A little bit of this and a little bit of that

Embellishments are like scrapbook sprinkles and I love them. Which is why week three of this month's LOAD has been so much fun - each day a different embellishment prompt. The prompts are not your everyday, ordinary prompts and therefore, each day it got us thinking about how to interpret them.

It was a great week!

May 15th

Lain interviewed Stephanie Howell (have you checked out her amazing style here?) and I always think it's interesting to hear how others approach their scrapping and their inspiration and even their process. Stephanie was very inspirational for me and when I checked out her blog, I was blown away by the gorgeous layouts she creates.

Our prompt was to scraplift something from her blog or her TwoPeas gallery - what? only one?

It was hard to decide which one to use but in the end, this is the one I chose and I loved the simple layout, the banners, the doilies.

I have scrapped this photo before (probably more than once) but I thought it would look great against the woodgrain background. I finally broke into the last untouched Scrapagogo kit for this (sad that this is the last one!) and was thrilled with the products in there - gorgeous!

May 16th

Take a plain photo and match it with a plain background, then jazz it up with embellishments that help to support the emotion you wish to convey.

Ok, so you know that I don't really "do" plain. Just not really how I work but I tried! I chose a single photo that said something to me and then I matched it up with a selection of pretty papers from the Scrapagogo kit which then formed the basis of the layout.

I made a long title (something which seems to be a bit of a thing with me at the moment) and clustered a selection of embellishment goodies. I chose word stickers and then added a flower with a little camera, a window frame and a little wooden heart counter to enhance the "seeing the world" emotions. 

May 17th

Good page gone bad! 

Now this was a lot of fun. Lain suggested that we go back over some older layouts to find a layout that in principle is good, but somehow, the embellishments have turned it bad! 

When is the last time you looked at your older pages? Well, from experience I can tell you that some of them will make you cringe! But don't dispair, they were lovely at the time and this isn't an exercise to remake all of those pages but rather take one that can be enhanced by a bit of rework!

Although I think the original is a bit embarrassing (!), if you really want to look at it, you can find it here from when I first did it as part of a class. When I looked at it, I realised that the photo was a special one for me but the layout said NOTHING! The embellishments were totally superfluous and don't support what I wanted to say in any way and when I looked at it, I realised that I just hadn't told the story I wanted to. 

As it is, the journalling on the front of the reworked page is not the full story but I feel that a public toilet bonding story is perhaps best listed on the back! I have used more appropriate products and the little cluster at the top suggests some of what we saw on our trip while the little badge is perfect as my MIL spent the whole time terrified of the prospect of coming across bears!

May 18th

 Restraint. Keep it simple.

Yeah right! Me? No problem! Not!

Actually, this is another layout I fished out from my older albums as I felt the story wasn't quite what I had wanted to say. So I trashed the whole thing and just salvaged the photo and the small metal charms. 

I decided to use BG Capella with its soft colours to emphasise the soft shades of this white rose and just added some fussy cutting to the right as embellishment. I added the metal charms as a nod to the original even though I probably wouldn't have done this these days.

May 19th

Choose embellishments appropriate for the theme of the layout.

I don't know if I am running out of steam, but this week started to drag a bit and I was struggling to find photos that I wanted to deal with.

But after going through all my storage albums, this little story came to mind and I decided it was time to get it down on paper.

I deliberately didn't want to make this a Christmas layout because the "Christmas Tree Way" just refers to the route and it's the same whatever time of the year it is and even now as an adult think of it this way when I drive past it! So I used happy products and colours but added in the little string of lights from BG Eskimo Kisses that I jazzed up with multi-coloured bling (doesn't show up here because of the scan) and then some extra embellishments relating to time, travel and memories. 

May 20th 

Create a page by choosing the design first and making up the page before selecting and adding a photo and only embellish at the end of the process.

I decided to challenge myself to use this Sassafrass background paper which I considered to be a bit tricky. I really did make up the whole page including the photo mat before I went to have a look at the photos.

I wanted to create lots of layers and just piled stuff on until I thought the page was full enough! And there is a lot on this one, it's really quite a heavy one. Once I had found a photo which I thought could work, I added a small cluster and the banner title and called it done. The banner is a bit crooked which is something I need to work on - they always seem a bit skew-whiff.

May 21st

Use trendy products, techniques and designs but in a way that will not be out of date when you look back at it in the future.

Until I had started on this layout, I would have said that I wasn't such a trendy scrapper - somehow that sounds a bit negative - but it became clear to me that I must be.

I included banners, butterflies, doilies, clustering, ribbon roses, strip journalling, baker's twine and distressing. That seemed like a lot but it was all so natural for me - does this make me a bad person? 

I've decided that I adore this Scrapagogo kit - every little bit of it is gorgeous. (Actually, that's not strictly true - there is a piece of ribbon I don't like.) I shall be a bit sad when I get down to just the small scraps but I think I have a few more layouts out of it before I need to call it done.

And this week I've learnt that I adore embellishments and most of the time, can't get enough of them on my layouts.

What about you?