What's in a name? Aaron

This layout was inspired by a bucket list story that I mentioned 3 years ago on the Scrapbook Your Way Podcast I was on with Jennifer Wilson. 

As part of a Stash Bash challenge with Simple Scrapper, I decided to tackle this story. The challenge was to make a page using nothing brand new, including at least one scrap, one item from a partially used pack, and one piece of ephemera. 

I was also working through the Your Layout Loop class with Story being the starting point.

I used Sketch #24 from Elle's Studio Sketch to Finish Vol 3 as the starting point to my layout. With the arrows behind the main elements on the sketch, I opted to use strips of paper scraps. Since I had way too many words to just fit in the 3x4 card used in the sketch, I modified it to also include the 6x6 paper to hold the rest. 

For the ephemera needed for the Stash Bash challenged, I cut the tickets from the coordinating Amy Tangerine Cut and Paste 6x6 paper pad. The 3x4 cards were from a partially used Project Life mini kit checking another requirement for the Stash Bash challenge.

The floral die cuts came from a Dear Lizzy pack and the iridescence on the florals were lovely to add. 

Used some enamel dots and a few heart puffy stickers that matched on of the title alphas as a finishing touch as well as stamped the date of the photo.

So happy to have this story told. Now I need to do it for the names of my other children. 
 

Grandma’s Wish

The layout I am sharing today is a Bucket List layout that was journaled several years ago. While taking Simple Scrapper's Your Layout Loop class, for the start with design prompt, we were given a sketch #839 and I found the printed photo for this story recently and thought it would be a good fit for it. 

What I found with starting with the sketch was that in doing so, I gave myself a lot more freedom to adapt it to fit. I rotated the sketch right off since my photo was the opposite orientation. There was a grid of circles across the page in the sketch and I had this flower die in my stash for over 15 years and decided this story of wishes would pair nicely. Initially I thought I would place them over circles, but their scale didn't really lend well to that, so I just had them flow down the page.

The title was a stash bash win as I found the blue acrylic word from my SCT Sampler stash. I paired it with the grandmother foam Thicker which was also in a SCT Sampler. I used the "s" from the word sister on the same sheet, because it felt better to use just the s than leave the sticker in my stash.

The color of the acrylic word informed the embellishments on my page. I found a scrap of blue card stock and decided to find some other dies to cut out butterflies.

I also found some 6x6 papers from my SCT Samplers that matched the blue title piece as well as the cloud background paper I found randomly in my paper stash. I felt the light wood grain paper warmed the layout up and used a heart punch to sprinkle the color around the butterflies.

This layout was an example of a page that doesn't require a lot of products to feel complete. Love how it turned out and happy to have this story told!

 

Sharing a layout today that was inspired by many things. For one, the story for this layout came out of the Ali Edwards' Birthday Story Stamp. I was inspired to work on it as part of a class at Simple Scrapper called Layout Loop for a layout that starts with a product, which in this case was the Story Stamp set. 

I also used two starting points to inform the design. The first page was inspired by a layout I had found on one of my Pinterest Boards. I scrap lifted the photo strips from the design. The second page was inspired by a Simple Scrapper sketch (#316) as part of another class, Square One.

 

I haven't been in the habit of creating many event based pages, so I was excited when I had the opportunity to use some birthday themed supplies. I found a Scrapbook Generation kit in my stash that the colors matched and the icons seemed most appropriate for this story. I had to give myself permission to use the supplies my own way rather than how the sketch and design had been originally used for.

The supplies were from Simple Stories and with my son going to an engineering school with robots and all, the icons worked!

I used a Vicki Boutin mixed media background as the base of my layout. 

I managed to squeak a Birthday Story Stamp on the layout by using one in my title. I also used one from the Family and Ampersand Story Stamps to create it as well. I used some lovely Felicity Jane puffy alpha and some Kelly Purkey alpha stickers to finish it off. 

I stuck pretty closely to the sketch for this one. The title is on the first page so I replaced that with some embellishments.

Because of the kit inspiration, I cut many of the icons from the square cut apart paper out and used them as die cuts instead. Great for matching embellishments! 

Finished the page off with some enamel dots and puffy phrase stickers from Elle’s studio.

Happy to have this event documented and loved how many challenges inspired it to become what it is!

Care Bear Love

This layout was inspired by Ali Edwards Care Story Stamp. It was something that came up when brainstorming ideas for this Story theme even though it didn’t match well with the stamps in the set. 

This layout design was influenced by Simple Scrapper sketch #853 in this Journey’s Spark Magazine and challenge. 

Most of the supplies are from Pretty Little Studio’s You Are My Sunshine collection. 

I have to admit that the paper texture threw me a bit when I got it in my hands. It almost has a glossy texture and the print seems to sit on top of the paper. It is not my favorite but I love the designs so used it anyway. The rainbow of bears and the rainbow paper were calling to each other!

For the journaling, because it contained a conversation I had with my girls, I found these speech bubble stickers and tried to color code them with who was speaking. The long form journaling I then added to the background using clear sticker paper, same for the speech bubbles. 

The title was made using the Story Stamp word, some alpha tiles from Shimelle’s Box of crayons sticker folder and Thicker phrases. 

Finished the layout off with some enamel dots from my stash.

Love how it all came together and glad to have this story documented!

Swim Progress

The layout I am sharing today was inspired by Ali Edwards Story Stamp for the theme of progress.

Simple Scrapper’s challenge this journey is to use a grid in the layout design. I had started with the cut apart piece of swim paper and found a grid the best way to house them and my photos.

The wave strip was from a scrap I had left over I found in my stash. Love that the colors coordinated so well and love the touch of sparkle. The background was from my stash. I liked the idea of arrows and progress and thought the paper was a good color match. 

I used the Story Stamp set on the title card and then sentiments on the photos. 

 I used another stamp to create a border at the bottom of my grid and separated them with enamel dots. 

Used a cluster of enamel dots around my layout in a triangle. 

Used a summer  Ali Edwards stamp plus a number stamp to add the date. 

Happy with how this turned out! Thanks for stopping by!

Summer Adjectives

 

This layout was inspired by a journaling prompt to describe the summer in 5 adjectives. It also works for Simple Scrapper’s Member Challenge to use text as design. 

I started with the alpha stickers in my stash in creating a kit to create this layout. From there, in working toward using more of the SCT kits in my stash, I found one that matched the color and theme to put in my kit. 

I wanted a fairly neutral background so I found a Vicki Boutin mixed media background in a grey that made the letters pop.  

The title was made from a 4x6 pocket card that I fussy cut out and the smaller letters are Thickers from Paige Evans. 

Pulled some summer themed stamps from my stash and used to make word strips and on the paper clip. 

Finished off with enamel dots and some iridescent zigzag trim from my stash.

Best Birthday Ever

The layout I am sharing today was inspired by Ali Edwards' Best Story kit and stamp. I thought the story of the "best birthday ever" was perfect for this theme. Who can beat a free day at Disney plus an evening with scrapbooking with friends!

I used Simple Stories Magical Birthday Collection Kit to create the layout and finished it off with the acrylic word from the Best Story Kit and some enamel dots. 

Was able to use a stamp to finish this one off. 

So happy to have this story captured from so many years ago!

 

Quirks

This layout was inspired by Ali Edwards Story Stamp for the theme of Habits. 

This was a fun one to look back on! My kids got a kick of the journaling. It was a reminder that sometimes documenting these little things in the moment are the best stories to look back on!

The supplies for this were from Felicity Jane. The tags were perfect homes for each child’s journaling and matched the papers from the same collection. 

 I love the look and feel of the Felicity Jane puffy alphas! Put many to use on this layout. 

Love how this came together and having these quirks 

captured.

First Days of School-Aaron

This layout was inspired by a Refresh Retreat challenge from May of last year. The challenge was to combine 9 or more versions of a similar style of photo to help visually tell a story. My son resent my graduated high school and I thought it would cool to get all of his first day of school photos on a layout!

I used Simple Scrapper sketch 717 and decided to put these plastic slide frames that have been in my stash a long time to good use. 

I struggled with using the sketch a bit, since all of my photos were vertical. But with some friends at an in person crop and moving things around quite a few times (which also meant reframing many photos) I finally came up with a composition that worked for me.

 

Used Jillibean Soup’s Alphabet Soup II collection for paper and die cuts that matched well with the stickers.

I had some stickers in my stash that had labels that fit on the slide frames perfectly and had the title piece to match. 

Love seeing these photos all together to see the growth year after year. 

Who What Where When Why

The layout I am sharing today was inspired by Ali Edwards’ Hello Story class for the lesson on Who What When Where and How. I used the digitals from the class to cut the circles to house my photos.

I used some diamonds from the pattern paper to create embellishments on the page.

Finished off the clusters with some enamel shapes.

 Despite having a ton more photos for this trip, I love this snapshot and having this documented!

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!