First Day with Emma

Hi CTK friends!  Emma on the blog today to share a layout using the, oh so gorgeous, February Main kit!  I'm quite sure I've confessed my love of circles before - there is just something about them that I adore and I find myself sneaking them onto pages without even realising sometimes.  In this case it was actually a conscious decision but rather just use circles on my page, I mixed it up by adding them onto 2x2 squares and creating my own patterned background!

This is one of those layouts that kind of just came together on its own.  I started it with an idea of using circles and the design changed a few times in the process of actually putting it together ;)

Here's a look at the page I created:

 

As you know (or may not know), my pages are all 6x8 which means I'm always left with lots of 6x4 "scraps" of paper, particularly white cardstock which I almost always use for my backgrounds and I'm forever looking for ways to use them up.  For this page I've used them by cutting little 2x2 squares and then adhered my circles on top (I used my glue pen).  I used a 3/4" punch and cut dozens of them using almost all of the papers included in the Main kit.

 I think I had around 10 of the 2x2 squares done by the time I'd used up all my punched circles (I went a little crazy with my trusty little punch).  I had originally planned to just adhere them to the page in a plain square pattern but by some odd chance, I'd turned one on the diagonal and liked how it looked so ran with that instead.

 

Rather than keep it all square and uniformed I cut a few of them in half (so they're 1x2") and mixed the positioning, keeping a small border around them.  Although I've mixed all the patterns with the circles I found that having the squares/rectangles all butt up together was crazy busy so that small white border around each shape helped to break things up a bit.

I adhered the pieces using double-sided tape but I've also gone over a few pieces with the sewing machine (using either standard straight stitch or the zig-zag).  My pages are not complete without some machine stitching on them!

My journaling is typed up in Photoshop and I just make sure it fit within the 2x2 white squares then printed it on the same white cardstock I've used on the background (using up more of that scrap cardstock I have!).

The gold alphas included in the main kit are gorgeous and I LOVE how they have mixed sizes of the font.  I often have trouble using some of the alphas on my page becuase they are so big but these smaller fonts are perfect.  I used a combination of the small and large fonts here and by some small miracle, they are a perfect fit for my 2x2 square format!

Although I knew what my layout was going to be about I actually left the photo printing until I'd figured out the background design.  Although my title/journaling are on the angle I didn't want my photo to be so I used Photoshop to create the diamond shaped template for my photo and then just printed it on 6x4 photo paper.

I left the embellishing to the bare minimum because the page has alot going on in the background already, I just tucked one of the word stickers at the bottom of my journaling then cut the yellow heart from the leatherette stickers and popped it underneath.  And that's it!  Embellishing is my favourite process of any layout so only having 2 pieces is unheard of for me ;)

I'm not going to lie - this page took a bit of time to put together.  I'm a slow scrapper at the bet of times but this probably took a few hours (I want to say 2 hours but in all honesty I think it was probably longer than that, ha!). It was fiddly, and somewhat messy with gluing all those circles down, but I thoroughly enjoyed every second of it!  And it's such a great way to use all those patterned papers too (without it looking like a crazy mash of patterns!).

I am so happy how this page finished up.  I got to use my favourite shape (circle) but added a new spin on it by having them stuck to 2x2 squares and having them on an angle. 

Thanks so much for joining me on the blog today!  I hope this might inspire you to try a new spin on a trusted favourite shape/technique of yours!  Take care, Em xo