Hi canaries, it's Sandra here today showing a simple but effective hybrid layout for portrait style photos using Scrappy Canary's October Wild Roses main kit and Heather add-on kit. Teresa Collins' Nine & Co collection is so lovely and clean to work with. I kept the page and embellishments to a minimum, and instead spent some time in Photoshop to create a time-lapse effect of my son being thrown into the pool.


I had so much fun taking these series of photos. And for once, my son was only happy to oblige, given it involved him continuing to be thrown into the pool by his uncle! I took Traci Reed's So You Wanna be a Design Star? course last year, and the Photoshop skills I learned were priceless. I was lucky that the background on this photo was busy, so my digi "fussy-cutting" didn't have to be perfect. But don't get me wrong... it still took a while to get this effect, but my kids were amazed by the result {and I'm secretly thrilled too!}.




I recently bought gold thread for my sewing machine ahead of my Christmas projects. I chose to use it to hand-stitch through the Studio Calico wooden word 'Shine' to help repeat the gold throughout the page. Normal thread, I'm sure, would have been much easier, but this stuff is surprisingly slippery!


By now you've probably noticed that I love using pocket scrapbooking cards in any type of paper project - layouts, cards, you name it. So the layout came together quite quickly using the Teresa Collins cut-apart and other papers. I haven't used rub-ons in quite a while, but once I started using them on this layout, I didn't want to stop! They just add a little more character to the already-gorgeous papers, but they blend in so perfectly.


{You might note that there's a sole "C" Pretty Little Studio alpha sitting toward the top left. You see, both my sons look SO similar, and although there's 5 years between them so it's easy to tell them apart now... in many years to come, and as memory fades, I am aware that we may forget who's who between the photos. Yes, this will go straight into my son's album, but that's not to say it will stay there forever - they may end shuffling things around to share between them. So to avoid the confusion I am contemplating putting an inconspicuous C or O on the page. I often write it on the back also, but hey, it's just something new I'm experimenting with for now, and these vellum alphas are perfect.}

I truly can't wait to use this Nine & Co collection again, and I'm loving see all of your work and the other DT ladies pieces also. The colours are lovely and calming with some little pops of orange, but it's also organic, modern and clean - perfect combinations! There are still a few of both kits available in the store, so I do hope you have already got yours or that I've encouraged you to get one ;)

Well, I'm off on a little holiday, but I will pop in on and off in between my cocktails by the pool (and kid-wrangling 6 children!). Be good, scrap hard, love and laugh much.

Love and light,
Sandra

Hi everyone! Manda here, hope you are all having a great week. It's time for our November Sketch Challenge. Here is the sketch:

You have until 30 November (11.55pm AEDT) to link up and the winner will receive a $10 gift voucher to spend in the the Scrappy Canary Store