Kids Live Here

Awhile ago (like back in May!) I posted some pictures I took of my boys playing outside at our new house along with a Photoshop tutorial on recomposing an image.  This weekend I FINALLY got around to scrapping those photos.

Once again I have a photo of my inspiration page but can't find the original post.  I do know that it was done by Autumn Baldwin over at Write.Click.Scrapbook.  Wish I could link you up to the actual post, but since I can't find it I'll just link you to the website.  So totally love that place!

The original layout was done in 8.5x11 and I wanted to use 12x12.  So I just stretched the sketch.  I actually used the same size photos (4x6 and 2x3), just added one more and had more space around the mat.  That allowed more of my cute little stars to show through.  This is also a digital layout, but totally easy to translate into paper!

The green block I used to mat all my photos was too large to fit through my printer.  Since I really liked the look of the type on the background paper I used a scrap of the green paper and ran that through my printer.  You can still obviously see that it is a separate piece of paper, but I like how it blends in with the background.

To coordinate with the stars on the paper I did a bit of stitching.  I chose to attach the star to the paper and then stitch.  Which worked ok, but did get a little bit tricky when needing to turn the paper.  In hindsight I probably would stitch the star first and then attach to the paper.

Because I maintained the photo sizes from the inspiration layout I had a lot more extra space for a title.  I originally intended to just use the title directly on the patterned paper, similar to the original design.  When I put it on the paper I discovered that the background had such a large design on it, the title got lost.  So I decided to back it with a blue square.

I cut the title on my Cricut using SCAL (Sure Cuts A Lot).  Once I added the blue paper I wanted to give it more oomph.  So I pulled out my new bracket punch.  I liked the negative space left by the punch but wanted something more.  So I inked the brackets and layered them onto the frame.

To give some added depth I popped the bracket up.  Whenever I use pop dots I keep the sheet they come on and  use it for things like this.  I cut some small strips from the edge of the pop dots paper and used those.  The dots themselves would have been too big.

I love that my boys now have a fun place to play outside, and I love that we have this layout to remember our first month in the new house!