Boy

I had to put this page in before we were finished with our 30 days of layouts. It's got to be one of my favorite portrait pages of all times, I loved the pictures so much that it made the page really easy to do!

My background is just plain green cardstock. The orange polka dot and the brown plaid is scenic paper route. The green polka dot and the stripe is Bo Bunny. All the stickers are from a Bo Bunny sticker sheet, they matched my pictures perfectly! I spelled Ethans name using doodlebug button letters. 

The brown frog and green flower are felt shapes I got from Fancy Pants a long time ago. Again I mounted my stickers on chipboard. The orange ribbon is from American Crafts and the fibers and green ribbon are from All My Memories. I also used some brown snaps from We R Memory Keepers and some matching buttons. 

Posting these pages has been a lot of fun for me, I have had a great time looking through my albums and stirring up some of my old memories! Sure makes me miss my chunky little babies though! 

Keep an eye out for our upcoming page kit giveaway! 

Spring Fling!

So yesterday was a little too hectic for my taste and before I knew it the day was gone and there was no page posted!  So here is my page for the day, and in honor of the gloomy weather I decided to go with something super springy.

I think these pictures are really fun because I love action shots!  One of my favorite things to do with my camera is to set it on multi-shot and just push the button down.  It's the very best way to get really great candids and you never know when you'll get the perfect picture and not even realize it.  Once again I took way more pictures than I could fit on a layout, so I had to pare it down and try to make it fit.

Every one of the pictures is smaller than a standard 4x6 size, with some of them half that size and the pictures in the filmstrip the smallest.

At first I wanted to put the pictures in the filmstrip in order so it looked like a moving picture, but since I had way too many, I only did it for the small pictures in the top right.  I love the use of the filmstrip to include a lot of photos!

The paper is some coordinating paper from Hobby Lobby (Paper Studio)--I love it because it takes all the guesswork out of matching the paper.

I cut the various sizes of circles using my Sizzix and a circle die cut. I love the idea of lots of circles with the page because it matches so well with the frisbees and giant ball. The ribbon is American Crafts, and the 3D bugs are Paper Bliss.  The word Fling is made with sticker letters from Doodlebug and I cut summer with a Sizzix alphabet.

Some people shy away from pink paper, especially when they are dealing mostly with pictures of boys, but it is such a fun spring color for everyone that it definitely has it's place so don't be afraid to use it!

On another note, we are coming close to the end of our "30 days of pages" and have some fun new ideas for future posts, including a page kit giveaway, which we are hoping to have ready to go next week!

Time for Tea

Okay...so in my opening post I said I would be posting layouts where I managed to fit lots of lots of pictures...and this one might just be the Queen Mother of those pages.

The Tea Cups at Disneyland...every time we go over to ride them, the picture taking goes something like this:  I don't ride, because, frankly, at my age I'm not sure I'd come off alive.  Sadly, I just don't do spinning anymore.  So while everyone else rides, I turn my camera on multi-shot and once the ride starts, I pretty much depress the shutter button and start taking pictures.  My intentions are always to "pick the best and delete the rest" but that rarely happens because I'm bad at making choices.  So when all is said and done, I have anywhere from 20-50 pictures.  Out of that scenario, this page was born:

I fit 28 pictures on this page total.  It took a lot of hard thinking to figure out how to do it, but once I had the idea it was pretty easy to carry out.  The paper is just random stuff from my stash--nothing that was coordinated, I just picked paper that matched the really cute Mad Tea Party stickers I was using.  The ribbon buckles and tags are from Scrapworks, and the ribbon is American Crafts.  It was really surprising how easy it was to coordinate all these pieces even when they weren't sold together originally.

 The filmstrip on both pages was cut using my Mickey and Friends cartridge and I have used this particular piece a LOT to make more pictures fit on a page, or to help tell a story with the photos by putting them in order.

In this case, I use pictures that were in consecutive order for the filmstrips, so it would actually replicate what you might see on a filmstrip.  The pictures are small, so you can't see a lot of detail, but because they are action shots, they are super fun and I just couldn't leave them off--you can see hair flying and funny faces--priceless!

In this picture you can kind of see how the pictures look being put in order...if you looked up and down really fast you might be able to see the cups actually spinning.  Okay... not really, but that's kind of the idea.

So if you've counted the pictures, you might have noticed that they aren't adding up to 28.  That's because unless you're looking, you don't see my "secret element" on this page--the spinning wheel.

That blue frame at the top of page two is actually a hole in the page.  See the circular piece at the top?  That's the wheel behind the little frame.  The frame is cut from chipboard to make it sturdier and covered with paper.  Directly behind the hole is a piece of transparency glued to the back of the page.  I put that there so that as the wheel is turned the pictures glued to the wheel wouldn't get caught on the hole.  The journaling block was printed on another transparency and is held onto the front with the same brad that is holding the wheel in place.

Picture #1

Picture #2

The space between pictures... all the pictures are glued on at an angle so when it turns they are upright.

Notice there is a notch at the top of the wheel.  I put notches in between all the pictures so it can be turned a little easier.  All in all there are five pictures on the wheel.  I hooked the wheel on temporarily so I could turn and trace and turn and trace--that's how I figured out where to glue the photos.

Hopefully the explanations are good--this was really a fun technique to use to get a lot of pictures onto this layout.  I'm sure I will need to use it again in the future since I don't know how to delete.

Baptism

Baptism days are always super emotional for me! I am always so proud of my boys and the decision they make to be baptized! They are always looking at me throughout the program waiting for me to cry! They know it's coming and feel a great sense of accomplishment when they see the tears! I love the picture below of my son looking at the picture of the Savior and have often thought about making it into an 8x10 so I can frame it.

Bo Bunny stickers are the best! They make a layout so easy! I didn't have any coordinating paper for my sticker though, so I had to go hunting. My background for this page is just a light blue and the patterns are a light blue and green from American Crafts.

The title for this page came from my Bo Bunny sticker! Easy right? No thinking involved! I embellished it with a white silk flower and put one of my paper flowers in the center of the white one with a jewel brad in the middle. the green polka dot ribbon I got at walmart! I'm telling you it's a great place for cheap ribbon! The flourish is chipboard, I painted with a mint green paint, I got it from Fancy Pants a long time ago.

The blue ribbon on this page is some I got from Pebbles. and the little oval words are from Lil Davis Designs. in the corner is another flourish from that same pack I got at Fancy Pants. All the stickers came from that one sheet of Bo Bunny. I left a spot in the corner for my journaling, which is yet to be done. I did this page at a convention. I have a bad habit of telling myself I will do the journaling when I get home and a lot of pages get left undone because I forget to do it. Maybe one day I will remember to do them all, I will probably think of what to say while I am showering. :/