Layout: 4th of July 2010

Sorry about the fuzziness of the picture.

The above is what will be the left side of the

first two pages of a four page layout.

Below is a close up of the embellishment cluster.

This is the first time I've tried this trend.

It's also the first time I've used tickets on a layout. The tickets were stamped with an Inkadinkadoo clear stamp set. The inside designs on the tickets were stamped with Studio G stamps. The flourish behind the rosette is a Sizzix die cut. The rosette is the Tim Holtz rosette. I created the tiny pinwheel by hand, since it's so easy, and I wanted a little something more. I don't know who made the flag button. It came from my stash.

The papers are from Best Creation Inc: I Love/Heart America designs. I found them at the LSS a month or so ago, and they seemed perfect for my 4th of July 2010 pictures.

Yes, I'm behind. Big time.

The other 3 pages will coordinate with this one and will have

a mixture of family and fireworks photos.

I'll try to update with the full four page layout when done.

Layout: Cherry Blossoms

In the spring I found this lovely cherry blossom paper at the LSS. It's by Paper House. Since we usually go as a family to see the cherry blossoms in DC every year, I went ahead and bought it in the hopes that we would go again this year. Depending on how the paper is oriented, you get a different pattern of the blossoms. It has a stone background, so while it can be turned a quarter of a turn, it doesn't look quite as nice that way.

I don't usually do "fussy cutting" very often, but I did for this layout. I'd gotten all my photos adhered to the paper when I realized that I'd made a mistake in both the fussy cutting and picture placement. I didn't know if I could get any more of the paper, so I tried swapping the positions of the paper. The two layouts below were how all the pages were supposed to look, and the lack of variety across the 4 page layout had bothered me a little. With my mistake, I ended up swapping left and right pages, so the left ended up on the right, and vice versa. That's when I got the lovely spray of cherry blossoms going through the middle.

I don't know if you can see in the photo, but I cut out some of the individual cherry blossoms from an extra sheet of the paper, and I popped the blossoms on top of the cherry blossoms of the background paper, which gave it a little dimension. The bottom two pages don't have the popped blossoms added to them yet, but I've included them anyway so that you can see how a "mistake" turned out nicer than the layout had been originally planned. I'll add the flowers to the second pages the next time I go to crop with one of my scrapping friends, but I didn't want to wait to show the layout till then.

The stickers on the journal mats were given to me by a dear scrapping friend. I hadn't originally planned to use them, but they added a very nice touch, too. The stickers are by EK Success.

All in all, it's a simple layout using really old techniques, but I'm happy with it.

My Only Claim to Fame: Colonial Independence

More years ago than I like to remember, I had a layout published in Simple Scrapbooks. It's the only layout I submitted, and the only one that has been published.

To get these photos, I was literally in the faces of the Williamsburg militia and the Fife & Drum Corps (poor guys). It was the 225th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and the Declaration was read from the courthouse steps. As it was read, the crowd cheered. They also occasionally yelled out "Death to the Tyrant!" and "Down with King George!" and other similar sentiments. It was the most memorable 4th of July we have ever experienced, and this is still probably my favorite of the Independence Day layouts I've done.