Layouts to Share

My word for 2016 is "content," and one of the goals I've had for this year is reinvigorating my blog, posting more often. Lately, I have been doing quite a bit of scrapbooking, trying to catch up on 2014, both the regular "every day" stories, as well as our epic Florida vacation, 3 volumes and counting. As my favorite season unfolded, I also wanted to start working more on scrapbooking our first wedding, as its theme was "autumn leaves," and I've done so little on it 14 years later.

So...yesterday, which was an emotionally dismal day, the sunshine here in MittenLand was nice and bright, and I seized the opportunity--admittedly, it did require me to summon energy by sheer will--to take a few photos of some of the layouts I've been working on. I'll start with my favorite, this colorful page about why I love autumn so much:

And This Is Why

First of all, I absolutely adore these brilliant fall colors. Ever since I saw the "I {heart} autumn" card with the leaf filling in for the heart shape from Bo Bunny's Autumn Song collection, I knew this was meant for a wedding page. The leaf embellishments I cut with my Sizzix Big Shot and two collections of thin dies, and the design is loosely based on a sketch, though I don't recall which one right now. That photo of me and Daniel is one of my favorites from our wedding, and I love how this page is a beautiful backdrop for it.


All Aboard and Us On the Train

Next up, these two pages about a train ride at the Magic Kingdom, which are not meant to be a two-page layout, though they coordinate because they're related. My inspiration for the color scheme was the tag on the left of the "All Aboard" page, which I created well over a year ago for a 30 in 30 project, trying to use more of my vast collection of stamps. I was at a crop when I started these pages, and I was able to find some train patterned paper from Carta Bella (I think) as well as that lovely red polka dot from Bo Bunny. I had to be patient in my search for embellishments, finally finding the train stickers (Reminisce) in exactly the right color scheme. Luckily, I still had some of those butterfly stickers I used on the tag that I could add to the second page, as well as some enamel dots (Queen and Co.) and red gems, and I added in enamel dots from Doodlebug in black to tie it all together.


Domain Strong

For this layout, I used remnants of a kit I created and made a mini kit of supplies, inspired by a May Flaum class called Kitastic 2016. Love doing that! The papers are mostly Basic Grey, a collection I love called Typeset, with letter stickers from My Mind's Eye and American Crafts. One of my challenges as a scrapbooker is figuring out how to use patterned paper like this in a way that doesn't detract from or lose the photo in all that bold, beautiful color. I didn't use a sketch for this, but I'm sure there are many similar designs by people who've had the same challenge as I have. I love this page, both for the bold color, and for the sweet picture of me and my Little Mommy, smiling together as we so often did. I sure do miss her.


City Sets

And finally, this page from our visit to Hollywood Studios. There wasn't a big story to tell, but I did want to feature the photos of the big, city street sets. I wasn't sure how to do it. I have used a lot of specific Disney-themed product on the pages of this album, both the Say Cheese collections from Simple Stories, and the one that Echo Park Paper released awhile back. But there are a LOT of pages for this trip, and I couldn't possibly use those supplies for every page. I've been creating pages for this album by sticking mostly to the theme of the photos when possible. That means the album is full of a lot of different patterns and designs, and there isn't really a unifying theme, but I'm okay with that for this project. A unifying theme, again for so many pages, would likely bore me quickly.

So, when I was brainstorming a design for these photos, I was at a crop at Scrappy Chic, and I went looking for some kind of paper reflective of city skylines. At first, I couldn't find it, partially because the store was supposed to be closing at that time (it was bought and is staying open, woohoo!), and a lot of the papers were sold out. I wandered to the clearance section and found the perfect paper from Studio Calico. Plain white background with that cityscape at the bottom. I fussy cut it out and used some polka dot grey vellum from Doodlebug as the background. Cloud stickers (October Afternoon?) and letter stickers from both October Afternoon and American Crafts add just enough embellishment for what I wanted to be a simple page. It's impossible to see in the photo, but the pen work is just a little bit shimmery, adding just a hint of glimmer.

Not a bad bit of scrapbooking for this season so far. I've just about completed scrapbooking July of 2014, except for the Florida trip; that will likely continue well into next year, but I'm happy with getting these stories told and sharing them here on my blog.