The Castle Cat

Hello and welcome to my blog! It's the first Monday of the month, which means double page design team reveal on the Stick It Down blog! This is the lovely double page sketch we had to work with:

What a beautiful sketch! As it was quite a girly one, I decided to run with that theme, despite the fact that I was scrapping some day out photos for my travel scrapbook. Because these photos are a part of a bigger story, the journaling might not seem rounded, until put in the full context...

One of my favourite designers to work with for my travel photos is One Canoe Two. The theme tends to be travel / adventure based, but the design is quite feminine with soft colours and floral details. Just right for me! I also like that the subject is more inland, rather than seaside or tropical, with meadows and softly rolling hill sides. The sort of places I tend to hang out at.

I chose plain white card stock as my background, to keep things simple. A large portion of the background was to be covered by the photos, and I didn't want the layout to get too busy. This had to be taken into account when choosing the patterned papers for the diagonal strips, too. I chose muted colours and simple patterns, so that they complement, rather than compete with the photos.

I matted the photos on navy card stock, to make them stand out more from the background. I changed the sketch to suit my photos, as I had more photos than on the sketch, and they were different in size, too. I wanted to include the large photo as the focal point, because this photo captures the beauty of the place, as well as the special family moment of my daughter and her dad bonding over the cat that joined us.

The smaller photos are of different orientation. It's always more difficult to create a layout that is aesthetically pleasing with both horizontal and vertical photos. To overcome this, I decided to form a rectangle with the photos, and use the trapped space in the middle for the title. Once I found the right alpha thickers, it was easy-peasy.

The discrepancy in height of the photos between the two sides was utilised for the journaling. I would have liked more space for this, to tell the story in more detail, but I had to make do. But on the other hand, this allowed for more embellishment pieces with sentiments and words on to be included on the layout, without them being too much.

I created three clusters, using embellishments from One Canoe Two, stickers from the Maggie Holmes sticker book and puffy hearts from Pinkfresh Studio. To achieve cohesion I used circular elements, flowers, and hearts in all three clusters. As a finishing touch, I added Heidi Swapp Color Shine drops.

I hope you like my layout. I'm pretty pleased with the end result, especially as I don't often use diagonal lines, so this was a bit scary. But it was a challenge I really enjoyed! For more inspiration, check out the other layouts from the double page design team on the Stick It Down blog! Happy scrapping!