Polly! Guest Designer - Lauren

Hello beautiful Polly! readers.  Today we have as our first guest designer for 2014 the super talented Lauren Matthews.  Lauren is using the Polly! January Scrapbooking Kit – Almond Biscotti.  Before we let Lauren share her gorgeous layout with us, one I am sure you are going to fall in love with, let's get to know Lauren a little better!

My name is Lauren, I'm in my early 30's and I live with my husband Ash in inner-city Melbourne Australia. We love life, going out and just enjoying ourselves. I am mad for papercraft (Project Life, Scrapbooking), yoga, reiki and wellness, fitness, food (hence the fitness), cinema, travelling, reading and just being. By day, I am an activist lobbying for the rights of children with a disability, their families and the services that support them. Come over and visit me in my little corner of the internet www.lovelifelauren.com or stalk me on Instagram and Twitter @theotherbacall - I'd love to meet you. L xx

Hi everyone, my name is Lauren and I am so excited to be guest designing over here at Polly Scraps for the next few months while Kayla goes and starts her new adventure as a mum! Over the next two months I will be bringing you some Scrapbooking and Pocket Scrapbooking creations  (and maybe even a card of two) using the fab Polly Scraps Scrapbooking and Pocket Scrap kits. 

First up I am creating a layout using the January Scrapbooking Kit, Almond Biscotti, and in this post I’ll give you a bit of an insight into my process. I loved everything in this kit but there were three main things I knew that I wanted to use on this layout.

The first being the stunning watercolour paper from Basic Grey Fresh Cut – it was just so rad that I knew I couldn’t cut into it, so it had to become my base page.  Then, the moment I saw the champagne glass clips I knew exactly the occasion I wanted to document – our amazing New Years Eve we had at a glam ball with friends and family – plus I had a super daggy photo of me and my hubby Ash with our drinks! Then finally I thought the twenty14 die cut would be the perfect accompaniment! Perfect match!

So to get started I printed my photos and gathered all of the paper, stamps and embellishments that I thought would match my layout. I then had a play around and drew some sketches. I thought that the champagne glass would be a great focal point and that the sequins would look cool as bubbles rising from the glass.

I then played around with positioning things on the page – papers, embellies, and journaling – until I was happy with where things were. I loved the twenty14 but I thought the white looked a little stark on the page, so I sponged it with ink using three central colours from the page – yellow, with a little bit of pink and blue. The sponging also gave a look that tied in with the watercolour paper.

Once all of that was stuck on I then added some arrows from the embellishment pack, stamped arrows from the super cute stamps this month and stitched a couple of arrows using the yellow bakers twine that Ruth used to package up the embellishment. To finish it off I added the title, stamped the sentiment and added some journaling and called it done.

This page was so much fun to create and it was a great way to capture an incredible evening. I will be back next week documenting more of my adventures but in the meantime if you would like to see more of my work (along with other random things) or learn a little bit about me and my corner of the world come on over and say hi at www.lovelifelauren.com. See you all next week and keep smiling. Lauren xx