Project Twelve

If you're like me, you always take way more pictures than you will ever be able to scrap in a single lifetime. Thankfully, in the two years that I have been seriously scrapping, I have moved away from feeling obligated to scrap every event and include every picture, and more towards trying to use my hobby to tell the stories of our lives. However, I still have the nagging feeling that I want to scrap certain occasions and, of course, there are always so many more layouts in my head than I have time to actually put down on paper. That is why I was intrigued when I read Davinie Fiero's blog post about Project Twelve. (You can check it out here: http://davinie.blogspot.com/2009/01/challenge.html) Davine challenged readers to make just 12 layouts -- one for each month -- to tell the story of their lives. One layout a month -- I could do that and maybe not fall too far behind.

So here is my January layout for the Project Twelve layout. (Just for the record, I created it in February -- right on schedule. It just took me two months to post it. LOL!) It includes pictures from sledding, New Year's Day, Melissa's Winter and All County concerts, as well as Sal's birthday.

The hardest part of this challenge was coming up with a color scheme since the pictures are all so different. I decided on red as my dominant color since a majority of the pictures had some red in them. From there, I knew that I wanted to use my new grey fabric Thickers so I pulled out my Basic Grey scraps and got to work. I started with a plain piece of American Crafts cardstock which I stamped with VersaMark ink to give it a slight pattern. I rearranged my pictures several times and finally decided on a placement that was not dictated by chronological order.

I used my new Stampin' Up! Curly Label punch to create journaling spots from grey cardstock. Next, I added some snowflakes which I cut using my Martha Stewart punch. (This is one of my favorites!) Just a note: when adding the snowflakes I used the same principle as I do when stamping. I let some of the flakes fall partially off the page and trimmed them out with a scissor. I also tried to make a visual triangle with the snowflakes to carry the eye around the page. Finally, I dug into my stash for the pearls to embellish the snowflakes. For $1.99 a pack, pearls and rhinestones add so much punch to a project. I now store them in my crop bag so that they are always at my fingertips!

I have already completed my February layout and have even printed the pictures for March. I told you that this is a challenge I could keep up with!

Ingredients: American Crafts cardstock; Basic Grey patterned paper and sticker embellishments; Autumn Leaves stamps; VersaMark and Colorbox inks; Martha Stewart (snowflake) and Stampin' Up! (curly label) punches; American Crafts Thickers; pearls from Michael's.