Daddy's Girl by: Jamie Barrus

Ten pictures fit on this beautiful, sparkly layout!

LA Museum of History

As I've mentioned before, I try to fit a lot of pictures on a layout. I want the most bang for my buck! When I made this layout, it was the first time I had ever lined my pictures up side by side without any space in betwen them, and let the borders do all the work. I even cut one of the pictures in half and stradled it across both pages. Title? I didn't add an additional title, since the museum name is in the background of a photo, and served as a perfect title. I only added some eyelets and a few stickers to enhance the layout. Super quick, easy, and fun!

"All Smiles" by: Jenni Johansen

So, I (Jenni: Mindy's sister-in-law) made this layout using Basic Grey paper. I trimmed 1/4 inch of the sides to frame the right page and make a "T" pattern on the left page. Everything is mounted atop dark gray textured paper. I think its a pretty simple idea as I consider myself more of a "medium-level" scrapper. I did the title with scrapbook paint and letters. The flower is made of thick metal and then I added the blue paper flower with a brad to hold it together. I think it came out pretty cute. I think this idea worked well since the pattern on the paper had so
many "lines" to begin with, and the"framing"complimented that.

Cricut vs. Silhouette

Here's a great review/comparison of both, in case you're in the market.....

http://debbieschroeder.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/01/quickutz-silhou.html

Let us know which one you like, and why. (Thanks Emily for the idea!)

Favorite Tool?

Ok, ladies, the question of the week is: What is your favorite scrapbooking tool that you just can't live without? Scissors and cutting utensils aside, what is your favorite thing to use? It can be something old, or something new or something you wish you had but are currently living without... Please share!

My Sweet Son

I was inspired by the 'My Sweet Son' material tag that I had to make a baby boy page that was a little more manly. I liked how the denim was frayed on the edges, and tried to incorporate that with additional ribbon that I added. I used scissors to fray the edges and making small cuts in the ribbon to "toughen" it up. I used dark blue and navy patterns, but softened it a bit by incorporating light blue and baby yellow.

At first glance this is a really simple layout. It is the same layout used for the Kindergarten Graduation layout posted earlier. Six vertical pictures creating a picture row. I attempted sewing on my paper for the first time. I used white thread on the dark brown paper and just made soft, flowing curves to add some dimension and interest. It took a while getting the curves to look non-choppy, but after a few practices, they started looking really good. The flowers are chipboard, which I then painted (acrylic craft paint). I mixed a little Martha Stewart glitter with some Mod Podge glue and covered the entire surface, giving it a smooth, thick, glittery surface. I used a Cricut machine for the pink letters, but I just printed small brown letters and then cut them up very small and staggered them for a cute, girly look.

Animal Kingdom Lodge

While I'm not completely impressed and inspired by this layout, I did want to use it as an example of something I am inspired by. One of the many reasons I scrapbook is to preserve memories and family history. Besides photos, I find that using actual souvenirs from places, trips, etc. add that real-ness of our family. Our hotel was by far our favorite part of our whole trip, and although I didn't have too many pictures, I had a lot of paper products, such as maps, activity explanations, courses offered, dining options, etc. We were so impressed with everything the hotel alone had to offer, that I decided to incorporate some of these elements into my layout. The title comes from a brochure we got when we arrived, and the map on the right was what we lived by to get around the place. We were to record what animals we saw, and we had a lot of fun doing that as a family. I folded a couple of other important things and placed them behind the map, attached some fiber, and made them accessible down the road, when I've completely forgotten any details from our first trip to Disneyworld. Try keeping souvenirs from your trips, your favorite restaurant, your favorite store, nail salon, etc. and incorporating them into your next layout!

The thrill of Disney

This is another jam-packed Disney layout! I couldn't resist this wild paper when I saw how well it coordinated with my boys' orange and green Hawaiian shirts. I didn't have to use too many embellishments, considering the paper and photos did most of the work! At the time, I was very obsessed with eyelets, and I used a lot of them on this layout, in a lot of photo corners. I embellished them even more by typing ribbon around each one for an extra punch! This isn't my usual style, but looking at this layout always makes me happy (and hungry)!

Spending the day at Animal Kingdom

As you may have noticed, journaling is not one of my strengths. I love when my pages have journaling, I just hate doing it! I keep my goal to: add the place and date, and sometimes if I'm really ambitious, I'll add some journaling. This layout contains the most journaling in my history of scrapbooking. I really spent a lot of time and effort writing, re-writing, typing, setting the paper correctly, printing off testers, playing with the font size, etc. before I felt like I got it right. Maybe that's why it's not my favorite thing to do! There are certain experiences, though, that must be recorded and shared, and our experience at Animal Kingdom was one of them, so I put in the extra effort. I love the purple and green combination of this layout, and it is the simplest one I did from our Disneyworld trip (maybe because I spent so much time on the journaling!) I used simple little slide projector covers to add each child's initial to their photo, used some ink around edges, some fiber, and it was done!

Fun in the Sun!

This layout has a lot going on! The pictures are all simple and pretty similar, so I wanted to make it exciting by using fun, colorful paper as the background. Doing this also allows for more pictures, since I didn't have to worry about embellishments as much- the paper did it all! I set the title and a picture at an angle to bring symmetry to the two pages, and used only a couple of colors for accents. I only found two ribbons that I liked with this paper, so I used them continuously behind the title and picture at the bottom. They're simply folded and tucked under, adding dimension and interest. I used different sticker letters to create the title, and set some at an angle.