A Thought on Pre-Embellished Paper

There's a new thought up at Thinking*Through*Design, and this thought was a doozie for me.  I prefer to start with a clean canvas, not one that has embellished elements on it already.  For two days, I looked through pictures trying to find ones that went with the pre-embellished patterned paper I had.  Then I went and bought the Simple Stories Harvest Lane pack, thinking new paper would inspire, but I just continued to look through pictures.

Then I got a preview of the thought, and everything changed. I was trying to fit lots of pictures on the page, which after reading the thought, I learned isn't really a good idea.  Once I knew I was working with only one or two pictures, it was easy to find pictures that worked, especially when I found an inspiration layout.

The pictures and papers went on quickly, but after rereading the thought, I wanted to enhance the embellishments that came on the page. Stitching is one of the things I always think about using, so I stitched on the stems of the flowers and added buttons to the center.  This went from a page that I was cursing about in the beginning to a page I truly love.

A Thought on Multi-Font Titles

Today my thought on multi-font titles is up at Thinking*Through*Design. I like to use different fonts a lot in my titles- jazzes things up a bit, adding interest and helping to direct attention to what I think is more important.  For my layout at T*T*D, I adapted the rules I learned for how to write titles when I was in elementary school, using big letters for the words that are important and little letters for those that aren't.

I had a bit of trouble coming up with a title for this layout that was multi-word, but once I came up with this, I got excited to write the journaling.  See, we actually went down this trail twice. The first time, as we headed to Musining Falls in Michigan, the kids would chase each other, and then Annaliese face planted.  The journaling here talks about how the second time down, we took a slower pace. But if you open the picture of the kids running, you'll find the story of how she got all bloody and cleaned up.

 Here are some more layouts I've done lately with different font titles.  The first one is the story of the day Annaliese was born. I wanted birth to be the prominent word in the title, so I used a bolder font.

 On this one, I wanted to use smaller fonts so that the "stomping at" would fit before the 'k' in backbone.

 

For this one, I thought each word in the title was important, but having them in the same font would have been boring, and possibly have taken up more room than I would have liked on the layout. 

Make sure to head over to T*T*D and see the awesome work the other gals did!

Thoughts on Splattering

I was a bit intimidated by the thought today at T*T*D, if its possible to be intimated by a thought. I've never used paint on a layout before; don't really like to use it in real life. I put off the layout for as long as I could, and then got down to business.  One of the first decision I made was what pictures to use. I knew I wanted pictures that would be fun, so the pictures of Annaliese splashing in the water table won out over those of her baptism or getting tubes (the other sets of pictures I had ready to go).  I found the water swirl and knew I'd fussy cut it, and place it on the right, which helped me figure out where I wanted my splatters. I couldn't figure out if I wanted to splatter before or after I added the patterned paper, so I did some searching on the web. The ones I liked had it on the patterned paper, so that's what I did.

The actual splattering was really fun. I did a few test runs to figure out which of my brushes I wanted to use and which technique I wanted. I opted for a brush with stiffer bristles.   To make the splatters on the bottom, I tapped the top of the paintbrush. To do the splattering in the top, right corner, I flicked the side of the brush (like you'd flick someone's ear) to create a bit of movement.  I remember conscientiously shrugging my shoulders when I got too much orange and telling myself to roll with it. 

Assembly was easy. The pink banner in the top, left, I had to stamp about 20 times to get the words, and it still isn't perfect. It was something new, though, and so I wanted to use it. I used clear embossing powder on both it and the title so that they shine a bit and appear wet, to go with the theme.  I love how this layout came together. Stay tuned, because when summer camp is over at Club CK, I'll be posting another layout I painted on, this time without hesitation!

Thoughts on "Grounding" Your Photos

I thought I better add the "your photos" phrase to my title so no one confuses it with grounding my kiddos :) It was once again my turn to design for Thinking*Through*Design, and this time the thought is on grounding your layouts.  Essentially what that means is giving things weight so it doesn't seem like they're floating on a page.

I have come a long way in grounding photos since I first began scrapping.  Case in point, I'm going to be brave and post one of the first layouts I ever did. The pictures are floating all over the page and nothing is giving the page structure. It's all cardstock and stickers. Apparently I had no idea what patterned paper was... Oh, and I just noticed the top right picture is Ian looking off the page; that's a no-no in design, too.



Fast forward four years and thanks to designing most of my layouts off of a sketch or scraplifting a layout I like, I've subconsciously learned the importance and how-to of grounding.  But because I usually do base my layouts off something, I challenged myself with this design to see if I could ground a layout without basing it off of anything in particular.


I've done a couple layouts lately involving paper (all of it Fancy Pants line) where I thought, "When will I use that?"  It's taught me that apparently the right pictures will come along to use with the paper.  These are of Ian and Grandpa Dan just hanging out in our living room.  I usually base my color scheme off my photos. I thought the subdued color of the background went with with Dan's shirt, and using blue was an automatic.  There is a line of pink running through the plaid in Dan's shirt, which is where the dark pink paper and accents come in to play. Plus, the pink really adds some pop to the otherwise subdued colors.

When grounding this, I knew I wanted there to be an intersection of lines at the photos (hence the red vertical and horizontal punched strip).  Using large die cuts, in this case a heart I cut out, is a great way to anchor something to the page.  I tried a ton of different things in the top, right corner, and eventually settled on the banner. I was trying to avoid using a banner because it's my go-to thing lately for empty space at the top, but it was the best fit. Perhaps there's a reason its my go-to thing..

My First "Thoughtful" Layout

This morning a new "thought" went live over at Thinking*Through*Design: handstitching. This was my first opportunity to be a Thoughtful Girl (TG) over there and I loved it.  I couldn't have asked for a better thought to start with.




This layout took a lot more time than it should have, but I love the end result. The photos are from a photo shoot Noah did for us for our Christmas card in 2008.  Ian was such a ham that day; just wanting to play and play.  Getting a shot where we're all looking at the camera took some trickery on Marlena's part.  I started this layout on National Scrapbook Day (May 5) at a scrapbook store, where I found the ornament paper (fancy pants) and cut it into a die cut.  I loved it on the green cardstock, but I only had one sheet and the store didn't have one that matched, so I had to do some piecing to have it spread across both pages.

Once the ADORABLE photos were down, I wanted a way to replicate the red strip that's on the right page on the left, so after I free handed a border in pencil and punched my holes, I used some of the DMC floss from my cross-stitch days and added a border to the die cut.  One of my favorite ways to add a little something is to hand stitch on lines already on the paper. It's hard to tell in the photo, but the 'string' hanging the ornaments I stitched with a combo of metallic and cream sewing machine thread (and also added a bit of sparkle to the ornaments with some stickles). The pages felt unbalanced to me with all the stitching on the left, so instead of using journaling strips like I usually do, I stitched my journaling lines. Another thing I love about hand-stitching is the ability to vary the boldness of the look by adjusting how many strands used. For each stitching I did, different amounts of strands were used.

To finish it off, I cut the trees out from another Fancy Pants sheet of patterned paper, added the sparkle hearts, and inked over some pinkish/red Thickers to get the color of red I wanted for my title (messy, but I got what I wanted).  The layout is based on a sketch by Allison Davis. 

Make sure you pop on over to TTD and check out all the other wonderful layouts that incorporate hand-stitching.