Hooray for Birthdays

And hooray for being done with throwing birthday parties!  (well...almost done.  Husband's is in a few days).

And double hooray for digital collage templates!  Once I had the pics in the templates the page came together super quick!

I found this template at Scrapbooks Etc here.  To be honest it was a bit difficult for me to use.  I'm accustomed to using clipping masks as I've talked about here and this format was not as easy for me.  Instead of each block being it's own layer, the whole template is one layer.  So when you clip it down you have to delete the parts of the picture that go outside the edge of the section.  You only have to use the rectangle marquee and then hit delete.  Which would be simple if it weren't for that lovely circle in the middle of the page.  That made it a bit more difficult, but it was do-able.  :)  Scrapbooks Etc does have a downloadable PDF for how to use their templates in both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

I rotated the template to the right and made this layout for my youngest son.  Notice that I didn't just use pictures.  I added digi paper and embellishments as well.

 Then I rotated it to the left to make the layout for the opposite page.  For my older son I wanted to show photos of each of his guests.  So in the large block I inserted several photos to make another small collage.

Since the collages are 8.5x11 I could easily print them on my home printer.  I then added them to 12x12 paper.  I chose white since there was already so much color in the collage.

I cut my title on my Cricut using SCAL.  I loved this fun swirly paper!  I chose the blue since I already had so much orange in the collages.

I tried this ribbon technique in my iScrap album (I promise I'll show it to you soon) and loved it so much I used it again here.  I just run my adhesive along the entire length of the ribbon.  Then I just fold and stick randomly to give it this messy look.  Love love love it!

I repeated the technique on this side with a smaller bit of ribbon.  I also kept the circle theme going with my digital papers, and on the ribbon.

To keep my circle theme going I cut this little journal block on my circut with linked circles.  I actually cut the white out of graph paper so that it would be easier to journal on.  Really love how it turned out.

So much fun with birthdays this year!  And even more fun that March isn't over but my birthday layout is!  Yay!!