Thursday, February 11, 2010

Layout of the Week - Bo Bunny's Love Bandit

I hope everyone is all prepared for Valentine's Day! I still have a few cards to make & projects to finish. I've been a very busy girl for the last week or so. I've finished quite a few projects. One for Delaney, this Valentine layout and one to submit for an Ella Publishing contest...if it wins, I'll share it with you when it's published and if not, it will make a fun Layout of the Week. I'll share the others with you soon.

I created this week's layout with my favorite Valentine collection of the season, Love Bandit by Bo Bunny. (Check out Bo Bunny's Blog for lot's more Valentine inspiration!)  I love the use of color on these papers. It's refreshing to get away from just red & pink papers for this holiday. Not that I don't love all the hearts & sparkle Valentine's brings, but too much of anything can be overkill. So this cute collection full of little racoons & bugs jumped out at me.


Once I chose the paper, I happened upon a sketch contest on Ella Publishing's blog. When I looked over the sketch, I thought it was the perfect layout for my papers & the photos of my kids. Since brown is one of my favorite colors, I love to use sepia tone photos. These photos are from Jake's 2nd Birthday a couple weeks ago. He's wearing his red Christmas "mun-in" (monkey) jammies and they certainly didn't complement the Love Bandit papers at all. So I printed them in sepia which looks great with the browns & other colors of these papers.

Lately it seems like I've been making a lot of single page layouts.  In the past, I was a total double page spread (DPS) girl.  My love of symmetry always led me to create two pages for each layout.  But I have started to find more value in one nice large photo for a single page layout, you know,  a picture is worth a 1,000 words & all.  But I love this Love Bandit paper collection so much, that I decided to add a right side page to my sketch for the Ella contest.  I chose the blue patterned paper, I like how it coordinates with the brown background of the left side without being exactly the same.  See what you think....


And here the two layouts are side by side, just like they'll look in my album...



I hope everyone enjoyed my Valentine layout!  And I hope you enjoy your long weekend...hopefully it is a long one for you like it is for us!

Happy Valentine's Day!

See you back here tomorrow for Ann's Virtual Girls' Night Out!  All you bloggers out there really should check out Ann's party!  We have a lot of fun every Friday night, meeting & greeting bloggers from all around the web and the world!  I wonder if Ann's theme will be Valentine's Day or the Olympics or a combo of the two.  Those of us on the West Coast are very excited that they Olympics are in our time zone this year, maybe we'll catch more of the action!

Tips

Use sepia tone photos to easily coordinate a layout with brown tones.

Use 7 Gypsies buckles to hold just one little knot of ribbon instead of on ribbon running all the way across your page.

Don't be afraid to use two different background papers on one DPS.  Do try for a solid or unobtrusive background if one side is a pattern.

Don't let your photos hide your pattern.  Get out that craft knife & use it to trim around part of your pattern.  Check out the right side layout.  I used the craft knife to cut around the portion of the tree that would have been hidden under my photo mat.  Then I stuck my photo mat under that portion of the tree, letting the tree pop out over my photo.

Don't let those extra dots that come in the packs of THICKERS go to waste, use them as mock brads!  I put them on my tags on the left side layout.


Supplies

Bo Bunny:  Love Bandit patterned papers, chocolate dot paper, stickers, ribbon
7 Gypsies:  Pink Buckle
American Crafts:  Green Glitter THICKERS-dots & bracket
Martha Stewart:  Punch Around the Page Punch


17 comments:

The Kooky Queen--Rachel said...

I used to love scrapbooking. Then I got lazy...help me!!!!!!!! Love your stuff though...WOW!!!

Kristy said...

love it, I should start scrapbooking!

Here to follow you from Friday Follow! :)

Kristy from MyPetSavings.com

Angelina said...

I love your blog..I just do not get enought time to read all of it all the time! I am a scrappbooking maniac- I got one gift for Christmas in 08- a cricut so I could cut whatever I wanted whenever instead of going to the store....I will be keeping up with you better- you rideas are great!

Sandra said...

Hi,
Nice Blog!

Thanks for the follow, following from Follow Friday

http://www.bargains4wahms.com

Leslie said...

Both of your pages turned out darling. Hope you have a wonderful weekend and Valentine's Day!

Happy VGNO!

Carolee Hollenback said...

Very creative- as usual. Wish I still lived in Oregon- my daughter has started scrapbooking.

Have a Happy VGNO!

qandlequeen said...

Happy VGNO

lv2scpbk said...

That is so cute. I love them. Thanks for playing along on Craft it Wed. I can't wait to see more.

Janine said...

great layouts!

I'm a day late, but I found you through Friday Follow! Great blog, I'm now a Google Friend Connect Follower! :)

Visiting from My Kids Are Fun!

Anonymous said...

I really like the colors you chose and the layouts. I haven't scrapbooked yet, but now I know who to turn to when I get started.

Thanks for linking up with Friday Follow! I am now your blog follower. Happy weekend!

~ Lynn
http://www.middayescapades.com

Felissa Hadas said...

Stopping by to say hello with Friday Follow. Hope you have an amazing weekend with your family and friends.

Felissa
Please stop by my new blog:
www.twolittlecavaliers.blogspot.com
and my business blog:
www.felissahadas.blogspot.com

Robyn Campbell said...

Friday following you on network blogs. I couldn't get your follower list to show up. Happy V Day!

Unknown said...

love the scrapbook pages. Wish I could do that.

Jenn said...

Hey Julie!! Your interview is posted on Scrapaholic Studio!! I emailed you about it just a few minutes ago, but I wanted to let you know here, too, just in case you'd see this first! :)

Anonymous said...

I was never that creative. Thanks for participating in Friday Follow. I am catching up to the links. Rita @ http://one2try.blogspot.com/

House of Smiths said...

Ooo! How cute is this stuff!
Love your style!
Thanks for commenting my blog!
I'll be following you! (yikes, that sounded a little creepy. LOL)
Shelley Smith
houseofsmiths.blogspot.com

Donna Jannuzzi said...

I love how you made the sketch into a two page layout. The little tags on the left-hand page ae so cute. :)

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