Double Page Layouts

Do you make double page layouts? I admit to having made a ton in the past but lately I've focused on single pagers. Well today at Practical Scrappers we are sharing some of our recent double page layouts with you. Hopefully they'll inspire you to create more double page beauties! You can definitely tell a more in depth memory over those two pages (and, of course, include more pictures!)

I went back to our Disney trip for my inspiration and came up with this.

(click to make it larger)

One of the last pre-made pages I have from all the ones I started with was the base for this layout. I did add a couple more blocks of patterned paper - the one behind the title and the one the journaling is on. Actually opposite corners of the same piece of Teresa Collins paper. The journaling is worth a read. It tells the story of how we were literally steps away from meeting the Top Three princesses (Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty) but got Belle, Ariel and Tiana (who?!) instead. Sigh. An hour in line for the second stringers!! Hmmm, I think I'm still a little bitter about missing out on my  favourite Disney Princesses. The girls? Happy as clams!

Here is a close up of that journaling. 

I felt I could embellish with flowers since the subject matter is fairly girly.  I had one giant black one left from my Disney stash but it was too big and I really needed more than one. Digging through my flowers tin (see this post) I discovered a hole or two in my available colours. Yellow and black! I had one large yellow flower but that was it. What to do? Mists to the rescue! I took some old Stampin' Up paper daisies and sprayed a couple of the large ones black and three of the small ones yellow. 

You can see one of the large black flowers in the journaling close up above and the last detail shot below. In this close up of the title you can see the small yellow one as well as the other colours I used. 

Another thing that's quite fun to do - and will help with the ol' memory many years from now - is to use letter stickers to put the names of princesses we saw on their pictures. It adds detail without adding bulk or taking away from the pictures. In fact, that small bit of information enhances the layout as it adds to the memory/story being told.

Here's that close up of the black misted flower I was talking about as well as the one large yellow flower I managed to find in my stash. Oh, and the Mickey Mouse ears gem that I've been adding to all my Disney pages. It's little details like those that tie an album together. If you're wondering what spray I used to mist this black, it's Dyan Reavely's Dylusions in Black Marble.

Well thanks for coming by today. I value your visit. If you liked what you saw today please leave a comment, I certainly do appreciate them and would love your feedback. Enjoy the rest of your Wednesday. Have fun scrapping!

S.W.A.T Drill #3 - 4 Photo Challenge

It's time for another challenge from your local Scrap Warrior! Oh heck, it's too late in the day to think up witty little lines for a blog post! 

With St. Patty's Day right around the corner we wanted to challenge you with some four focus fun.Just as a four leaf clover brings good fortune, so does this challenge. Simply create a layout using four photos and you could be the lucky winner of a $20 gift card to 3 Scrappy Boys!

Here's my layout - another Disneyland layout. I've been lax on finishing this album but it is slowly coming together. 

I cropped two of the photos to 4x4 to make a even grid. 

Some of my details for you.

Tucked behind the flowers and the red journaling card is one of our Photopass Cards. I like finding new ways to tuck bits of memorabilia into this album.

My letter stickers were not sticking so much, despite additional glue, so I got creative and stitched them down. I don't have a working sewing machine but I do own a Sew Easy (We R Memory Keepers) that got the job done just as well!

Okay, that's it for today. Your challenge is to create a layout with 4 photos on it. Can't wait to see what you come up with!

Oh, and if you're looking for my Let's Get Sketchy Birthday Bash Blog Hop post go here.

Let's Get Sketchy Reveal Day

Can you believe it's Monday again already? It must be because there's a new sketch over at Let's Get Sketchy. Check it out ...

Please head over to the blog to see what the rest of my team did with this.

Here's mine.

I confess to cheating a tiny bit on this layout. I started with one of the pages I'd pre-planned for my Disney album! (Insert sheepish grin here!) When I say I'd pre-planned my page, I'd used Shimelle Lain's ideas from her "The Perfect Collection" class from True Scrap 3 (you can purchase it and other classes from True Scrap 3 here). She talked about taking a kit (either from a Kit Club or one you'd put together yourself for a specific project) and cutting the papers into various sized boxes straight away. Sounds scary I know but there is a method to her madness! Once the papers are cut up you create several base layouts - both single pages and double page spreads - and then all that's left is to add your pictures, embellishments and journaling. Before you know it you've got a pile of completed pages!

I was dithering over what to scrap for this sketch and in the end had to give myself a swift kick in the you know what and just get something DONE! Pre-made pages to the rescue! I felt the design of this was a good match to the sketch and then went from there. 

The flower here was made using some of the paper streamers the girls collected on this day. I used an extra large glue dot and just twisted and wrapped until it was covered. The brad finishes it off and is also handy for keeping stray ends in check.

I used lots of these word stickers on this and the stars were from my buddy Lain!

There wasn't a ton of space to journal but I managed to fit the basics on. If I want to add more at another time I can add a 6x12 insert or something.

While I technically did not use anything from my inventoried stash (yes, I am keeping track of all the papers I'm using up this year!) it still feels incredibly good to get one more Disney layout done. Thanks for stopping by today. I hope you will play along this week - remember there is a $40 GC to Artful Delight up for grabs this month.

Let's Get Sketchy

I'm trying to squeak in a submission for the Let's Get Sketchy Blog Design Team call (click the link to read all about it). We were asked to create a layout based on their sketch. Here's their sketch ...

And here's my layout.

I'm still working on ALL those Disney pictures I had printed last month. This time I'm telling the story of how Christine fell in love with the Teacups ride and EVERY time we entered the Park and/or Fantasyland we HAD to go on the Teacups. 

A close up of my title and journalling.

Close up of additional embellishment  and a secondary journalling card - notes that Paige is not in the cup with the rest of us but she did come around later and loved the ride as much as Christine!

Last embellishment cluster. Also, I added some ink splatters and painted the top right and bottom left corners with the same ink. 

Thanks for stopping by everyone! Be sure to head over to Let's Get Sketchy and enter some of their sketch challenges! Wish me luck!!

Continuing with Disney

I realized I had several assignments due today for various scrapping commitments but before I got to them (sorry, can't show you them yet) I wanted to finish off the Paige and Pooh Bear story. On Tuesday I shared two pages with you and mentioned I had more pictures and another story I still wanted to tell. Here it is.

I've been wanting to try out scrapping in these divided page protectors for awhile and I've got to say, I really like them. What a fun and easy way to add a ton of pictures while still allowing your creative juices to flow!

Anyway, here the story is about Paige overcoming her fears of mascots and people in full body costumes. This trip would not have been possible if Paige had been her old scared self! As I said in the post on Tuesday, Christine was fast asleep and Marley uninterested in getting Pooh's autograph so it was just Paige and Pooh Bear. She did awesome and I am so glad I had a ton of pictures of the event and could properly celebrate this developmental milestone in my scrap book pages!!

Speaking of which ... here is the layout side by side with the first of the Pooh Bear pages - this gives you an idea of how it will look in the album. 

And some close ups - sorry about the glare. It's next to impossible to take a picture of something in the page protector without getting glare!

There's the Mickey bling again! :)

I wanted to make sure this page looked like it belonged next to the other one so I tried to use similar colours. I didn't have anymore of the Pooh Bear paper or the yellow striped Echo Park but when I found this yellow hexagon (an older Echo Park) I knew it was serendipity! Honeycombs for a honey loving bear?! Are you kidding me? How perfect!

The back side of the paper has these cute bees on it plus it's blue which ties back to the slight bits of blue in the original pages. To further tie everything together I introduced papers seen in the other pages as well as design elements like the border punch and the alphabet stickers, washi tape, flowers, bling, etc.

Here is the back side of the divided page which has the continuation of the story on it. I basically just put an arrow at the bottom of my journaling on the one side (see above) and an arrow at the top of this page and kept writing!

And this is how it will look in the album next to the second of the original Pooh Bear pages (the one about Christine sleeping through the whole thing!)

I used Elle's Studio journaling tags for all the journaling on these two pages. Love this one with the doily image on a yellow chevron!

Another tying element are these word stickers (I used "Celebrate" in the title on the other side). With another Elle's Studio tag, it creates a nice little addition to the photo and the story.

Well, there you have it. What do you think? Do you use divided pages in your scrapbook albums? I'd love to see how you've used them if you can leave a link in the comments section I'll come check them out. 

Thanks for stopping by today. I'll try to get another family update posted tomorrow but if not, have a great weekend!

Making a Start

WAY back in July (sheesh, is it already August?!) I made my foundation pages for our Disneyland trip album. I thought I'd manage to quickly whip off a bunch of pages even after the girls returned from their week with their grandparents. Ha! Here we are a month later and I have finally made a start on the album. I was spurred to action by a couple of challenges. The first is the Creative Accents August challenge to use the colour yellow (features pretty heavily in my foundation pages) and the second was this week´s sketch at Sketch Inspiration.

Starting with the page for Creative Accents ...

This will be the title page of the album. The yellow chevron circle is actually fabric - Stampin`Up Essentials Designer Fabric to be precise - which I cut with my pinking sheers. I loved the bright happy yellow and felt it was the perfect way to start the album. This page was created brand new for this challenge (i.e not one of the base pages I'd created) but it will fit in perfectly as I have kept all the patterns and colours consistent by using leftover scraps from my other pages. Also, none of the other pages have embellishments on them yet so I can create continuity that way too. 

The title. The Disney Vacation plus the balloons/fireworks was a title sticker while the May 2012 were added using glittery foam letter stickers. 

I figured the title page probably doesn't need a ton of journaling so this little tag did the trick.

There are a few things I mean to add to pretty much every page I do and you can see some of them here. The fabric flower, the dots (I think they are called Candy Dots) and the Mickey head shaped bling. I've got a few different washi tapes that will get added here and there as well as little word phrases (cut out from a 12x12 piece of patterned paper.)

This next layout is for Sketch Inspiration using this sketch.

I wanted to use these portrait oriented photos so I made some changes to the sketch to accommodate them. It's not too far off though.

This is one of my pre-made base pages but the paper strips in the background worked for the sketch. 

More fabric flowers on this one as well as a word sticker.

Instead of the horizontal element shown at the top of the page in the sketch, I chose to anchor my photos with a horizontal element at the bottom of the page. You can also see the Mickey gem too!

My title may be a little hard to read so I'll write it out here again - Up Close And POOHsonal. Ha, ha, ha!! A little play on words there!! The journaling explains it. It reads: "Christine was fast asleep and Marley was saving room in her autograph book for Princesses so Paige got some one-on-one time with Winnie-the-Pooh!"

I have quite a few pictures of this particular event and had created a companion page during my base layout stage. This is not a double page spread but they will face each other so there is more "communication" between the two single page layouts than you'd normally see. Here is it - While You Were Sleeping - and tells the other half of the story.

I used a sticker journaling spot for the title and wrote my journaling directly onto the back ground paper. To further anchor the photos I added the other half of the strip of black card stock from the layout above as well as some washi tape and white border punched card stock. The word sticker seemed appropriate!

Here's a better look at the anchoring line.

I added the Mickey gem to the flower accent in the top right corner. I also repeated the washi tape and punched white card stock up here.

I still have more pictures of Paige with Pooh Bear and more story to tell (like how awesome it is that she will now hug mascots when she used to run away in terror!) so I will likely add a divided page protector between these two layouts with those photos. I didn't get to that today though.

Well, that's all I have for you today. Thanks for stopping by!

Last Disneyland Post

Almost finished recapping our trip ... grab a cup o' something and get comfy for this PHOTO HEAVY post.

Thursday May 10, 2012:

It was Greg's Birthday (42 ... shh, don't tell!) so I made him get a Birthday Button from City Hall and all day long people were wishing him Happy Birthday. It was awesome!

Grandma and Grandpa missed the bus so while we were waiting for them we got more autographs in the main square from Donald and Daisy Duck.

Alice and the Mad Hatter were there too but for some reason we didn't get their autographs. Weird.

This day was our last day at the park so we made it a "Greatest Hits Day".

First off were the Tea Cups - I rode in the "fast one" with Marley and Paige while Grandpa took Christine in the "slow one".

Then Autopia. Greg drove with Paige and Christine ...

... while I had the dubious pleasure of riding with Marley.

This is pretty much how I looked for the whole ride!! Let's just say, she's got a lot to learn before I let her get a real license!!

Then it was time for a little Jedi Training academy. None of the girls wanted to participate (or even watch really) so this was mainly for Greg's (and my) enjoyment!

Darth Vadar and Darth Mol (not pictured here) made their appearance with a couple of Storm Troopers but the Younglings defeated them! Phew!

LOL!

It was about 11am when the Jedi show ended so we headed to Fantasy Land to make good on a promise to Paige to see Rapunzel. Only the line up was already 90 minutes long when we got there so we decided to do more rides and check back later.

On our way to Splash Mountain we ran into Winnie the Pooh. Christine was asleep (see below) and Marley was saving pages in her book for Rapunzel so only Paige got his autograph.

Aww!

While Christine slept, Greg took the other two girls on Splash Mountain while I got fast passes for later and then waited to capture this.

We went back to Rapunzel's line which was only 45 minutes at this point so I held our spots and Greg took the girls to see Snow White and the Evil Queen.

Finally!! Rapunzel and Flynn!! The little girl in front of us in line had hair below her bum!! No joke! She and Rapunzel had a LOT to talk about!!

Then after lunch we used our fast passes ... with Grandma. Apparently Greg was a little tuckered out by this point. LOL!!

I snapped this as we were walking towards Big thunder. For the most part, the 3 girls looked out for each other! So sweet!

Riding Big Thunder.

Then we skedaddled over to California Adventure to catch the Fineas and Ferb Live Dance Party Show.

Marley and Paige enjoyed dancing with the characters but Christine got a bit overwhelmed so I eventually had to rescue her. 

Then we did the Grizzly River Raft ride again.

Greg lost the "who will get the wettest" contest!!

Since it was his birthday, we went to his choice of restaurant which was The Crab Shack. Greg and I both got Crab feasts (I had lobster too! yum!) and even Marley got into the spirit with a kids crab legs feast! Love that she is getting more adventurous as she gets older!

Well, there you have it. Our trip to Disneyland.

As I'm sure you can tell from the pictures, we had a lot of fun! It truly was a trip to remember! I was expecting to be exhausted when I got back and while I was tired every night there, when we returned I was strangely energized. So much so that the garage sale the morning after we got back which morphed into a block party that we reluctantly left to attend a surprise 40th birthday party, didn't seem too tiring or overwhelming. 

Anyway, it's back to reality now. School. Field hockey. Swimming lessons. Ballet. Gymnastics. All the usual routines! This long weekend is appreciated. We finally checked out the new Super IKEA in Richmond yesterday (REALLY need to win the lotto or something!) Today was swimming lessons and clean up time. And serious potty training for Christine. Some success, some accidents. Sigh. Wish us luck!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!