"Best Family Photo Ever" Layout | Sketch

My friend Suzanna is a member of The Scraproom Design Team and created a sketch for their October Jumpstart Sketch Challenge. So I decided to participate and I'm so glad I did. I had completely forgotten how much I enjoy working from sketches. The photos were taken last year at our elementary school's Fall Festival where they had a Halloween photo booth. I used papers from Pebbles Inc. as well as some new items from the Elle's Studio October release.

I layered some of the embellishments behind the photo and then staggered them in height, I love how it looks. The spider repeats on of the motifs from the banner, connecting both parts of the layout. The same idea goes for the wood veneer banner. By placing the little witch die cut all the way in the background -even partly behind the photo- I was able to make one of the cute die cuts work.

If you've seen my layouts, you know that I usually don't use wood veneer, but these Halloween themed wood veneer just jumped into my cart when I shopped at Elle's Studio. So I made it my mission to use them on this layout and it couldn't have worked better: this cat just fits right next to the photo and walking on one of the paper strips from the bottom of the page.


If you want to hear all about my thought process and why I placed cards and embellishments the way I did, please check out the process video on my process video on youtube.

Thanks for stopping in today!

October Mini Daisy Dori | Traveler's Notebook

Since I am not using my Mini Daisy Dori for planning anymore, I decided to use it as a combination of memory planning and creative/junk journaling for October and see if I would be able to fill it up. And not only that, see if I would be able to maintain it throughout the month without feeling stressed. So far it is working well, I'll continue through the remainder of the year and see how it goes.

I am trying to order my photos for Project Life and this journal on a weekly basis. This way I can plan what I want to record in each format and also work on the spreads as soon as I have the photo. Since the Mini Daisy Dori is such a small canvas a spread doesn't take a lot of time. I had some time last week and worked on several spreads. This one simply documents my current planner and journal situation.

Here I had found a quote online that I wanted to remember and instead of saving a screenshot on my phone, I copied it onto a page. I love that I now have a place to add meaningful quotes and affirmations instead of letting them die on my phone. I then picked a journaling card that went perfectly with the quote and stamped a title for it.

Another thing I love doing is documenting happy mail. It is often orders from sticker shops and such but some packages are packed so nicely and I love saving part of the packaging. I created the left side of the spread on the day I received my order from seeamydraw and then added the photo once it came in.

My idea for the Mini Daisy Dori is to have a journal that documents my life, but I know that some things will be documented both in the family album as well as in my journal. This is one of those cases - and I don't care one bit. I was able to add tickets and a sticker from the day to this spread, that I would most likely not be able to fit into the other album.

Lastly, here is an example of one of the memory planning spreads. I love this way of documenting or logging my life and am so happy that I finally found a way to incorporate it into my journaling as it wouldn't work for me as a way of planning. I usually do this on a daily basis and won't fall behind as the space is so small and it is so much fun.


Thanks so much for stopping in today! If you have some time to spare in your day, I would love for you to join me over on youtube for a little chatty journaling session!

Week 31 | Project Life 2018

For this week I dug out an old Elle's Studio kit, if I remember correctly it is the May 2016 kit. It has been sitting in my stash for a long time and when I pulled out my big box of pocket cards, I thought it would be a fun challenge to use it on a spread. If you have been following my process videos on youtube, you know that my weekly spreads have been quite minimal lately. I love that I am able to tackle a weekly spread in a short amount of time and having a limited amount of elements to work with makes it even quicker. Even though having cards and supplies in kits were complicating my creative process in the beginning of the year, I am again intrigued and fascinated by monthly kits.


Besides the kit, I pulled out a Tim Holtz alpha sticker book and a date stamp. And that is it ... I told you I was going minimalistic. If you want to hear all about my thought process and why I placed cards and embellishments the way I did, please check out the process video on my process video on youtube.

Thanks for stopping in today!

"He is a Reader now" Layout | Shimmerz Education Team

This month the Shimmerz team chose one color to use on their project and I picked Shimmerz Coffee. I love the hue of this brown, sparkly shimmerz and since I already knew the photo I wanted to document I also knew this color would be a perfect fit. Somehow my project ended up being a layout in colors very suitable for the season but not at all revolving around the typical Fall topics. And I'll tell you that I couldn't be happier about it! It turned out perfectly!

I used various different free cut files from the Paper Issues store and only cut the pieces that I liked most. I resized, turned and cut pieces out of the files. I also placed different patterned papers on my cutting mat - all of this was a first for me and not everything turned out the way I envisioned it. But what I noticed again and again, if you never try you won't find out if you would actually be successful. This was a great start. I cut leaves from white cardstock as well as patterned paper. The white leaves were then colored using the Shimmerz Coffee as well as some other Shimmerz colors but spreading the color onto some packaging an dipping the leaves in the paint. I absolutely love how they turned out. If you have never tried this, I highly recommend the technique. It is very easy and since the color doesn't cover all parts equally you already have a great color variation just like that!

I then layered some paper at the top, placed my photo and created two vines of leaves coming off both sides of the photo. The open space that I created with these branches, I then used for my long title as well as my journaling. Before I added the vines and the title I added paint splatters to the background, it felt very odd to have a plain white background with piles of mixed media leaves and torn paper stacked on top. The splatters made it look messier and therefore it all blended well together.



Here is a link to my process video on youtube. If you place an order in the Shimmerz Store, don't forget to mention my name Simone in the comments at checkout to receive a free mini surprise product! Thanks for stopping by today!

SUPPLIES:
Shimmerz - COFFEE, So Sappy, Wisteria Lane, Pink-O de Mayo
Inklingz - Miner, Miner 49er, French Twist

Cut files in a Traveler's Notebook | Scale it down

These past two Scale it down episodes, Suzanna and I looked at ways to incorporate digital cut files into Traveler's Notebooks. Here are two spreads that I created using free files from Paige Evans.

I resized the summer file to about 2.5 x 2.5 inches and it still cut out well. I am in love with using full page photos in my spreads lately and so the sun worked perfectly in the sky part of my photo. It didn't cover up any important details and it also helped to increase the contrast between the background and the color of the sun. You can see in the video (click here to watch) how the visibility of the sun changes when placed on the left side of the spread on a white background. I then just added a little bit of journaling and some embellishments to the left side of the spread.

Can you see the shimmer of the paint in the background? This spread or actually the mixed media in the background was inspired completely by accident when I spilled this paint onto the page while creating another spread. But I absolutely love that the accident resulted in this spread.

The cut file is part of an 8.5 x 11 inch background and I only used two rows of clouds. I didn't resize anything, cut the original file, used some mixed media in the background, again used another full size photo and then added only a tiny bit of journaling to the left side of the spread, right above the clouds. In the video you will see how I go back and forth between using more of the clouds on the left side and then ultimately deciding on using these two rows in order not to compete with the photo and leave it as the focus of the spread.


Thanks so much for stopping in today! I hope you were inspired to create some simple spreads documenting your favorite memories!

Week 27 | Project Life 2018

I realize more and more that sometimes less is more. For this spread I tried to find cards that balanced the red dirt from the Baseball field as well as the blue sky. The title card from feed your craft with its matching stripes is a bold choice but took away some of the weight from these photos. The rest of the cards are very simple and light since most of my photos from that week were rather on the darker side.


With the Stanley alpha stamps from Elle's Studio I added in another bold element which is able to guide your eye through the spread. Since I am still missing the number stickers I had to be creative with the week number and chose my typewriter as another element. It also solved the problem of writing on the slick surface of the blue card in the bottom right. If you want to hear all about my thought process and why I placed cards and embellishments the way I did, please check out the process video on my process video on youtube.

Thanks for stopping in today!

Week 26 | Project Life 2018

I took a little break from Project Life. This was mainly due to the fact that I thought I needed to film each and every spread that I created and since I didn't have time to film over the summer, Project Life suffered. So I took an unintentional break and had a very hard time getting back into the swing of things. So I kept my embellishments very minimal. I used printable die cuts from feed your craft as well as letter stickers from Tim Holtz and tried to distribute the colors evenly and accent certain elements on the page.


Inspired by Odessa Reichel, I used a circular photo on the page and love how it turned out. I hope I can do this more often from now on. If you want to hear all about my thought process and why I placed cards and embellishments the way I did, please check out the process video on my process video on youtube.

Thanks for stopping in today!