Layouts to share...

Continuing on with my recent obsession with die cut papers I created the next 2 pages. As I said before these are a challenge for me because I struggle with deciding what to do with them & how to use them. I was talking on the video camera on Skype the other night with my daughter in Iraq & was showing her the new papers I had purchased. When I showed her this one from Creative Imaginations (which is actally from a Christmas line they came out with) her response was "ooooh...I'm not too sure about that one Mom" I felt the same way when I bought it....I liked it well enough but I don't do many Christmas pages so this one posed even more of a challenge....how to use it, and how to use it in a non-Christmas layout.

What do you think now Mand? Kind of grows on you doesn't it?

I added couple of strips of Basic Grey paper under the die cut so it didn't look like it was floating in the center of a sheet of cardstock so much. Then added the photo edged with another small piece of basic grey, a chipboard title & accent piece and an epoxy sticker.

And I'm wondering....am I the only scrapper out there who often creates a layout and then realizes I have given no thought as to where to add some journaling in? You can see in the photo below how I solved this problem and it ended up being the perfect place to add some text & a bit of bling. I think my friend Brenda would call this a happy accident : ) I have rarely used die cut papers on their own as the background of the page until this week. I like how they look but when I put them in my scrapbooks I have to make sure they are behind a page that has a complimentary color which is kind of a pain.

I love this next layout though. The colors are happy and cheerful and I adore this photo of my beautiful daughter (taken the same day as the one in the layout above). The title is American Crafts foam Thickers and this die cut paper is from Deja Views.Love it because it had the lines on it perfect for adding journaling directly to the page.

I added some gems as bullets for the journaling and to help finshing framing the photo.

This last one was also a challenge for me as the paper is from the Basic Grey June Bug line that I bought recently.Its an odd collection of papers....bright, busy and none that really appear to match each other. Although that seems to be an upcoming trend in scrapping to use odd mixtures of patterns & colors its really not my thing.

So anyway I had this series of photos of Tanner playing in the snow last winter that I wanted to use but was having a hard time finding a color to use with them since they had an odd blue tone in the snow (need to learn to photgraph snow so it comes out white !) and this busy red plaid from the June Bug collection ended up being a perfect choice I thought. And oddly enough the yellow and black seemed to go well too. So maybe I am following the trends a bit in my own way.

So here's a little quiz for Brenda....what are the first 2 things you notice on this page? I'll give you a hint ...1 is from you (thank you again) and the other is something we both rarely do.