new to me

I have seen the amazing Sarah de Guzman create so many neat layouts and one company she uses over and over, and is on their Design Team also, is Kiki Arts. I have not seen it around here in any of my local scrap supply stores, so I ordered some patterned paper here.

And then, I created this for my oldest daughter, a 4-page mini-album made from just 2 sheets of paper. In case you can't read the title, it says, "things you" and the heart stands for love.

The die cut label came in my goody package from Gina and it is such a good match to the Kiki Arts paper! I began by cutting the paper in half so that I had 2 pieces measuring 6x12, then folded them in half and rounded the corners for a 6x6 square. I let the fold be on the outer edge and the open edge is on the inside where it will be bound. This allowed this one-sided patterned paper become double-sided and I didn't have to adhere the paper to chipboard. I think you can see in the photo above how it was done.

There's so much more she loves, but there's plenty of time for me to make layouts about the rest!

I used the front of the journal spot to describe the photo on the front of the page and the back of the journal spot to describe the photo on the back of the page. Does that make sense?

Front describes the photo of our toes in the sand in Aruba on the front of the page...

...the back of the journal spot describes what is on...

this is a favorite photo of mine and its {uncropped} enlargement is part of my summer decorating scheme

...the back of the page, which is this bathing beauty! This journaling tells Isabella that she did not always love this bike. Look closely at the photo behind the journaling spot, because...

...my flash totally made her face vanish, and you missed the happy smile she had this Christmas Morning!

I glued this journaling spot to the back cover. I didn't have to, but I thought that it might get torn.

And here is a layout about Zach's love of all things hot/spicy/burn-the-tastebuds-forever type of foods!

You probably cannot see the sweat rolling down his forehead and forming on his face. It. Is. There. I took these photos with my iPhone, so kept them small for the layout. This kid loves hot and spicy and doesn't know the words, "Too Hot"!

Even though this paper has an all-over heart pattern, I made it more masculine by cutting the page down, placing it on some textured white cardstock and adding some black elements to the page. The red strip of paper I used for the date was cut from the bottom of the page and trimmed and grunged with my Heidi Swapp edge distresser. Love that thing, especially for masculine layouts.

I used Pages for Mac to design the journal spot and the "some like it hot" speech bubble, then printed and trimmed. When Mr. wRight looks at what I jammed up my sewing machine with, I will probably add some messy machine stitching underneath the date strip somehow. I love how Karen Grunberg has been doing that on her layouts lately.

And one last Kiki Arts paper project for today.

I chose the font Amelie to add the text, "friends are the sunshine of life" to this patterned paper, cut a round shape from some felt, used some stitching to embellish the felt and paper and mounted it to a 12x12 canvas. I will display this in my scrap space as decoration and a reminder!