Retreat Workshop - Sweetheart

This was the layout that I used for my retreat workshop. At my retreats, I always provide one short workshop where I cut out all of the paper ahead of time so it is just a matter of passing out the pieces and putting it all together. This idea just came to me and I LOVE how it turned out. (I wasn't sure it would!) The title will be, "Let Me Count the Ways." I'll probably have to make several of these layouts, one for each of my kids!

The floral B&T was cut the same for both sides of the layout. The bottom made up of a 6 x 12 cut corner to corner, but you have to do it twice to get them to lay point to point like they are. It is the same for the top outside floral pieces which are diagonal cuts of two 5 x 3 pieces. The good news is that you can use the 4 leftover pieces to make another double layout the very same way. You can even make it different by using the back printed side of the B&T. The final piece of the "heart" is a diagonally cut 3 x 3 square.

The mats are made with the pink polkadot paper. The left hand side has a 6 x 8 tucked into the bottom "pocket". I did make it a pocket to facilitate adding a picture, but the mat is actually set into the layout firmly. It looks like it can move, but I don't want it to be. The top mat is 4 x 5 and it is tucked under the inside of the heart. A 2 x 5 piece of polkadot is at the bottom of the page for journaling. The right hand side has some more off-set mats: a 5 x 7 portrait style and another 4 x 5. Like the first, all of the mats are adhered even though they look like they're just tucked into pockets. Also on the right hand side are 4 journaling strips, hanging down from the outside edge of the heart. I added some Mocha Opaques and Pink buttons throughout the layout. I also plan to add some chipboard hearts as well once I've added my pics and titles.

Piecing Together Sweethearts

During my Scrappin' Happy Classes and all of my Monthly Layout Workshops, I try to be really efficient with my paper. My goal is to have little leftover once I'm all done. However, with a couple of extra base pages (white), Angie made these pages with all the leftovers from the Sweetheart workshop. It looks like she started with a 4 x 12 of the stripe B&T at the top of the left hand page and matched that at the bottom right hand corner with a 2 x 5 piece of the stripe B&T. Above the stripe sits a floral B&T that measured 3 x 12 on the right hand side. The left hand page matches it with a 3 x 10 floral. Over this she laid a 1 x 10 of black cardstock on both sides. On the left hand one, though she covered the edges with some random squares: the pink side of a 3-inch square and another of a 2-inch square, where she mounted some other random squares in a checkerboard fashion. Under the largest one is a 2 x 6 black cardstock that abuts the stripe at the top of the page. Last but not least, are some black cardstock mats at the top of the right hand page and some other random squares added to a pink 1-inch strip for decoration. I just love the way this turned out and am so impressed with Angie's creativity! I may have to stop giving away my scraps to my little girls!

Sweetheart Workshop - Layout #3

This was by far one of the EASIEST layouts! I will DEFINITELY use this design again and again! Like one of the other layouts in this group, I used a plan from the Magic instructional book, but I wanted more of the base page - the polka-dot B&T - to show, so I did some alterations to it. The left-hand page has a 6 inch piece of the heart B&T. I made a point to cut the 6 inch pieces for both of the pages off the bottom-half of the heart B&T so that both of the pieces would match across the layout. I placed it 1 inch down from the top edges from both pages. The 1 1/2 inch strip of the strip goes 1 1/2 inches from the bottom edges of both pages. A 3-inch strip of pink cardstock (our new Cotton Candy color!) overlays the other two papers and is 1 inch from the left edge. I did some accenting on this page down at the bottom left corner with a cut-out, stamped butterfly and a stamped curly trail in black. I also put a second accent, an epoxy heart that comes with the workshop along with the stamp sets.

The right hand page continues the design across the page. I don't measure the exact distance from the top edge of the page as much as I make sure that both pages have the design lining up.

I added some accents to the bottom right corner of this layout with a small butterfly stamped cut-out and a stamped curly trail. I also added a large epoxy frame to the picture to highlight my sweet old dog. She is so amazingly patient with us when we put hats and other decorations on her.

Sweetheart Workshop - Layout #2

Like I mentioned in yesterday's post, these layouts were fast and easy. I think the reason they were so fast is because the papers - the B&Ts (background and texture, also known as printed or designed paper) - are so GREAT! In this one, the paper I dubbed "Heart Lattice" provides the base. I wanted to show plenty of it, so, while a Magic patter inspired the layout, I altered it quite a bit!

The best thing about this layout is how the papers stretch across both pages. The effect makes it flow together perfectly. The pink cardstock (our new Cotton Candy color!) is cut 10 x 8 for the left and 6 x 8 for the right. Under that is the floral B&T. A 10 x 2 strip peaks out at the top and bottom of the cardstock on the left, but the 10 x 11 piece dominates the right hand page. A 3 x 12 piece of the strip goes along the bottom of the grouping, about 1 1/2 inches from the bottom edge of the base, and over the floral paper. Last, but not least, I highlighted the bottom of the pink cardstock with just an edge of white cardstock and a second layer of black cardstock with a scalloped edge on it.
I really liked the effect the edging had. It makes the photo section sort of pop out. I added a couple of butterflies to the top-left corner of the page and a little heart epoxy sticker to the bottom left corner. Both the stickers and the stamp set comes with the workshop kit!

I also added another epoxy sticker to the right side of the layout that looks a little like a backward S. This is to highlight my title when I get it on. The title will be "And They Call It Puppy Love," and this time it will be in white. I'll likely use my Cricut for it; at least for the "Puppy Love" part, because I intend to put that over the striped section at the bottom of the right hand page. The other epoxy sticker, that looks like a regular S, marks the end of where I expect my title to go.

On that right hand page, I added a heart sticker and adhered a stamped heart directly on my picture. Our stickers, adhesive, paper, and inks are acid free and lignon free so they are safe to use even directly on a picture!

Something else I like to do when I can is spread one picture across both pages like with this pic of my son with his new puppy. (I can't believe he was ever that tiny - the puppy, not the boy!) It really draws the eye into the pages and makes them work together like a team.

Sweetheart Workshop - Layout #1

Our monthly workshop lasted only about 3 hours last night! These layouts proved to be the EASIEST we've done in QUITE some time, but they turned out AWESOME! Since I have 4 kids, I keep 5 albums - 1 for each of them and 1 for myself. That's the reason for all the duplicate pictures over the next few days. I plan to title all of them, "And They Call It Puppy Love!" (Yes, I was always a Donny Osmond fan!) The title on this one will go across the top, Tulip cardstock and I'll use black paper or ink for it.

The Tulip cardstock is actually the base here. I used three 1 1/2 inch strips of black cardstock as borders between the top half and bottom half of the page, but on the left hand page, you can tell that I cut the border into "chunks" so that one of them overlapped the picture a little. It turned out that I only used a 1 1/2 x 4 overlapping the picture and a 1 1/2 x 3 to complete the border on the other side. I edge the horizontal borders on both pages with a 1/2 inch strip of the floral B&T, but again, I chunked that up to match the black cardstock on the left hand page. Also on the left hand page, I added a 1-inch strip of the floral next to the vertical black, going under the horizontal stripe. As final accents on this page, I used the Sweetheart Assortment of epoxy stickers that comes with the workshopt set. I added a 3 dots to the horizontal stripe and a frame to the bottom corner. The workshop set also includes an exclusive stamp set, made just for the workshop. This one had some great ones in it. I stamped one of the butterflies, using the rock-n-roll method to deepen the color at the edge of the wings, and cut it out to add to my frame. I thought about titling the page "Dog and Butterfly" (yes I'm a child of the 80's) but I decided I better not because Captain, the black puppy in the picture, would just LOVE to eat the butterflies - a gruesome thought - totally away from the spirit of the song that inspires the title!

The right hand page was super simple! The heart paper is just a 6 x 6 square (the 3 x 6 on the left hand pages just gives an illusion of a larger frame.) Then the black accent along with the floral strip finishes off the page. There aren't even many accents on her. I added 1 epoxy heart, with a cut-out stamped heart and a directly stamped heart up by Captain's picture (He was about 2 months old when he came in the pic where he's licking my boy and he was 4 months in the next picture - so handsome!) and 2 little dots on the floral strip like the 3 on the left hand page. Simple and done - that's the way I like the workshops to be!