Life Crafted Inspiration with Amy

Hello everyone and welcome to April!  I am super excited to introduce not only the new Travelogue kit for this month, but also the BRAND NEW, totally awesome, get-'em-while-they're-hot 6x8 Life Crafted albums!  I love working in the 6x8 size and am thrilled that they will be joining the Citrus Twist Kits family.  For this week's Life Crafted Inspiration, I created the title page for a travel album I am making of a trip my husband and I took to New Zealand way back in 2010.  I will be using the aforementioned new 6x8 album size in Leaf.

This layout was inspired by one piece of diecut ephemera: the viewmaster. As soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to use it on my title page, and I wanted it to "work", as in spin freely. I also decided I wanted it to be a literal highlights reel from our trip, so I picked the 8 main stories I wanted to tell in this album and chose 8 photos that related to those places and stories.  The eight pictures and stories also correspond to the locations marked on the map.  

To assemble the piece, I resized the pictures in Photoshop and created a collage on a 4x6 canvas so they would all print on one 4x6 page.  I then trimmed them and laid them out so that when the diecut was turned, the image on the right would always be facing up.  (This was slightly more challenging than I initially thought, but I got there in the end.)  The images are slightly larger than the opening so that there was a bit of "wiggle room" to center image, and to provide an anchor for the photo.  Finally, I glued them all down and voila, a "working" viewmaster!

To make the element interactive, I punched out the center hole, and backed it with a thick layer of cardstock to give it a bit more heft and to protect the photos.  I then added a heart diecut, punched holes through all of the layers, and attached it all together with a decorative brad.  

For the rest of the layout, I used two different puffy alpha stickers, and other elements of diecut ephemera.  I like how both the alphas and the ephemera match the map perfectly!

I am very excited about how this layout came together.  It is always rewarding when a design idea from your brain translates well onto the page.  I am looking forward to continuing to dive into this kit, and to keep telling stories of travel!  If you try the spinning viewmaster, be sure to tag me on Instagram @alphins_little_corner and have a great weekend!