On 5th and Frolic

I wasn't sure about Dear Lizzy's last collection when it came first came out but, as usual, as soon as I saw it being used, particularly those B sides, I decided it was too pretty to pass up.  I bought 11 of the papers and cut into it almost immediately (I'm such a brave girl!)  The pink, turquoise and white went so well with a couple of photos from last year that I loved.  And I had plenty of bits of white and bright pink to embellish them with.  I even pulled out my Slice (still learning how much I love that machine!) and die-cut a couple of shapes for that right hand page.  I was experimenting with confetti and sparkle at the time, can you tell?!

And then I put the papers away, probably to work on my Project Life album, and moved on to other things. I was musing over the Christmas period about how to make the most of my scrapbooking time and I realised that I spend a lot of time thinking about and choosing the right combinations.  I'm also a very visual person, if I can't see something, I rarely remember to use it.  So a couple of weeks ago, I pulled out those pretty pinks, green, turquoise and yellow and raided my stash to create a kit that I could make several pages from.  I kept to just the 5th and Frolic papers but added 3 different small alphabets, 4 or 5 sets of thickers (and another packet to finish the last page), some border stickers, label stickers, co-ordinating washi tape and ribbon, journalling cards, baker's twine and a couple of mists (really, I just picked those up when I felt they would work, I only have 3 different colours!).  Oh, and sequins, gems and enamel dots.  I think that's everything.

I store my prints by month in individual paper wallets so I knew I could find some photos to suit the colours from different time periods to stop my albums looking too matchy-matchy (thanks Shimelle for that great piece of advice, I think it was in the Cover to Cover class).

I've made 7 more pages so far and to be honest, there's only scraps of paper left so I think that'll be it unless I make some cards.  Looking at them all together, I've realised that they're almost all about Anna but I guess that's inevitable given how pretty and girly they are!  I'll show them to you in order of making, it works better in my head.

Beach Bum is a scraplift of a lovely monchromatic page by Jennifer Johner, I heard about her on the Paperclipping Roundtable podcast.  It is completely not my style but I thought it was so pretty and delicate.  I found the process a little bit uncomfortable and it took flipping ages!  But I'm pleased with it, and it definitely inspired me to try some different things on some of the other pages I made.  After all that thinking, I needed something simple and straightforward.  I love this photo of Sally and Leanne at Sally's daughter's 3rd birthday party.  That Nigella cheesecake was delicious!  This one came together quickly, though I'm not sure about that yellow tape even now.  I love other people's long titles, so I thought I'd try one myself.  That ledger paper had a lovely yellow print on the other side so I purposefully trimmed it down to about 8x10 and the rest of the page grew from there.

One thing I love about the newer American Crafts collections is that the branding strip has a pattern on the back of it.  The green arrows in Hugs, the green and white stripe in Beach Bum and the narrow green/white stripe in Scrapbookers are all branding strips.

I love this picture of Anna, taken on her first birthday by my Mum.  This page was super simple.  I stuck down a doily (Sainsburys own brand!), added a few blocks of flowery paper and stitched around the photo with yellow thread.  Add a title, a prima flower and a piece of ribbon and it's done.  This will mark the start of Anna's birthday pages in her album, similar to Isaac's with all those die-cut stars.

I started Cupcakes with that great big slab of green floral paper.  It's really pretty but quite different to the other papers I bought so I was struggling to use it.  I started layering other blocks on top, added a journalling card, some washi and another branding strip.  That stripe and the multi-coloured floral have all the other colours in them so they draw the different elements together nicely.

That baker's twine is attached with Glossy Accents, a liquid glue; I just allow it to dry slightly before curling the twine into it using some craft tweezers.  And the cupcakes were delicious - there's a page yet to be made with photos of Anna stuffing her face!

Ready, Steady, Go! was almost titled Ready, Set, Go! until I remembered I wasn't American.  It's similar in style to Beach Bum and loosely based on layouts by people like Marcy Penner and Lisa Trusdell.  And you can see the similarities with Cuddle Monkey too.   Isn't the green/blue bird paper beautiful?!  This is actually the B side, I debated which side to use or whether to cut it up for ages before finally deciding to just buy another sheet.  It has a clean arrow design on the A side which would be great for a more masculine page.  I'm also planning to buy another of the giant chevron from Now for the house print on the other side.  The ledger strips at the top and bottom were, you guessed it, branding strips from two different papers.

I love that silver glittery ribbon; it came on a gift from a friend and I've nearly used it all now.  Must ask her where she got it!  I'm really keen to have the date of the photo visible on each page, it not only gives the reader a sense of time passing, it helps me sort them into albums more easily too!

And the last one, a really sweet picture of Isaac's first friends.  These kids were born within 6 weeks of each other and we've been meeting regularly for coffee and cake since they were a couple of months old.  I have photos of them all lying on a playmat in February 2011 and I can't believe how much they've grown!

I had one large piece of paper left - that bright pink vertical stripe - so I used it as a base to layer some horizontal block.  It wasn't quite big enough for two 4x6 photos but a single one looked a bit lost so I trimmed the photos down to 3.5x5, losing much of the background but thankfully none of the babies.  And then I just added some strips of this and that over the top until it felt down.  The yellow scallop at the bottom and the friends flashcard are a bit more cream-toned than the rest but I think it works.  Little secret?  The hot pink ribbon, the thin striped strip and the green chevron washi don't go all the way under the photos.  I added them later and there wasn't enough of the striped bit so I just cut it and put one piece just under the photo on each side.  So now you know!