Santababy

Here's Daddy, holding his little Santababy. Poor babies; they have to put up with grown-ups decking them out in all kinds of outlandish outfits and taking photos for posterity!

The polkadot paper allowed me to continue the pink theme even though the picture is strongly red. The white strips on the right side are leftover trims from other pages. Her hat seemed to be crying out for a white pompom, and the white flower brad fit the bill. I added a little bling on one of the paper strips just for a little something extra. I felt like the upper left corner of the photo needed some interest, so I added a white photo corner, punched from a scrap of white paper. Rather than place it on top of the photo, I chose to slide it underneath. The edges of the background paper are, once again, edged in brown.

Next stop, April in Minnesota!
Immi

Sweet Girl

This is another photo taken in December. It was so much fun to see N smiling and interacting with all of us. This layout has two layers of paper edged in brown, along with a rub-on. I cut the rub-on into three parts (two words and a flower) and placed them to create a triangle. I added some sparkle with little crystals placed on each part of the rub-on.

One of the fun things about a smaller size album is that you don't need to spend a lot of time on each layout. Less room = less work! Sometimes I'm in the mood to spend a lot of time on a layout, but often, especially with a themed album, I'm anxious to get the project done so I can enjoy it.

Happy crafting!
Immi

Mummy

Here is N, dressed in her cute mummy costume that Sooks bought for her. Love the orange hat!

The background of this layout consists of two layers, white textured cardstock layered over a Basic Grey paper. The narrow strips running across the page vertically and horizontally were cut from a very cute glitter paper. The edges of all papers were altered with brown ink. (I love my ColorBox cats' eye stamp in Chestnut Roan for this technique!) I stamped the word "cute" using an acrylics stamp, and that was that! Quick and simple.

What are you doing today that is creative?
Immi

Mommy & Baby

Now we've moved beyond N's very first days. This was taken in Texas as we celebrated Christmas together.

This layout was very quick and easy. I added some brown ink around the edge of the background paper and placed a white word sticker on top of the photo. Nuthin' to it!

If I had it to do all over again, I would have tried to do a little more editing to the photo itself. Mommy's skin is a little green, due no doubt to my very inexpert photography! Even though the photo could be better, it's more important to me to have this recorded rather than obsess over every detail.

Enjoy!
Immi

April Layout

This is one of the easiest type of digital layouts to do, similar to the one I did here. This is called a quick page. Everything is done for you except to add a photo and text. The only change I made beyond that is to add some splatters around the edge. The background layer is locked on this type of page, so I had to make the changes to the top layer which was unlocked. The only quick pages I've downloaded have been freebies. They're a great way to get started, but I don't think I'd pay for any because of the limitations. Since the background layer is locked, any additional layouts I did with this would look waaaay too similar. However, when you get a layered template, you can make any changes you want. You can change colors, papers and the order of the layers. You can turn off layers you don't want to use. Much more useful down the road!

First Year Continued

Here are some more pages of my scrapbook. I'm keeping these pages very simple, so the process is going quickly. For the background of this first one, I used a gorgeous paper I had with a raised glitter design. I put a rub-on on top of the photo, and that was that!

The next page also went together quickly. I combined two coordinating papers, edged in brown. I stamped the word "family" in brown, and added the felt flower to the bottom left corner. I also used a small rub-on over the top right corner of the photo.

Enjoy!

Immi

Siblings

I love, love, love this photo of A & N. This was taken in the morning, while we still had our jammies on. I think Abba was working the camera that morning.

I had a little trouble with this layout. I wanted to use green and pink together, but because of my robe, my patterned papers all looked too busy. (I could have worked around this by converting the photo to B&W, which works well to avoid clashing colors.) The pink paper was originally white textured cardstock. I started with Tim Holtz' distress ink in Worn Lipstick and his ink applicator tool. Wonderful color, but really too strong for the effect I wanted. Next I tried using his Tea Dye distress ink to tone it down, but the brown on top of the pink looked too orange. I added a layer of a Fresco chalk ink (Botticelli Blush), using the direct to paper technique (pressing the ink pad directly onto the paper), but it still wasn't right. Finally, I rubbed Brilliance Pearlescent Orchid over everything. I also stamped flowers in white ink on top. The green was also pretty bright to start with so I toned it down with some of the tea dye ink followed by the Fresco. The stamp in the corner is from a teeny set designed by Ali Edwards. The set has a variety of words, and I combined the ones I wanted onto a single acrylic block, then stamped it in black.