Belinda Jane

Memorykeeper. Mother. Maker

One photo, two layouts

I had this beautiful photo that I’d taken of Jack and Violet when he was just a couple of weeks old. My initial plan was to create just one layout to go into our family album. But I ended up printing out two copies of the photo in different sizes, not sure which one I wanted to use. So rather than let the second go to waste I decided to make a second layout to go into Jack’s album.

Brother & Sister

This is the layout I first created. The papers and vellum all came from a Studio Calico kit, the embellishments from digging through my stash. I’ve had this giant acrylic ampersand sitting in a container on my desk for a very long time. I’m happy to have finally used it.

My embellishment clusters are pretty basic and boring so that’s something I want to work on improving through practice. And I didn’t really think through the placement of my title before sticking everything down. I centred the title by the ampersand which meant that the ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ alphas aren’t even across the page. It’s a little annoying but I’m just leaving it because really, who is going to care?

Some close-up images:

She Loves You

And here we are with the layout to go into Jack’s album. This layout came together after making my way through a couple of big chunks of Victoria Marie’s “Layering Like a Boss” classes (available here) using one of the sketches provided. I think there is a pretty noticeable difference in the overall design from the first layout above, even though they were only created a week or so apart. The other great thing about this one was that I was able to finish the entire thing while both Jack and Violet were having a nap. Winning!

Supplies for this one mostly came from a Gossamer Blue kit with some extra embellishments from my stash.

More detailed images:

Hybrid layout – Believe in Myself

This layout is taken directly from this blog post back in 2016 which was sparked by the Ali Edwards “Believe” story kit. It’s just taken me this long to make it into a layout.

I struggled a little bit to get it to look the way I wanted it to. I dug through my stash of Studio Calico kits and found some papers that I wanted to use with nice, soft colours. I really loved the grid paper and knew I wanted to use it for my journalling. But when I tried printing straight onto it, the journalling just got lost on it. So I tried printing on vellum instead and laying it over the top. It’s ok, but not really what I wanted. I would have preferred the vellum to be a little more translucent. And then there was the problem of how to adhere the vellume to the paper without being able to see the adhesive. If anyone has any awesome tips for that I’d love to hear them.

I thought I’d pull embellishments straight from the physical products that came in the Ali Edwards story kit but the colours just didn’t work and I couldn’t pull enough out of the kit to make it work. So instead I grabbed the digital kit and decided to make my own. I picked a couple of different colours that I liked and recoloured the elements to suit before printing and fussy cutting them out to add to my layout. I really loved doing it this way and expect I’ll start dabbling in more hybrid work from now on.

More detailed photos of the layout are below.

Layout Share – Best Girl

 

In between caring for a newborn and taming a toddler over my summer break from uni, I was able to work on quite a few scrapbook layouts which made me so happy. When it’s been a while I forget how much fun it is to play with product and make pretty things.

I’ve been watching LOADS of YouTube videos from various papercrafters and memory keepers around the world and have felt really inspired to do more with my layouts and put my mountains of product to good use. I also signed up to a couple of Victoria Marie’s online classes to pick up some inspiration and tricks for layering. A link to her blog (and classes) is available here .

I put this layout together after getting through a few of the lessons in the Layering Like A Boss classes. And honestly, it took a really long time to come together. Like any new skill, I guess it’s something that will get easier with practice. But I am really happy with the finished product and I can’t wait to try using more layering techniques and clustering of embellishments on future layouts.

The papers for this layout came from a Studio Calico kit. I believe it was the Birds and the Bees scrapbook kit. And most of  the embellishments have come from digging through my stash. There are also a few leaf-y die cuts which I cut out with my silhouette cameo.

Some close-up photos are below.  

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