Picking, and Packing Page Kit Papers (say that ten times fast)

The photo is not the best, apologies...it was a bit windy on the patio so I snapped the page photos pretty quickly.  

Picking papers for a photo usually starts with color for me. I grab papers...multiple shades and combos of the colors represented in the photo.  I normally do not start with a pre-conceived idea of how the page is going to be arranged, so I pick both full size patterned papers and leftover cuts. And I do the same thing with cardstock... Think lather, rinse, repeat...( never did understand why those instructions were necessary on a bottle of shampoo). 

On this page, I wanted blues and grays (honing in on the water and the buildings).  I also wanted a neutral background, so in the page planner I included white, gray and beige 12x12 cardstock sheets, as well as a couple of options of map paper (only one of which I wound up cutting and using to break up the white), plus several smaller cut pieces of patterned paper in the blues and grays. 

Now to pack up kits, I use Cropper Hopper Page Planners.  I used to use 2-gallon plastic zip bags and those do work, but man, they slip and slide all over (and under) the place.  They would slide under other page kits and supplies in my tote or in a drawer, thereby bending papers and sometimes photos, requiring rather undesirable and inappropriate language...thereby altering my scrapbooking mojo a bit.... 

Besides the sliding about, zip lock bags do not have the half pouch on the backside like the page planners do, nor do they have the smaller pouch on the front keeping your photos easily at hand.  I use the pouch at the back for a selection of embellishments and for the small-ish scraps of papers, as well as ribbon or twine. 

When the page is complete, any leftover papers, embellishments and such get stored all together in one page planner, the other empty page planners easily slide into the front of my tote (in front of the remaining packed page planners -- or if at home I just make a stack of them under the desk).
Page Planners by Cropper Hopper, a very good thing!  They used to be sold in packages of three, not sure how they are sold now--I've had mine for years.  And how many?  That depends on how many pages you pack for a crop or how far out you like to plan your pages.  Sometimes I use the page planner to hold things I am acquiring for pages...like if you have some papers, but have ordered the embellishments for a particular line.  I think I must have 27-30 of them total.  (Told you--I love them.) 

Anyway, I have droned on about packing and selecting.... the above page is of the photos my grandson took from his hotel room view of Australia.  Part of the project I am making for him about his trip last summer.   Map papers were from Heidi Swapp, the No Limits paper pad.  I added a piece of patterned vellum, the charcoal gray patterned piece I think is an old, old, Cloud 9 paper, and the tags are from Crate and Heidi Swapp.  Alpha set is a foam Thickers set, and the enamel dots are from my stash of homemade(s). 

be happy, play with paper...
Cheryl

Scrapping with Limited Supplies - Using Pieces and Parts

Working from a page kit does not necessarily mean everything I package together makes it onto the page. It does mean making good use of what you have, though.  Sometimes not a lot makes it onto the page!! 

In this case, the only pieces and parts that wound up on the page, were just that,,,pieces and parts.  I had envisioned a watercolor background---um no, didn't like that so much.  So I snatched a piece from a pad of paper that I was not likely to use and turned it over to use the clean white side. 

The bits and pieces that I did use?  See that tiny bit of gold thin stripe..yep that's one piece.  Then right under that is a small blue patterned paper, and there is the multi-patterned vertical strip.  That's pretty much it.  The green map paper with "Top Ten" imprinted on it was a 4x6 cut apart in the No Limits paper pad I brought along.  The grid at the top and bottom of the page was from the piece that I cut the arrows out of (on yesterday's posted page).  And since I liked the "Top Ten" map cut apart, I used a similar paper at the top of the layout--also from the Heidi Swapp No Limits pad. 

You see, what I did after packing up page kits...was to also pack a couple of paper pads and packs.  One with a definite travel feel (also very masculine), one that is very birthday, party feeling, and another that is very general--but it has a variety of types of patterns--grids, small florals, vintage.  All the paper pads had several cut apart sheets in them---the Heidi Swapp on in particular has great words---making it very usable for titles -- like on this page!   

The thinking was that even if I did not use the page kit as packed...I could dip into the paper pads and I did!  Used the backside of a paper that I thought I would not likely use--just for the clean white unprinted side.  And that grid paper; it came from the pad.  The repeated the use of the green-ish map paper?  From the pad. 

Other layering pieces were a leftover piece of another map paper and then vellum and acetate embellishments from one of the few packs I brought along (Boys Rule - Crate Paper).

The alpha stickers are Cosmo Cricket Tiny Type and Basic Grey (I think it was the Printery? or something like that).  The alphas I chose to bring along also had to serve multiple themes--masculine, travel and a couple of feminine... Again, the rule being, a select few that are specific and several that are very general (the Tiny Type for example).

So, look for more about how you can pack up your stuff--not bring along the kitchen sink, and still make pages you are happy with. 

scrappin' on,
Cheryl 

Scrapping with Limited Supplies, but Scrapping Just the Same

We are here, at Dad's till the house is up.  That means we have the bare minimum of clothing, tools, toiletries, and most importantly (LOL) scrapping supplies! 

I packed my rolling tote and shoulder bag as if I was going to an extended crop.  (Look for more on how I pack in a later post.)  Now that we are kind of settled, it was time to break out the scrapping supplies!  Makes me a MUCH happier person to scrap, and blog and facebook.... 

The only "mixed media" I brought in my tote was watercolors, so I am mostly gonna be working with paper.  And that's fine with me, I love paper! 

Still working from stash stuff.  This page used a mix of Heidi Swapp No Limits papers and Echo Park's For the Record 2.  Embellishments are both cut and punched from the papers, plus a few stickers from Crate Paper's Open Road, as well as For the Record 2 .  Splattered on a little blue watercolor and called it done. 

What I really want to talk about... are the choices of the papers.  When all you are working with is paper; not a lot of ready-made embellishments, not a lot of punches on hand, my Big Shot is packed, the Cricut is packed, and I did not bring along a bunch of mists, gesso, texture paste or stencils...  it makes the choice of papers that much more important. 

For me, it's all about color then.  I focused on the colors in my Jackson's shirt and that red on the soles of his sandals.  Then I think it's a fun technique to add a small doses of a third color NOT represented in the photo.  This grabs your attention and directs the eye.  In this case, I used a mustard-y yellow.  See it?  It's only in three places, but that's enough.  Any more and it will over power the page and that's all you would notice. 

Photos are of my Jackson boy enjoying a Dairy Queen treat one afternoon while his mommy was helping sort out our garden (before we put the house on the market last year).   No big story, just photos  I love. 

Glad top get back to scrapping (and blogging!). 

best!
Cheryl