House Rules

This is a layout I finished a while ago but never shared. This layout was inspired by Ali Edwards Hello Story class last prompt- Rules for Living. The Story Stamp for Black and White contained a perfect stamp with the House Rules sentiment.

The sketch was Simple Scrapper sketch 288 and used supplies from Vicki Boutin's Discover and Create collection. 

Loved using the 6x6 supplies from a SCT Sampler kit for this one!

Here are those stamps in action, creating a border at the bottom of the page.

Loved getting this story told, finishing up layouts from the Hello Story Class and using more of my stash!

 

How I Met Your Father

 For an in person crop I had recently, I did not prepare very well in advance and was looking for layouts I could make without the need of printing photos. 

I ran across the story of how I may have met my husband as a photo-less story and started to look for supplies to kit it up. Originally it had been a layout I had brainstormed for the First Story Stamp- back with the first ever Story Kit, but when I looked at the stamps, they weren’t quite right for the story. 

I shifted to the Begin and Start Story Stamps and Kits (I happened to pick those up in sales) and found the perfect cards in the Start Kit to tell my story. 

I matched the cards up with some mixed media papers from Vicki Boutin that coordinated well, and decided I wanted to cut the title from the show “how I met your mother” font. Happy there was also a “how I met your father” show as well so I could just pull it in with no design work on my part!

I cut the title from black cardstock 4 times and packed that with a coordinating VB thicker set that I liked the arrows on and a 49 and Market die cut pack. 

I debated if it was going to be too much typography with the cards and the title with no photos to break it up, but I like the pieces so I went with it.

At this point I had just read Spark Magazine and saw the Refresh challenge and thought this layout would be a good contender for it since I only had 5 things pulled for the kit.

I love how it came together, that this story is now told, and bonus that I bashed pieces of the Start Story Kit while completing a challenge!

Baby’s First Christmas- Rosie

The layout I am sharing today is for my daughter's baby album. I wanted to document her first Christmas and I had made base pages using a Christmas collection from The Girls Paperie quite a few year back. 

I loved this collection when I bought around 2011 and still do. I especially loved the layered snowflake embellishments that came with this collection. I didn't want quite as much dimension so I removed a few layers of foam adhesive. 

I recently took inventory of predesigned page kits, layouts from classes I had taken that didn't have photos or a story associated, and layouts I had started and never got stories paired with them. I have a list of layouts I want to include in the baby album, so I went through that inventory to match them up. I was super excited to get this base layout used up!

I struggled on where to put the journaling for this layout and decided to print it on velum and layer it on the top of the left page. It is much more legible in person.

 I used the sticker book for the alpha stickers used in the title, as well as the labels for each of the photos.

Love pairing this old base layout with a project I am currently working on, especially one that I still really love!

Thanks for stopping by!

Currently

The layout I am sharing today was inspired by the Story Stamp for the Prompts theme. I had documented a currently list in January of 2014, and when I saw an 8.5x11 layout on Pinterest using product, a Maggie Holmes collection, I decided to scrap lift. 

One of the things I liked about the original was the stitching of the stamped "currently". It made me think of Ali Edwards' Type class challenges. I was almost completed with the stitching when Simple Scrapper had released its Stash Bash challenge for this journey. The challenge requirements were to: include an envelope, stamping in the title, an item with metallic foil, an animal, and texture element. 

I had already had stamping and texture in my title, so I was looking for was to incorporate the other elements. I used stamps from the Currently and Around Here Story Stamps for the subtitles as well as a Papertrey Ink set. I used a stitching stamp set from Elle's Studio, a Borderline stamp set from Kerri Bradford, and the Listen Story Stamp to add texture each subtitle.

 

To make my layout 12x12, I selected a coordinating pattern paper with the chipboard banner to mount it on with a small border for contrast. I found metallic stickers in the same Maggie Holmes collection and used one above my photo.

On the chipboard set, there was a gold metallic deer which ticked two boxes for the challenge.

The envelope worked out well, because once I realized how many times currently would fit on the page, I had a few more details than what would fit. An envelope to hold those leftovers was perfect. 

Love how this turned out and love that the challenge had me use some different items from my stash than I might have otherwise and I used a lot of stamps! 

A One-derful Easter

The layout I am sharing today is another for my youngest daughter's baby album. It is the story of her first Easter. Because of her birthday, her first Easter fell after she had already turned one and I wanted to emphasize this on this layout. 

I participated in Simple Scrapper's Square One class this year and this layout is based on Sketch 613. I took a lot of liberties with this sketch to make it work for me and this layout. It had a band of paper at the left of the 2 page layout. It wasn't a 12x12 two page layout sketch, so I had to modify the sizes of things to make them work. 

The papers I used were from American Crafts Hello Spring paper pad. I only had one piece of the pink dotted paper left to use so I used a half and half design to stretch it across the two pages.

I found the Easter title in a SCT Sampler kit and paired it with tiles from Simple Stories.

To embellish, I had bunny buttons in my stash and figured it was time to use them! The butterflies I cut from a cut apart card from the paper pad and I created the labels using Elle's Studio stamps. Finished the clusters off with star Thickers and some pearls from my stash.

Initially I tried using AI to create a clever title that emphasized the fact that my daughter's first Easter was after she had turned a year old. It came up with nothing good. I outsourced it to the Simple Scrapper members that were at a zoom crop and this was the title they came up with, with the egg on the O and everything!

The title was fun to make mixing a glittered Thicker font, some flat stickers from Kelly Purkey and the puffy alpha from SEI. 

The chipboard circle was from Ali Edwards that I picked up from a local crop's free table. 

Love how this came out, even though I don't know if you looked at the sketch, you would be able to tell I started there! 

Thanks for stopping by.

 

Ally at Bedtime

This layout I am sharing today was inspired by the Square One class at Simple Scrapper. I had this story saved as an Apple Note and thought sketch 568 would be perfect for it!

The background paper was from Dear Lizzy Star Gazer collection. The other paper were from Shimelle’s Little By Little collection. I saw the owl on the cut apart and thought it was on theme for my story.

I used wood veneer from my stash and some Felicity Jane alphas for the title. 

So glad to get this story told! Thanks for taking a look!

 

Rosie’s First St. Patrick’s Day

The layout I am sharing today is for my youngest's baby album to celebrate her first St. Patrick's Day. I used Simple Scrapper sketch 241 to participate in the Square One class. I modified the sketch a bit using 3x4 photos instead of 4x4 and replaced one of the 4x6 with 2 3x4 photos.

The strips of paper on the right of the layout inspired me to use a rainbow of papers. It was a great way to use up some of the 6x6 papers from my stash, some of which were SCT Sampler papers.

The chipboard Thickers were from an Amy Tangerine collection but they were craft. I loved the size and sentiment of them but the color wasn't working for me so I heat embossed it gold. Which was on theme for St. Patty's day! I used the same rainbow papers to run across the top of my journaling card that were on the right page and layered the title over the top. 

The rubber rainbow pieces were an Ali Edwards product that I picked up from a free table at an in-person crop, another perfect embellishment for this page.

I had fun embellishing the rainbow strips with repeating embellishments, trying to go tone on tone. 

Finished it off with some star gems in most of the colors of the rainbow. 

Love how the sketch informed the products and direction of this layout to include the rainbows. Loved getting this story told and using up quite a few things from my stash.