Layout of the Week - Family with Graphic 45 Papers & A Special Annoucement!

This week, as the sun shines outside here in Oregon, I want to share my family with you.  Dave, my wonderful husband,  is a sports fanatic who loves to play with his kids.  He managed to combine those this week...he got Delaney to fill out an NCAA bracket and then had Jake do one too.  Dave used blocks with the first letter of each team and had Jake pick his favorite of the two.  Yes, it took quite a while and Jake's bracket is full of M-named teams (his current favorite letter).  Poor Jake didn't fare well with Montana last night, but he still has a chance to beat his Daddy.  I keep telling Dave that knowing about sports really has nothing to do with winning with these tourney brackets.  On to Delaney, my beautiful, talented, creative daughter, will be 9 on Sunday.  Delaney is so well-rounded, she loves participating in all sorts of sports (those talents come from Dad), creating original, eye-catching art pieces and she's a "bit" of a perfectionist (that, I'm sorry, comes from me!).  She is thoughtful and loving, especially to her little brother.  So that makes Jake last.  Mr. Jake is now two and FULL of ENERGY!  He loves the movie "Cars," any every character in it.  We're missing Sally right now and he asks for "Yaddy" every chance he gets...I'm sure she's around somewhere, probably in one of Delaney's shoes.  We all love to hang out together and are very excited that the weather's warming up here!

So that's a bit of our story!  On to my layout...this design idea came to me a bit backwards.  Usually I have a photo and then come up with a layout.  OK, sometimes I have a paper collection that I love and take photos to go with it.  This time, I was inspired by a pile of mismatched Graphic 45 papers laying all over my counter while I was creating projects for the Graphic 45 design team call.  Seeing these papers, most are the backsides, reminded me of a patchwork quilt.  I thought & thought about how to combine them and came up with using a brown background and my favorite sepia tone photos.  I didn't shoot a new photo for this page, I remembered that my mother-in-law shot some photos of us when she was visiting in early December.  This one was almost our Christmas card photo, but it didn't quite make the cut.  We were very excited at the time, being huge Duck fans and having just attended one of our most exciting games ever...the Civil War win over the dreaded Beavers!  So we decided to have a Duck theme Christmas card.  Even though we didn't use this photo, we found some even more fun Duck photos of all of us.  My trusty sepia tone came into play because dark green and almost neon yellow don't exactly match the Graphic 45 color scheme.

Since I had been thinking of this project as a patchwork quilt, I searched the internet for patchwork quotes.  I found a few that combined the quilt idea with the family idea.  I didn't find one that fit my thoughts exactly so I made up my own.  I didn't want a big wordy journal box or title on this one, so I used photoshop to print my quote right on top of my photo.

For the patches, I cut my papers to 2 1/2" square and then used a ruler to gently fold the edges in 1/4" on each side.  I tore upward along these folds so the white would show on the edges.  Next I inked the edges with brown ink.  I used one little Hermafix square on the back of each square and placed them on the brown background, leaving an area in the bottom right corner for the photo.

This was my very first attempt at machine stitching on a layout.  I'm pretty excited with the results.  I had been planning to give it a try.  Dave put a table in the laundry room for my sewing machine and I dug the poor thing out of one of the "holes" or storage closets in the bonus room.  It had been in there more than 5 years.  I was surprised it worked at all.  I searched the internet for ideas on machine stitching and found tons of them.  So I experimented with an extra sheet of my background paper and extra little squares.  I adjusted the tension, stitch width and lenght, writing each of the number combinations next to that particular stitch on my sample sheet.  When I found one I liked, I used it.  I chose ivory thread for this project.

After sewing around the page twice, I decided to create my own embellishment for my title.  I cut a piece of patterned paper twice as long as my photo, tore it leaving a white edge, inked it with the brown and folded it into pleats.  I used the same straight stitch I used on the whole page to stitch my pleats together.  I went over the pleats twice.  Next I stitched down my brown ball fringe ribbon.  For the title, I inked the edges of the Graphic 45 letters with black and adhered them with pop dots.  To attach my homemade embellishments, I used glue dots.

I was very happy with how this layout turned out.  I loved machine stitching and can't wait to use it again!  Next time you're together with your family, shot a photo and remember to create a layout to celebrate these special people!

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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!

I want to share some exciting news with my readers!  I am now a featured writer on the Oregon Women's Report website.  I am writing a series of fun, anecdotal stories about scrapbooking.  I'd love it if you'd stop by over there and read my first one!  I'm planning to post each article here also.  I'll post one in both places every two weeks or so.  If you're from Oregon or just interested in all the cool women writers on the site, sign up to receive updates from OWR in your inbox.  Thanks! :)

Don't Forget!  Join me at Ann's tonight for Virtual Girl's Night Out!  Stop by to join in the fun, meet lot's of great women bloggers (and sometimes some male bloggers too!), hop around the internet leaving comments and getting some for yourself too!

Tips

Of course, use sepia tone or black & white to help your photos blend with your chosen papers.

If you're looking for a new way to include journaling in your layouts, give photoshop a try!

Look at the backsides of your papers, they might inspire a layout all by themselves.

Think about creating your own embellishments.

If you've got a sewing machine, try machine stitching!

Supplies

Graphic 45 papers...from all different collections, most are the backsides.

Graphic 45 alphabet letters

Bazzill brown ball fringe ribbon

Dark Brown Ink - Cat's Eye ink pad

Ivory thread for machine stitching