Twinning Together

Christmas is long gone, but I am still reminiscing and scrapbooking those photos. We aren't even going to talk about how I am still working on my Christmas Journal. We'll save that for another day.

Today we will focus on one of my favorite photos from exchanging Christmas gifts with my hubby.

Several months ago we had bought him a pair of Crocs to wear around the house. While these things may not be fashionably attractive, they are super comfortable! I had wanted a pair also, but the store didn't have any in my size. No biggie. I could always get a pair online. Which I never did.

While I may have forgotten about the Crocs I had wanted, my hubby did not. He gifted me with a pair that were exactly like his at Christmas.

The simplest gift like this put a huge smile on my face and I couldn't resist snapping a picture of us wearing our matching Crocs!

For this layout I used  a couple of Crate Paper off cuts I had left in my stash (oh how I love that wood grain paper) along with several papers from Basic Grey's "Dear Heart" collection. I am so sad Basic Grey is leaving the scrapbooking business and I may, or may not, have added one too many papers from this collection into my stash when I heard the news.

I included three embellishment clusters as per my usual design. Each varying in size.

I pulled items from other collections that contained the orange/peach color that I felt coordinated with the Dear Heart papers I chose to use. The chipboard and ephemera pieces came from Crate Paper's Wonder collection. The clear "Sweet Stuff" tab was found in Maggie Holmes' Shine ephemera pack.

The paper flowers are from Martha Stewart.

The sticker doily came from My Mind's Eye "Sweetest Thing" sticker sheet. The Project Life card I used for my journaling was from Amy Tangerine's "Ready Set Go" mini kit. I even used the plastic heart clip (tucked next to a paper flower above) from the Simple Stories "I Am" collection.

This was the first time I had been able to find so many elements from different manufacturer's that would coordinate together effortlessly and I love the final outcome!

Man vs. the Machines

On two separate weekends in June of last year, I caught my husband doing something that reminded me of a young boy being totally fascinated. First, I spotted him staring into the washing machine and then one week later, it was him staring into the dryer. It completely warmed my heart and was thankful I had my phone on hand to snap the photos without him knowing!

While I found myself in a super scrappy mood, I decided it was time to get these pictures on a layout. I dug into my stash and decided to use several papers from Amy Tangerine's "Stitched" collection. Here is the final product:

I was completely drawn to the heart paper to be my background right away. I loved the random yellow hearts. From there, I decided that I would accent the layout with grey, yellow and orange from the collection.

For my clustering, I wanted to create three clusters directly around the photo to get the visual triangle and help bring your eyes to the photos, since the background was quite busy. I then knew I needed to bring elements (colors and texture) from the body of the layout to the upper top right hand corner. Someplace for your eyes to start on the page and naturally flow down and around it.

I knew I wanted man and machine in my title, to be different fonts, but both to be Thickers. I chose Eclair and Kal Barteski. The remainder of the title is Tim Holtz's tiny letter tiles.

Right after I chose my papers for this layout, I knew this double heart cut apart had to be included somewhere on my layout. I loved the stitched hearts and the bright orange color. However, by doing this I knew I would be losing my journaling spot.

Then the bright idea came to me to do hidden journaling! I took a premade tag from my stash and adhered it to the grey patterned paper I used in matting my photo on both sides of the tag. The reinforcer for the tag was cut from my Tim Holtz tag Thinlet die set.

There wasn't much space for embellishments on the lower right corner. I kept it very simple with just a few elements consistent with the rest of the page.

In the beginning I wasn't sure where exactly I was going with this layout. In the end, I love how it all came together and most importantly, another story has been told!