Sunday, August 23, 2015

Dress It Up

Happy Monday everyone. I hope you had a great weekend and that you took a lot of pictures! Today's post is the third in a series of blog posts that begins with the CM Blog. If you landed here first, be sure to visit the CM Blog as well as Julie Tambrini and Lisa Graham's blog posts. Julie will be sharing simple layouts with you today and Lisa will focus on intermediate or an enhanced scrapbooking style. My focus today will be on  grand layouts - layouts with a more decorative style.

I recently took advantage of a sale on prints and ordered some 1200 photos from Snapfish. Then realized that I hadn't uploaded images that I took during a camping trip to the beach last summer. I ordered those this weekend and when I did I discovered another sale (woohoo! I love sales!). So, in addition to my camping photos, I also ordered another 200 photos that I've been putting off printing. I now have about 1450 prints to scrapbook! It will be a big undertaking and I can't wait to get at it. Needless to say, I will be using Fast2Fab Predesigned Albums as well as plain refill pages in order to get this project done.

Generally, my albums include both simple, simple, simple layouts and decorative layouts. I like simple album pages. Particularly when I have a lot of photos to get into albums. In fact, to get all those photos in albums, I plan to create some simple layouts with no embellishments at all - just pictures and journaling. Simple gets it done and conserves both time and money. At the same time, I also like to dress my pages up and go for a grand, decorative look on occasion. Today I'm going to share 3 decorative layouts with you. And, I'm going to start with a dressed up Fast2Fab Predesigned layout.


I chose adorable Pretty in Pastel Fast2Fab Predesigned Pages for this layout featuring my youngest grand-daughter. These are some of my favorite pictures of my grand-daughter, who by the way is no longer a sweet baby girl. She's now a sassy young lady who doesn't like getting her picture taken (unless she's in a mood for it). Anyway ....I added papers from the Pretty in Pastel paper pack and Shades of Pastel Designer Cardstock as well as Pretty in Pastel Slide-In cards and Pastel Paper Flowers - a recent free gift offered by Creative Memories. I love the paper flowers and have my fingers crossed that they will come back as a sell-able product.

The predesigned page on your left comes with photo boxes for one vertical and one horizontal photo. I wanted to use this page for 3 vertical photos so I simply covered the photo box area with blue plaid paper  and pink cardstock. The pink polka dot scallops were cut from a slide-in card. To create, use the Shape Maker System and the Round Cartridge to punch 4 circles. Cut your circles in half then overlap them along the page as shown. Cover the tops with a layer of cardstock or printed paper and that's it ... you have a scalloped border. The word art at the top of the page was also cut from a slide-in card and matted with pink cardstock.

To create the page on your right, I covered the vertical photo box with blue plaid paper then added a trimmed and matted slide-in card. The horizontal photos were matted with blue plaid paper before adding them to the predesigned pink polka dot photo boxes. The three flowers at the top of the page were adhered to the page using foam squares. I used tape runner to adhere the small flowers and a dual-tip pen to hand write the title.

My next layout also started as Fast2Fab Predesigned pages but these pages don't include photo or journal boxes. I love the flexibility of these fun photo box-less predesigned pages. You can add your photos and journaling any where you want and either leave it as it is or dress it up! This time I had fun dressing it up.


Aren't these babies just too adorable? These are my great-granddaughters. I think it's so cool that my first greats are twins!!

I used pages from the Be Bold & Flourish Fast2Fab album as the base of this layout. I then added photo mats and a border cut from white cardstock from the Shades of Neutral Designer Cardstock paper pack. To create the border, punch the border with the Border Maker and Picket Fence cartridge. Trim the border and thread a strip of light coral print paper from the Be Bold & Flourish Paper Pack thru the spaces and adhere as shown. The journal card on the left page is a Be Bold & Flourish Slide-in card cut to fit. The title card on the right page was cut from another Be Bold & Flourish slide-in card. Add a few paper flowers and walla ... your done. An easy peasy way to get a decorative, dressed up look without taking a lot of dressing up time!

I created my final layout from scratch using the Bright Paper Pack, Shades of Bright Designer Cardstock and If You're Happy & You Know It Slide-In Pack.


The base of this layout is beige printed paper from the Bright Paper Pack. To create the border, tear a strip from blue cardstock; use your trimmer to cut another strip from printed paper then punch out a blue cardstock filmstrip with the Border Maker and filmstrip cartridge. Layer all three as shown. Cut the title from a slide-in card as shown and mat with red paper from the Bright Paper Pack before adhering to page. Mat two horizontal photos with one sheet of blue cardstock cut to fit. Tear one side of a strip of red paper and cut to fit the length of the mat. Adhere to the photo mat as shown before adhering the photo mat to the page.  The tag and large square were punched with the Shape Maker and the tag and square cartridges. Both squares were punched from a slide-in card and the tag from striped  paper from the Bright Paper Pack (the reverse of the red paper). I also doodled around both squares with a black dual-tip pen to mimic the doodling on the title box.

That's about it for today. I hope today's post inspires you to try a Fast2Fab Predesigned Album for yourself. You really can use the album pages as is to get an album done quickly and easily or you can take a little bit more time to dress it up if you like. And, as always, if your preference is "made from scratch" pages Creative Memories can also help you with your traditional album projects.

For more information about the Creative Memories products used in today's layouts, visit your advisor's website. Of course, if you don't already have a Creative Memories Advisor, I'd be more than happy to be your personal Creative Memories Advisor. Just visit my website at www.creativememories.com/user/dbrinsley to create an account. 

Have a good day and thanks so much for visiting my blog!


 

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