Layout of the Week - 'Tis the Season!

I'm so sorry I missed posting this layout as my Layout of the Week for last week!  Forgive me!  I was 'a bit' crazy trying to send out packages, cards & deal with Delaney's class party.  Oh, gee, I can hear so many of you who know me saying, "Shocking, Julie took on too many things at once!"  OK, I admit it, YES I DID!  But it's all over now & I'm on to taking on too many baking projects in one week!  But boy those cookies sure taste good!  Apparently my problem with not knowing how to say NO extends to cookies too!

Well, this layout is one of my favorite recent projects.  It's a photo taken last Christmas of Jake in his Christmas jammies just after he opened his Toy Story phone.  He was SO excited!  Who knew he would later eat off the number sign & I would have it handed to me by the nice lady who works in the nursery at our church.  She just laughed, having a little guy just a month older than Jake.  Then she told me what Delaney had said when she found the rubber key in his mouth, "You know, I told Mommy that the phone says it's for ages 3 and up!"  Out of the mouths of babes....  But still, his expression and those two teeth are priceless.

As far as the layout goes, the wood background is from LUXE (which sadly has closed up shop) and the other papers are new this year from Creative Imaginations.  I used three colors & two sizes of the Mark Richards mosaic tiles on this one, along with two different sets of THICKERS.  I'm always trying to create just one more title out of a set of these and darn if I don't use each set on 3 or 4 layouts!  Just mix & match if you don't have enough to write out your whole title.  And if you're, just a bit psycho, about color like I am, don't be afraid to paint them or just add a coat of glitter glue to them.  On the " 'tis," I used red paint & red glitter.  On the "season," I left them brown & added a coat of red glitter.  The "the" is created from Mrs. Grossman's stickers, an old set I have used many times.  The cute little letters at the bottom are some of my current faves from My Little Shoebox.

And do take a look again at Mr. Jake's darling smile, my next post will be yesterday's visit to Santa and he certainly isn't the one smiling!

Tips

Again, I'm mentioning Costco, but they really do make great large prints, like this 8 x 8 one.  Give them a try for your next printing job.

Don't be afraid to mix your font styles in your titles.  Just stay with one or two bold ones and try to stay with the same color or coat of glitter.

When mixing patterns, try a few large rectangle blocks on your page and round the corners for a unique look.

Supplies

Background paper - LUXE Designs - :( not around anymore

Patterned papers - Creative Imaginations

Tiles - Mark Richards

Titles - THICKERS - American Crafts

            Mrs. Grossman's

            My Little Shoebox

Layout of the Week - Home Sweet Home

When I first saw this paper from My Little Shoebox, my "I gotta have it!" alarm went off! I just knew that I needed to do a page with my house. Of all the photos I've taken in & around my house over the years, there still wasn't a page just showing the front of the house...where we live. The colors in these papers are just so cheery that I knew they'd be fine with any photo I could find of my gray house. The color of our house is something we laugh about a lot. This is the third home Dave & I have owned together. It's also our 3rd gray house! Being people who love color so much that we've painted two of our family rooms dark red. This whole gray thing is somewhat of a surprise for us. One of our friends even remarked that we have the "Skittles" house, when he saw how differently we've painted each room of this very traditional style home. But I guess the gray does point to our sense of looking past the book's cover when choosing such a large ticket item! We bought this house from a close friend, solely for the large backyard. It was just an extra perk that the floor plan works so well for our family. It certainly wasn't the traditional facade or gray color that drew us to our home of almost 5 years. If we could choose, we'd live in a Craftsman style home. But alas none were to be found with a huge yard and a view of all the geese & duck families floating on the pond out back...so traditional gray with black shutters was the way to go!

And having a layout of our home all covered with snow, will always bring us back to the freak snowstorm of December 2008! This photo was from the first day of that storm and the snow didn't stop falling or even melt for two more weeks! I'll have to do an "after the storm" page someday! Delaney was so excited, she struck a "Vanna White" pose in the driveway for this shot!

I love the diecut scalloped paper and used it to set my photo apart from the 2 Home Sweet Home patterned papers I used in the background. And my black shutters came in handy, helping me to spread the color black as an accent around my layout. I used the Cricut's Tear Drop font to cut my address numbers from a piece of Bo Bunny's black dot paper, the shadow is a pink on pink heart pattern which is the flip side of the Home Sweet Home strip paper I used at the bottom of the page (I inked the edges of the strip & scalloped diecut with black chalk.) Next, I mounted two square black buckles from 7 Gypsies on pink twill ribbon from Creative Cafe and a black chiffon flower on a sparkly white brad to complete the embellishing of my page.

The color scheme for this page is a bit out of the ordinary, which is why I love it. It will be lot's of fun to have such an unexpected page in my album! The next time you've got your camera out shooting photos of the kids, take a few minutes to get some shots of your home, yard, kitchen counters (yes, whether they're spotless or full of piles like mine!). Someday you'll love looking back & seeing where you lived at this moment in time! Maybe that pile on your counter will remind you of all those kids' school projects or that today you were making chocolate chip cookies. Whatever is there on the counter will bring back memories of today and that's what our photo albums are all about!

Check out My Little Shoebox's Blog to get some inspiration for your next project using all their cool products!