Take Inspiration from a Travel Scrapbook Page

This week's challenge on Shimelle's blog was right up my street! It was to take inspiration from one of her travel pages. I really like this page and, coincidentally, I often create pages which have the photos in a row across the page, so it was ideal for some photos I was itching to scrapbook from a weekend away earlier this month.

This is a double layout, but I really used the inspiration on the left-hand page, with the photos stretching the width of the page, the title above, and the tags below. I actually only cut the tops of the tags and used them to label the photos.

Most of the papers are from the Fancy Pants Designs Down By the Shore collection 6 x 6 paper pad, and the navy and white striped paper was from one of my crafty friends who was having a clear out! A few enamel dots finished off the page.

Paint the Edge of the Page

Some weeks I know I'm not going to have too much time to scrapbook - and this week was one of those - so I thought I'd be really keen and get a page done on Monday. I had a photo of my nephew meeting Gunnersaurus, the Arsenal FC mascot, and one sheet of paper picked out, so I thought that was a good starting point. Layout done, I decided it really needed a border, so merrily cut down the background paper before realising that a white background was just too wishy-washy, and I didn't have any cardstock the right shade of dark blue - so the layout stayed on my desk.

On Tuesday, Shimelle posted this week's challenge, which is to paint the edge of the page - and there was my answer! Up came the background paper and out came my watercolours to paint the edge of the white cardstock. A couple of minutes later, I have a page I'm much happier with!

The background paper is Stars & stripes from the Amy Tangerine Better Together collection by American Crafts and the other papers are from 6 x 6 paper pads - the Fancy Pants Designs Down By the Shore collection and Simple Stories' A Charmed Life, which was still on my desk from last week! The puffy stickers are from the Attwell collection by Fancy Pants Designs, and a few wood veneer and enamel stars finished the page.

It would never have occurred to me to paint the border on to the white cardstock (if I hadn't already cut down the background paper, I could have painted directly on to it), if it hadn't been for the challenge, but I'm really pleased with the result, so I'd definitely encourage you to give it a go!

Embellish with Leaf Motifs

One of the reasons for doing challenges is to push yourself to do something different and, when I saw this week's challenge on Shimelle's blog, which is to embellish with leaf motifs, I really thought I'd fail! If you're a regular reader of this blog, you're probably a little puzzled by now as last week's layout had leaves - as have several more layouts this year. However, leaves just don't inspire me, so I don't really buy scrapbooking supplies with leaves - so the extent of my leafy supplies have more or less been used up!

I had a thumb through the photos I had printed and none of them really said 'leaves' to me so, once again, I decided to sleep on it and see what came to mind. In the end, the layout by Leigh Ann Odynsky, which Shimelle included in her post, really stuck with me. As mentioned in a previous post, sewing on my layouts isn't something I'm especially good at so, instead of the sewing, I created messy circles with the spray sticks from the Heidi Swapp Colour Shine mists in gold and seafoam.

The photo is another one from our wedding so, again, I wanted to keep the colours soft. I've layered the photo using some of the A Charmed Life 6x6 paper pad from Simple Stories, and then muted those colours with a scrap of glittered vellum. The flowers, leaves and butterflies are punched from coloured vellum and then rubbed with an embossing tool to give them some dimension. They were sprinkled around the circle, along with pearls, heart-shaped gems, and heart enamel shapes. These and the vellum are all from my stash, as are the row of gems along the bottom of the photo.

Use Floral Motifs

Do you use flowers in your scrapbooking? I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with them - I love them and see other people's layouts using them, but find it really difficult to make them look good on my own, so I thought I might struggle with this week's challenge on Shimelle's blog, which was to use floral motifs, although I was slightly reassured as one of her examples just has a couple of small flowers.

Having slept on it, I had an idea in my head - I had some photos printed from a wine tasting evening at a local Asian restaurant and was pretty sure that I had the remnants of an old Basic Grey kit which would go with them, so I had a rummage... I eventually came up with a few scraps of the Basic Grey, Konnichiwa collection - I'm not completely convinced this is the collection I had in mind, but the bits I had left really complemented the photos - and the largest scrap of paper I had was a lovely small floral - ideal for the challenge!

The large fabric flowers, felt floral strip, and letter and embellishment stickers are also from the same collection. The background is a cut file I designed myself - it was my first attempt at creating something like this, and there are definitely lessons to be learned!

Use Lots & Lots of Layers

Following a summer hiatus, the challenges are back on Shimelle's blog and this week's is to use lots & lots of layers. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know that I regularly use layers - but not lots and lots of them - in fact, I struggle a bit with using more than a couple!

My first step was to find a photo I love, and this one, taken of a regular visitor to our garden this last weekend, is definitely a current favourite - I find that, if I really love the photo, the layering becomes just that bit easier. Step two was to rummage through my scrap box and see what I could find to make the photo pop.

I ended up with the remnants of the Serenade collection by Basic Grey, plus a couple more oddments which have been hanging around for a good while! With all of the layers, I didn't really feel as though much embellishment was needed, but a few stickers from the Serenade sticker sheet and some cute wood veneer birds really helped to finish the layout off.