Best. Day. Ever.

Hello and welcome to my blog! This time I have worked with the Stick It Down July double page sketch to record my daughter's memories of her first weekend away with Guides. They had a woodland adventure and needless to say they had so much fun!

Here is the sketch I used - it was so much fun using this sketch as it is a bit less structured and symmetric than what I would usually go for, so it got me out of my comfort zone:

I kept the grid design on the left side, but changed it up a bit, as I had horizontal and vertical photos to include. I used a large rectangle shaped patterned paper to mat the photos on and I used another patterned paper for the journaling (which is a must for me).

I used a couple of embellishment clusters to bring some interest to this side of the layout.

I used the Take a Hike line from Bo Bunny, which is an older collection, but a firm favourite of mine. I don't often use Bo Bunny for my scrapbooking, but I remember seeing this collection the first time and ordering the lot on the spot... I was so taken with it! I have been stashing it since, only willing to part with the odd tiny strip of paper occasionally... ;-)

This seemed to be the perfect time to make a dent in the collection. It was hard work to persuade myself, but my daughter had such a fantastic time on her retreat, it seemed worthy to celebrate it with a favourite collection... not to mention that the theme is perfect for the subject...

I also used bits from the Dovecraft Lost and Found line, which is a more recent collection - it seems to go perfectly with the Bo Bunny collection both in theme and colour.

I used slightly larger photos for the right side of the layout - these are my fave photos from the event and I wanted to draw attention to them. I tried to keep true to the sketch as much as possible, but I had to shuffle the photos about a bit in the end. I swapped one of the photos with a journaling card both on this and on the other side of the layout.

I wanted the title to reflect my daughter's excitement and joy, so I went for a generic, but rather large title. The letter I used for the word 'ever' is from Pink Paislee - it's from one of their Christmas lines from a couple of years ago. Originally they were a shimmery white colour, so I just used some distress ink to turn it the colour I wanted...

Because the layout is quite busy with all the photos and embellishment clusters, I chose a neutral background. I was very tempted to just go for plain card stock as the easiest option, but as a great advocate for patterned paper, I felt I should be using that instead. I finally chose this off-white / stone coloured paper with a woodland print. It took me a good long time to persuade myself to use this paper, as it is my absolute favourite from the whole collection. In the end I decided that my daughter and the wonderful experience she had was worth it.

I found this sketch challenging because of the empty space in the middle of the layout. To create cohesion, I have used the same patterned paper to mat the photos on on both sides and used similar things in the embellishment clusters: circles, feathers, arrows and puffy stickers.

I hope you like my layout - be sure to check out all the talented designers' creations on the SID blog. We have a new design team, so lots of new ideas. Thanks for visiting!