First off, I just want to say that I love, love, love this month's kit. Love all the fun colors and the cute tags and embellishments! Love the paper and the letter stickers, too! I just love it!
Second, how cool is it that ETM has been providing us with fun crops and awesome projects for 11 years?! Way to go and THANK YOU, Kim!
And third, how about some tips and techniques?
Here we go:
This month I used a lot of circles. I'm not sure why - but I have really been liking circles lately.
{But, I have a confession to make.}
I have been scrapbooking for, like, ever and I have NO circle punch! No circle cutter, either. Crazy, right? For those of you who don't know me personally....well, you might not know that I am CHEAP when it comes to scrapbooking. And I'm also REALLY low tech - in scrapbooking, anyway. (Not in any other area of my life!) I don't type my journaling on my computer - I don't use a die cutting machine or a Cricut or Silhouette......I just use a pen, some paper, scissors and glue. Throw in a few buttons, flowers and butterflies and I'm a happy girl. My point is this - scrapbooking shouldn't be complicated. It should be what YOU want it to be. FUN!! If you like to buy lots of cutters and punches and tools - that's cool. If you don't - or maybe if it's not in your budget, then that's OK, too. Just go with the flow. Trace a big button to make a circle. Draw your own heart and cut it out. Round your corners with scissors instead of a punch. It's all good.
Anyway....back to the topic at hand. Circles! I traced a big old button that I had in my button jar and made some circles to accent this layout of Carter. I love that the big circles that I cut out mimic the circles in the yellow patterned paper. I also love that each circle adds a different element to the page. For instance, I added hearts to some circles, buttons to another, and my subtitle to the last.
{is that not the funniest school picture you've ever seen?}
Another fun technique on this page is the hand-cut banner. Basically, I just took one of the journaling cards that came in this month's kit and started cutting away. I like the imperfection of the banner - I think it compliments the circles nicely.
Here's another layout where I used lots of circles:
I added circles to the bottom edge of the page, circles on the edge of the luggage tag, a circle journaling stamp and I also used round buttons. Lots and lots of circles!
Something else that I really like about this layout is the fact that the "5" is at the very edge of the layout. For some reason I always like titles that kind of "hang" off the page.
For my last layout I used NO circles. Well, unless you count the doily.....have you seen these doilies around? They are all the rage in scrapbooking - and I bought mine at Walmart. You can find them in pretty much any party section of any department store - they are cheap and cute and I love 'em!
In Kim's last post she pointed out how I used the string on my tag to underline the title of my layout. Isn't that fun? I just used little dots of zip dry to adhere the string and then added my stickers once the string was glued down. I used my own handwriting for the "and" - which I think adds a bit of whimsy to the title.
Here's another tip for ya - do you see that little pink heart with the letter "a" written at the top (in the middle of my journaling)? Well, I messed up my "a" when I was writing my journaling (don't ask me how that happened) so I just cut out a heart, glued it down, and re-wrote my letter "a" on top of the heart. I do this all the time. Mess up and then stick something on top of the mistake to fix it, that is. That's what so fun about scrapbooking - it's perfectly imperfect!
Well, that's it for this Month's tips and techniques! I hope you loved this month's Moment's kit as much as I did!
Oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ETM!!
{amanda}
P.S. Stay tuned for a fun birthday party banner idea!
