Adorable

This is another layout I did on NSD.  I originally had it with just the triangle of embellies but it looked so bare on the left-hand side that I added the buttons and hearts.

I never used to use buttons but since starting A's baby book, I've sure become a fan.  I love the look of them and think they add so much to a page.

I've been really trying to figure out how to do embellishment clusters.  Jennifer Larson did a great blog post not long ago about how she does her embellishment layering.  It's wonderful advice but I still seem to struggle with it.  On most of my layouts, I see what I can do to do the clusters or layering and nothing looks right so I just forget about it.  However, on this page, I decided to mount these stickers on cardstock, cut them out and then add some foam to give them a more 3-D look.  When doing that, I realized that I could actually make a cluster out of them.  I kept two of the hearts flat and raised up the moon, boat, duck and one heart.  To fill in the gaps, I added a couple buttons.  I don't think it's perfect but I'm pretty happy with it.  My first successful cluster!  :)  Oh, and these stickers are super old - they're from a random baby sticker pack and I thought they were cute so I used them.

I decided to use dimension here too by layering circles and using foam again and then topping them off with a sweet little metallic flower.

Sweet Little Baby

This is one of the layouts that I did at the crop on NSD.  I did everything there except I added some Frosted Lace Stickles on the stars and moons to add a little something to the layout.  I love sleeping babies so I grouped some pictures of A that we took over the first couple weeks.  This patterned paper is old - we're talking several years old - but I thought it was perfect for the layout.  I used a vellum saying that I have for babies for the title and just mounted it on blue cardstock.  I put two different ribbons on the top and bottom to frame the photo mat.

I love this quote and think it's so very true.  

Oooh, what colour?

Over at Skrap 'n Chat, April issued a cake challenge - to use layers, icing (lace, ribbon or trim) and white for a wedding cake.  Since I've been on a kick with Easter layouts, I thought I'd do one of them for her challenge.

Once again, I used Just So Scrappy's "Cottontail" digi kit (like for the other two Easter layouts).  There is so, so much in that kit!!  You could do a whole album using the papers, alphas and embellies from her kits and not have much repetition.  Just fantastic.  And I used an Allison Davis sketch - I love, love, love her sketches.  I need to invest in some of her sketch books.

So, the obvious is the white background.  :D  I did lots of layering with the borders, paper and flowers.  I used a loopy border "punch" (from Julie Billingsley) to add some fun to the design and I made the Easter egg border using embellies from the kit.  I decided to fill up some of the white space on the sides with some cute flowers and I love how they turned out!

Easter Layouts

For this week's challenge over at Club CK, Susan asked us to scrap photos of our least favourite event to scrap.  I can honestly say that I don't hate scrapping any event but I do find it somewhat intimidating.  I think it's because of the sheer volume of photos that we have for events.  I've already done our Halloween pictures and most of our Christmas pictures but hadn't touched Easter for 2010 so I decided to do them.  I was browsing on Sweet Shoppe Designs on Saturday and discovered Janet Phillips's template for many pictures - they're fantastic!  They're all in a grid format and they look great as is though you could embellish your page as you like.  Here are two of my layouts for this challenge using the following templates as my guides:

I didn't embellish this layout at all.  With the Easter egg background paper and the fancy alpha for the title, I felt it was enough.  I love how it makes the pictures stand out!

And here's the template I used:

And this one of Easter morning:

One this one, I did add a few embellies, just to add a visual triangle.  I'm still not great at doing the visual triangle but I'm trying to get better.

This is the template:

I really do recommend Janet's templates if you've got lots of photos to scrap.  She's got so many different ideas for photo placement.  I've found a new love!

Happy Anniversary!

Today, D and I are celebrating our 10th anniversary.  Wow, 10 years together!  When I think back on everything we've been through, it's been quite an adventure.  I decided to make D an album celebrating what I love about him.  I found pictures to go with every idea and then journalled about it.  I loved doing this album and I can't wait to see it printed out!

While I won't share the whole album, I will share the cover.  I used Julie Billingsley's digi kit, "Love of My Life" to do the whole album.