Project 12 - January 2011

Okay, I conquered my "perfectionitis" and finished the layout. Here it is ...

A couple of notes on my process (if I may!) ...

Last year I used a Martha Stewart album with coordinating papers for the entire year. By the time December came along, I was sick of the papers and wishing I hadn't restricted myself so much.This year I decided NOT to buy anything specifically for this project and instead to start using up my massive stash! I have a TON of Basic Grey papers that I can't seem to resist buying but then rarely use in layouts (not sure why -  they are gorgeous!) so my goal is to use mainly BG papers for 2011.

For January I dug into my Wisteria stash as well as some of the Basics (in vanilla I think). I have fallen victim to the love of the craft cardstock and since it works well with BG papers it seemed like a natural fit here. Now, all these decisions were made over a month ago in a moment of "eager beaver-ness", along with the choice of dark blue/purple cardstock. When I pulled my Project 12 box out last week to tackle this layout I was pleasantly surprised by these choices and quickly laid out the base.

Then the trouble started!

The sketch shows the pictures mounted on dark cardstock so I originally planned on using the purple for that but once I placed my chosen pictures on it, I didn't like it. Then I saw the light blue in the patterned papers and knew it would also work with the colour of LC's sweater (her favourite sweater at the moment) and voila! A colour palate was chosen!!

Okay, so far so good ... now to choose my title letters and my embellishments ...

oh yeah, and that journalling box ...

I will spare you all the details of the 1st and 2nd attempts at making something that more closely resembled the sketch. Suffice it to say, I am really happy with what I (eventually) came up with. 

Journalling reads: "January. A new month. A new year. A new project 12! This month saw Marley lose tooth #4. She really thought #5 & #6 would quickly follow but nothing so far! Paige & Marley started skating - something which Paige has discovered she loves very much! And LC? She just is." 

The large embellishment shown in the sketch was causing me much heartache until I found a jar of Making Memories flowers and buttons. The purple under flowers were originally light beige until I got the brilliant idea (after much hair pulling and second guessing and stash searching) to stamp them with purple ink. Now they stand out against the paper and with the addition of a brown flower, a button and a couple pieces of ribbon, it feels like a complete embellishment.

It was then a pretty easy thing to add more pieces of the brown ricrac and more buttons to complete the layout.

Oh, the title ... very quickly, I searched my alpha stash and found these letters that work with the light blue then I used my Cuttlebug to cut out the 2011 from the same purple cardstock as the journalling block.

On the Embracing Imperfection front, my papers aren't glued down straight, I got messy with stamping, I used a crappy picture of the snowshoeing (hmmm ... I actually just realized that I forgot to add a note about that on my layout ...), my journalling is mostly ledgible but not the neatest and I could have written more, and lastly my colours do not match perfectly but they all "go".

And now I get to start thinking about starting the process all over again ... :)

Thanks. Enjoy your weekend everyone. I am about to tackle Marley's birthday party costume (the latest - and hopefully final - iteration is Katy Perry!), the base coat of paint on the craft they'll be doing next week and dye some sheets for the "stage". Boy oh boy! I was happy to just have a few friends over to play Barbies with and then eat cake!!!