Before & After

"Break It Down" is a new six week class from Shimelle Laine hosted by UKScrappers, which will fit perfectly into the last half term of this school year, before the kids break up and my scrapping time is severely reduced. It's subtitled 'Six Steps to Six Layouts You've Really Been Meaning to Make', and each week there are six prompts that build into a page. Each one focuses on a different area: story & photos; colours & product choices; techniques; page design; page construction; finishing touches.

Last week's page had a theme of 'Before and After' and I decided to use photos from my daughter's hair cut earlier this year. She has always had long hair (and she still does really) but we cut 6-8" off in February. She wouldn't pose for photos, so I just have shots of the back of her head:

The six steps were:
1. Choose the story and photos
2. Use Pictaculous to pull a colour from the photos and then use Color Scheme Designer to pick a colour palette
3. Stamp to Fade Out - inking a stamp once and stamping repeatedly 
4. Place the photos front and centre
5. Construct the writing first
6. Embellish on the diagonal

Once I'd decided on photos and story, the two websites gave me a palette of peach, cream, yellow and blue, but the blue in the papers I chose is more aqua then plain blue. However all my paper is from the same collection and there is no blue in the photos so I am happy that it does all match.

I used the stamp to fade out technique with the date stamp in the bottom corner. I chose an old black ink pad so that the stamping would be a softer dark grey colour rather than the harsh black of my newer ink pad.

I had some conflict between the last three prompts. Embellishing on the diagonal meant that I wanted my photos and journalling to be concentrated in the centre of the page with the embellishment trailing across empty space to the corners. I didn't want to have my photos too close together because i took them with different zoom levels and placing them together exacerbated the difference. I decided to place the title above, below and between the photos to form part of that embellishment line. I wrote out my journalling in rough to see how much space it would take up, and adapted the width of the yellow paper so that the writing would fill the height of the aqua panel. My line of embellishments is made up of doilies, various punched shapes, wooden hearts, gems and mist spatters.

Supplies
Paper - My Mind's Eye Miss Caroline
Letters - October Afternoon Mini Market Stickers, Making Memories Rub-Ons
Doilies - Papermania
Wood Veneer Hearts - Studio Calico
Gems - Papermanis Dew Drops, Dovecraft Pearls
Mist - Mister Huey's 
Ink - Ink It Up!
Ribbon - from Stash

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Woodware Small Daisy Punch
Craft Creatives - Tiny Heart Punch