Scrapbooking: Three Very Different Looks from One Packet of Paper

I love versatile products. I have three daughters and one son, so I'm always looking for scrapbook papers and embellishments that I can use for both masculine and feminine album pages.  The Skylark Workshop on the Go Scrapbooking Kit is perfect for that!  I will be sad to see it retire at the end of this month.  Quick reminder: if you like this paper and the embellishments in the kit, be sure to order quickly before they run out.  Once they're gone, they're gone and they're definitely not available as of August 1st.

Above is a page I made to showcase my eldest and youngest daughters' epic dance and lip sync to NSync's "Bye, Bye, Bye" for a friend's going away party in August 2000.  Holy smokes, has it really been almost 14 years already???  As you can see, this page is just about exploding with girliness -- flowers and birds and ribbons and... more flowers.

A quick side view of the resin flowers from the Skylark Assortment adorning the slate twist tie below the girls' picture.  These flowers are beautiful, and they come with the adhesive already on them.  Just peel and stick!

You can see in the photo above that I used a piece of 3-D Foam Tape to pop up this picture of the girls.  

Below is a page I made to celebrate my son's 8th grade promotion in 2002.  Same paper pack, but this page is very much a masculine page with its muted colors and grid background.  Before you start minutely comparing the two pages, you should know that the girls' page above is actually much more nicely subdued than my camera would have one believe.  

Check out the name of his middle school: Spratling Middle School.  We were tickled because my grandmother's last name was Spratling (no relation to the person for whom the school was named).  So naturally, I had to get a photo of Ricky with his great-grandma in front of the school sign!

Also, can you tell that I was once into Creative Memories scrapbooking? Yes, I cropped my son's photos years ago with the intent to scrapbook them back then. It's only taken me a dozen years to get to it.  All those pre-cropped ovals made assembling Ricky's page a bit challenging, but I like a good challenge!  

The oval picture in the upper left corner and the one above the "Epic Moment" stamped image (from a retired stamp set) are mounted on 3-D foam tape, as is the "Spread Your Wings" sentiment.  This gives the actual page a little more character and depth.  I trimmed down a small Slate Striped Twist Tie and added two pieces of it to the left of that sentiment block to make it pop a little.

The dark green strips of paper that run along the bottom of the page and accent a photo and the journaling block at the top are BONUS strips. Yes! Close to My Heart 12"x12" patterned papers have an additional 1/2" strip added to them to show the design title and other important information. The backside of that strip is patterned in a design that coordinates with the 12"x12" paper so that when you cut away that strip you get a bonus strip of patterned paper to use on your page.  Pretty nifty!

You'll notice on Ricky's page that the "Go Forth and Conquer" stamped image (shown above) is difficult to read. That's because I bought that stamp (as part of a set) from my local craft store and then excitedly used it only to find that no matter how much seasoning I did the stamp just wouldn't hold the ink.  Unfortunately, ALL of the stamps in that non-CTMH set have the same issue.  

Compare that image with the "Epic Moment" stamped image on the scrapbook page (shown below); both stamps were inked using the Desert Sand inkpad.  You can see that the "Epic Moment" image is much bolder and the ink coverage is far better.  There is definitely something to be said for buying Close to My Heart's My Acrylix stamp sets!

Lastly, here is a page featuring one of Kathi's hobbies.

The top trim strip is not really crooked on the page; that's just my funky camera work.  I leaned the page up on something to take the photo and couldn't quite get it straight.  To get the streaks on that little square on which the mini camera image is mounted, I simply took my Desert Sand ink pad and lightly brushed it across the cardstock all around the edges.  It's a fun look, and super easy to do.

I am really, really going to miss the Skylark Workshop on the Go when it retires at the end of this month!  Be sure to order yours through my website by July 31st, before this great kit is gone forever.  The kit includes the papers used in these layouts, slate twist ties, resin embellishments, and a gorgeous stamp set.

Happy crafting,
Pia