A Tutorial of Sorts...

Happy Thursday, all!

Last week I had the pleasure of guest blogging over at the fantastic Scrapbook & Cards Today blog (I know, I know - trust me, I see the irony here, but at least I blogged somewhere!) where I got to share a little about using themed papers in ways vastly different than how they were originally intended. I had such a great time working on it that I thought I'd repost it here for those that might have missed it. I hope you enjoy it and perhaps get a little something out of it, too!

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Since I’ve been talking to you this week about the wonders of summertime, I wanted to expand that just a bit and focus today on all seasons – or more specifically seasonal or themed scrapbooking products. While I am the first to admit I completely hoard Valentine’s themed papers (I can’t get enough of them. It’s a sick addiction, really!), I mostly do just that – hoard them. After all, there are just so many Valentine’s parties or love-dovey things you can scrapbook about, you know? And sadly I find the same holds true for Christmas, Halloween or any other holiday. Yet I can’t stand to let those seasonal or themed papers just sit there and not get used, it completely goes against my nature as a paper conservationist! So my solution to that problem is to challenge myself to use the line completely contrary to the way it was intended - a pet-themed paper line becomes a page about teenage girls, a Christmas line becomes a baby layout. You get the idea! It’s a lot easier to do than you might think and it gets those papers we love off your shelves and into your scrapbook albums!

Here are a few of my favorite examples to inspire you and get you started:

This first page is about my beautiful nieces. They are 13, 15, 17 and 19 (at the time) and I just love them to pieces. They aren’t overly girlie girls so I couldn’t see scrapping this picture in pinks and frills. Instead, I went with the gorgeous, rich colors in BasicGrey’s Max & Whiskers line – a very PET themed range! While I purposely chose papers that didn’t have animals on them (a huge benefit to double-sided lines), if you look closely, you can still see the “pet” influences where the flower leaves have dog bones or the “best friend” writing on the chipboard around the title and so forth. But all this is secondary. The focus is on that photo and the beautiful girls in it.

Supplies: BasicGrey patterned paper, Lace Doilies, Take Notes, Bloomers, buttons, brads, chipboard shapes, chipboard alphas, alpha stickers; Uni-ball pen (white); Pentel pen (black); Colorbox (Clearsnap) chalk ink.

Here’s another fun example using BasicGrey’s Halloween line, Eerie:

While the Eerie line has a plethora of cobwebs, skull and pumpkins adoring it’s papers, I choose the more subdued patterns (can you find the spiders?!) to scrapbook a layout that was all about me. Notice how I still managed to keep the tradition “Halloween” hues of orange and black present without making it scream “Halloween!” (As a side note, this layout was done based on one of Scrapbook & Cards Today’s own Becky Fleck’s Page Maps. Becky does an amazing job with her sketches and they are such an excellent resource into getting your photos scrapped!)

Supplies: BasicGrey patterned paper, chipboard shapes, alphabet overlays, Lace Doilies, Olio rub-ons; Pentel pen; Fiskars scalloped scissors; Creative Memories corner rounder.

And finally, one last project before I go.

This page features Wassail, BasicGrey’s holiday offering a couple of years ago. Wassail has wonderful vintage images of holly, partridges, candy cane stripes and more. But here, rather than Christmas, I used it to scrap the six-month portraits of my youngest son. I love how the vintage feel of Wassail gives the photos such a timeless feel and quite frankly I almost think I like it better for these types of photos rather than ones from the holidays!

Supplies: BasicGrey patterned papers, Element stickers, Opaline pearls, chipboard alphabets; Zig pen; Colorbox (Clearsnap) chalk ink; jute; Miss Elizabeth’s scallop scissors.

So let’s see it! Make a graduation page from baby-themed papers, change Birthday papers to a layout about your pup! I hope I’ve shown you that anything is possible!

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As a final reminder, you have until midnight TONIGHT to enter into the giveaway a couple of posts below! Be sure to leave a comment if you're interested!

Have a great day!
xoxo,

k.