Hey there, it’s Kathleen back with you today. First of all, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas together with your loved ones! Now I am sure that many of you are working on their December projects right now, be it a December Daily, or scrapping photos from this Christmas season. For my project today I decided to put my December and Christmas crafts on hold for a moment and create a “normal” layout.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just need to take a break from a certain kind of project or theme and create something different to get the creative juices flowing again. For today’s project that not only meant changing the topic or theme, but also to try something different again.
I have made a few layouts with a patterned paper background for my Maggie Holmes Design Team projects so far (like this one or this one), but they are still the exception and not the norm (which for me is a white cardstock background). So I thought I would try my hand at creating a layout with a patterned paper background again.
I chose the backside of the “Sweet One” paper for the base of my layout because I really loved how the color complements my photos and because the pattern is soft and neutral enough not to be overpowering or too busy. The page itself came together rather quickly, since I still had some fussy cut flowers and leaves left from a previous layout, which I had cut from the Blossom paper and the gold foil vellum.
After I had matted my photos on a frame from the ephemera pack (I cut it in half so it would stick out at the top and bottom of my photos) and a piece of woodgrain paper, I arranged all the fussy cut flowers I had left to the left and right of my photos to “frame” them.
I made sure to give the floral clusters some dimension by arranging the individual pieces on different height levels, adding some foam tape behind some of them and also curling the leaves up a little bit. I shared some more tips for adding texture and dimension on your layouts in here on the blog a while back.
Instead of a “traditional” title with alphabet stickers I cut out the “You’re some kind of wonderful” card from the Daydream paper and used this for my title. I thought the sentiment was perfect for my photos and it was too long to recreate it with any of the alphabet thickers. I also added the word “hello” from the puffy stickers at the top so now the title reads “Hello, you’re some kind of wonderful”.
To fill some of the empty spaces and also to repeat the black from my photo and the “title”, I added some more pops of black around my page using the clear stickers from the Waterfall stickers set and also some of the Wonderful Thickers. I then did the same with yellow (adding the two butterflies) and the gold (adding some golden paint splatters, gold glitter stars and finally a piece of the gold foil washi on the bottom edge of my layout).
To add another pop of black and also to break up the background paper, I tore of a strip of it at the bottom and added a piece of the Melody paper to it. I intentionally turned it so that the lines would be vertical, because that way they create a contrast to the horizontal lines on the background paper.
I didn’t add any journaling because the photos are of our dog, just taken on random days and this layout was more of a “just because” kind of page rather than to document a specific event. And to be honest, these are my favourite kind of pages!
I hope you like this layout and it inspires you to get creative with your Willow Lane goodies!
See you again soon! And I wish you all a Happy New Year!
Kathleen
Supplies used: Maggie Holmes Willow Lane / Willow Lane 12×12 Paper Pad / Willow Lane Blossom Paper / Willow Lane Sweet One Paper / Willow Lane Daydream Paper / Willow Lane Melody Paper / Willow Lane Gold Foil Vellum / Willow Lane Flutter Paper / Willow Lane Wonderful Thickers / Willow Lane Puffy Stickers / Willow Lane Waterfall Stickers / Willow Lane Ephemera