The two-page layout that almost kicked my butt

I had one more layout to be done with my December Studio Calico kit. Just one more layout. But it took me a month to figure out how to make it work. I thought I'd share with you how this page almost kicked my butt.

I had several photos of my son making stuff, drawing his inspiration from some books he'd read (Potterwookie and Diary of a Wimpy Kid), and I wanted to scrap them under the title "Construction." As a result, I pulled together some papers from this kit:

Specifically, I wanted to use the wood paper for this page on building things, and when I added the blue star, red diagonal, and green Christmasy pattern, I thought they meshed well. I had six photos: two 4x6 and four 3x3, enough for a two page spread. Here's where I got stuck: What did I need to do with the papers to make the two pages cohesive and not overwhelm the photos? Here's what I did:

Adding the off-white base to the right, pulling some scraps from my scrap table, and trimming the  photos a bit to occupy less space were the keys to making this page cohesive. I normally like lining up my photos and making something asymmetrical, but with the photo orientation it just didn't seem to work, so I made a mostly symmetrical block in the middle, title lying underneath and journaling to the right and left of the block. I added some epoxy stickers from Lily Bee Design and a Jillibean Soup sticker that had been on my scrap table for a while that seemed to fit. And I stitched, of course. Here's some details:

I'm happy with the end product. I think it's interesting that I had to change up what I normally do to scrap this; I'll have to remember that. Later this month I'll share another page that gave me trouble too.