tag, the green clip, the metallic lime dots, and that green tab had been hanging around for years.  Those metallic dots were actually handed down to me by another scrapper, so I can’t even imagine how old they must be.  I mixed them with a few newer die cuts to finish off the layout.

About that green tab… that’s a hidden journaling spot.  Originally, I was going to write on the “Dream” card.  I felt like the writing would just look wrong there.  If I wrote on the card and didn’t like it, I would have to trash it and find something else to put there.  So I found a large journaling card with a tab and made a pocket for it underneath the turquoise dot paper.  For those who don’t like their handwriting, but want to include journaling, hidden spots are the way to go!

No travel tips in this post!  In this case, I didn’t get beyond my own backyard.

 

More San Francisco Memories

Most of my scrapbook pages either feature pets or travel.  The funny thing is, I don’t travel all that much.  Disney World was our first “fly to get away” vacation.  So how do I have photos from other locations?  Work.  Every once in a while I get the opportunity to go on a business trip.  Though it doesn’t allow much time to explore, I always manage to go out at least one night to play tourist.

I have spent a little time in San Francisco over the years.  The photos I have are generally from the pier.  It’s a little magical at sunset.  The sky becomes this peachy orange color.  I am used to the pinks and purples of our local sunsets, so the peach sunset always makes me stop and take in the view.

It’s always these colors that guide my paper choices when scrapping the pier.  I did some fussy cutting of the lovely flowers from Jen Hadfield’s DIY Home collection.  As much as I hate fussy cutting, I really do love the embellishments they create.  From there, I chose the grey and white polka dot paper and the peach cardstock.  If I had stopped there, it would have been a bit too plain.  So I rifled through my scraps and found the peach chevron and the floral paper that forms the mat of the photo.  Finally, I grabbed the grey card and peach library card from my embellishments.

It didn’t need much beyond the flowers for decorations.  I had that grey heart that I cut out YEARS ago, then topped it with the “Be Happy” from the branding strip.  I also pulled out that “Snapshots” chipboard as well.  I finished it off with a few tiny pearls sprinkled around the flowers.

Believe it or not, there is journaling on this page.  This is one of those times where I didn’t want all of my thoughts out there for the world to see.  That grey card in the middle has journaling lines on the reverse side.  I created a pocket for that card so that it can be pulled out and read.  I could honor my travel partner who was with me on this trip, and has since passed, without it being stumbled upon.

The one part that I am unhappy with is the title part that utilizes the peach alpha stickers.  That font is not my favorite.  I wish I had picked something else.  Yes, I could peel them up and try again, but I won’t.  This is another one of those times that I just have to move on.

San Francisco travel tip:  If your hotel is near the airport, downtown San Francisco is a bit of a drive away.  Expect to pay $50 one way if taking a Lyft or Uber.

 

Using Old Supplies

Admit it.  You have purchased a scrapbooking supply that you thought was a great idea at the time, only to find out that you never use it.  Washi tape, brads, and papers with corner prints have all been my kryptonite.  All of those pale in comparison to this pack of Crate Paper frames that I bought back in 2012.  They were all the rage back when I purchased them.  I was all on board, until they arrived and I tried to actually use them.  I finally gave up, and put them under a pile of supplies that I would “get to someday.”

A fellow scrapbooker put out a challenge to put together page kits.  One of my goals is to include those hard to use items in my kits.  That way, at least some of them will make it onto a page.  So for one of my page kits, I tossed in the entire pack of chipboard frames.  I was DETERMINED to use them.  For this kit, I also included some very old chipboard shapes and cork hearts.  (I honestly love those hearts.  I just don’t tend to reach for them very often.)

The papers came together quite quickly.  I pulled an old lime green tone-on-tone print for the background.  Then I added that lovely teal vine paper on top.  It’s so pretty!  I also added a bit of blue from a paper pad, then used a border punch on it.  The blue paper is also an attempt to use up some of those thin papers I purchased very early on in my scrapbooking adventure.  I much prefer the heavier cardstock weight papers for my projects.

Once the papers were placed, then the fiddling began.  I’m not talking about the good kind of fiddling that you can tap your toe to.  No, I’m talking about placing, moving, and placing items again.  At first, I was going for a diagonal design.  I simply could not get it to work.  Finally, I realized I could group them in more of a horizontal design.  It still took quite a bit of finessing before I was happy.

After I got the frames where I wanted them, I needed to choose the paper scraps to fill them.  This then began the game of “move the frame without bumping any of the others out of place.”  This is not a fun game.  I did make sure to take a photo of the frame placement before I began gluing papers.  Still, it’s difficult to keep everything exactly in place.  Admittedly, I did end up adjusting them a bit more before everything was attached to the background.

For once I actually enjoyed embellishing a layout!  I am as surprised as you are!  The frames took up so much space and added quite a bit of dimension.  Each little space invited its own little decorating space.  The best part?  Those old chipboard pieces finally came out of my stash after sitting for years.  I also included a couple of die-cuts and mixed in cork and wood hearts.  It was so freeing to not work by the rule of threes or use a diagonal design.  Nope, just place here and there until I was happy.

Going out of my comfort zone took a little extra time, but it was totally worth it.  This is one of my favorite layouts that I’ve done in a long time.

Disney tip:  If you want some nice photos without any people in the background, get to the park early.  This photo was taken before park opening.  Though not all parts of the park are accessible, there are definitely some nice photo opportunities available.

And So it Begins

I know this doesn’t look like a Disney layout.  It doesn’t use any traditional Disney colors.  You don’t see any Disney icon embellishments.  There is absolutely nothing about Disney in the photo!  So how can this be a Disney layout?  This was the selfie (I forced upon my husband) that we took while waiting for the friendship boat to take us to EPCOT.  We were about to go to our first Disney park, and I wanted to record that excitement!  That’s about as excited as we get, people!

With the photo being so dark, I wanted to work with a light background.  In this case, I just went with my favorite smooth American Crafts cardstock.  Then I began digging through my scrap bin.  I pulled out all of the blue and green scraps, then began mixing and matching them until I found a combination that I liked.  For the most part, I chose lighter shades.  I did want that navy star paper included to give it a little bit of weight towards the bottom.

I am a big fan of the stacked boxes design.  There’s no right or wrong way to do it.  I always try to make some sort of an “L” shape.  Really, I just stack and restack until it turns out the way I want it.  This is a great style for using up your scraps.  Whenever I get a number of large scraps that compliment each other, you can be sure I’m going to do a stacked box design.

Almost all of the embellishments are pretty old.  The only new piece is the “Let the Adventure begin!” die-cut.  The chipboard stars are some of my favorite embellishments ever.  I believe they are from Studio Calico.  I am nearly out of them.  They just seemed to be a perfect compliment to the star paper.  The chipboard “love” was sitting on my desk.  I believe I’ve had that for 10-15 years.  With the colors in the page, it just seemed to be a perfect fit.

I know it doesn’t look like a typical Disney layout.  That’s okay!  There are no rules about scrapbooking.  This was a special memory that I wanted to document.  The beginning of this particular adventure was magical.  The story was about us, and our happiness.  That’s what this photo captured.

Disney tip:

If you want a relaxing trip into either Epcot or Hollywood Studios, the friendship boats are amazing.  We enjoyed gliding along the water, taking in the scenery.  Crescent Lake is a great place to stay if you want easy access into 2 parks.  Both parks are within walking distance, but we loved the boats.

Back to Disney (I Wish)

Oh how I wish I could go back to Disney.  Living in that perfect little bubble is quite addicting.  For now I will have to do the next best thing, scrapbook the memories.  Today’s post takes me all of the way back to arrival day.  We came in late, checked into our hotel, and headed to EPCOT.  Lucky for us, EPCOT had extra hours and wasn’t closing until 11:00.  We grabbed some food and began to explore in the dark. That place is REALLY dark at night. Not so great for newbie navigating, but excellent for photos.

Spaceship Earth is so beautiful lit up at night.  The photo on the left is from across the lake.  I simply adore the shadows of the palm trees cast against the side.  The photo on the right is from a little trail where you can see the monorail track in the foreground.  There’s nothing like seeing that view while walking along the water.  That purple glow is just iconic.

There was no way to avoid using a purple or lavender palette on this page.  Okay… I could have tried something else, but I wanted to honor the photos.  Like I often do, I used some aqua as well.  I just love those colors together.  I do wish that I had chosen a different background paper.  I feel like there isn’t enough contrast between that and the title.  I tried to make it work by placing the lavender “earth” on the strips rather than the background.  However, I think the the aqua “spaceship” somehow melts into the lavender background too!

Since I have so much trouble with layouts that feature both landscape and portrait photos, I searched my pins for some inspiration.  I found this layout by Susan Stringfellow.  (I am a serious fangirl.)  I chose to use flowers as embellishments like Susan did.  Really I have so few embellishments in lavender and aqua, I needed to make some myself.  I used Tim Holtz’s tattered florals dies to make the lavender flowers.  By luck, the white and aqua flowers showed up in an order that arrived while I was scrapping this layout.  I also stamped, embossed, and then fussy-cut the butterfly.  Sometimes you just have to create what you need.

Disney tip:  If you are arriving late to Disney property, you may want to relax and enjoy your evening at your resort.  We jumped right in, but in hindsight, it would have been nice just to wander around the boardwalk.  We could have gotten dinner and watched the fireworks without ever going into the parks.