Saturday, September 19, 2009

Inspired by scraps

For the most part my scrap "room" is organized, crowded only because it is small (about 5x5). A few things, though, I can't bring myself to throw away and there is no logical place to put them, so they stay on my desk. This was the case of a scrap of dotted ribbon that came with a kit I got from Scrap-Diner. When I cleaned out my ribbon scrap basket (I think it was an old blueberry basket), I found a yellow scrap that went, so I put them together. At this point I looked around my scraps lying around. I picked up a small piece of a Doodlebug paper frill, a leftover orange floral ribbon from a Scarlet Lime kit, and a Hambly overlay scrap and took these four things to my space where I actually scrap: by the TV in my easy chair with the ottoman. I left them by the TV for weeks.

After I got new photos from Shutterfly, I went through my small number of leftover photos to see if any inspired me. I came across a picture of Rowan last year doing homework. He was smiling and wearing an orange shirt. I put this next to these scraps. The shape of the scraps--lines, basically--made me think of a stamp I just got in a kit from Studio Calico. At this point a layout was born.

I sprayed the background lightly with a couple colors of Glimmer Mist, then stamped the letters, put down the photo, and attached my strips. (Yes, I was "stripping" again.) I had a space for a journaling stamp, so I found a small library card stamp by Maya Road I had almost gotten rid of because it was too small. Glad I didn't now. I added a strip of gems under the stamp to link the lines from the bottom frill to the journaling stamp.

I still had a hole or two, so I found last year's Fancy Pants Chipboard--All Fall--that I had gotten on clearance this summer. The colors didn't exactly match, but I found three pieces that went nicely with the colors on the layout. After I added them, all I had left was the title. I knew it needed to be boldly colored but not boldly sized, so I found some bright orange letters from My Little Shoebox. I like using more than one letter type in titles, and I had some ancient rub-ons sitting next to the TV that I had never put away, so I used those two. And a layout was born.

I'll post a photo after the sun comes over the trees. Autumn is definitely here in Minnesota, even if it was 85 degrees yesterday.

Edited to add: Here's the layout!


And here's a couple more:


This one was one of very few that I actually remade. I started with traditional Easter colors and hated it. I tore the photos off (I actually lay it face down and peeled the patterned paper off the photos--I'd rather destroy the backing than the pics), found a more subdued color and redid it.


Events I almost always make as a two pager. This event was chronological, so I didn't worry about design--I basically put the photos in order after trimming them to identical or compatible sizes, then added labels to tell the best parts of the story that you don't get from the photos. And yep, that's a scanned and shrunk diploma on the page--the real one he got--along with a picture he had drawn for the back of the program. So darn cute!

3 comments:

alisonm said...

Hey Jennifer, look at me- I'm bloggin" I really love your Blog- thanks for all the great instructions.

csewy-csescrap13 said...

Jennifer,
I love ready how you put together your layouts, very informative!! I enjoyed your lastest!!

alexandra s.m. said...

Great Pages jennifer, I especially like "Homework Habit", very rich and still quite "clean & simple"!
xox