scrappy success.

i have a couple of finished layouts to share. :]

i still need to add the rest of the title to one of the layouts that i mentioned a couple posts ago. i think it's going to take me a while to finish that one. we'll see.
but i did finish this double page layout on thursday night:
yes. i've used more crate paper with those basic grey alphabets again. they go together so well that i had to do it. ha.
and fair warning, i may use the paper again. i'm sort of in love with it. and i still have tons of the glittery die cut shapes and other elements that coordinate, which i want to use.

you may have noticed that double page layouts are rare for me. i have another one that i began a while ago that i need to pull out and finish. it's funny because my first scrapbook is all double page layouts, but after i finished that, i started making primarily single page layouts. usually i don't have tons of photos that i want to scrapbook; in fact, most times i just have one large photo or a couple of smaller photos that i'll cluster together, so a single page offers sufficient room. i have enjoyed working with more space when i have more photos though. it's definitely a challenge for me. a bit out of my comfort zone i suppose. :]

on saturday night i stayed for the crop at my work, where i managed to get this layout finished:
it's for the studio calico hometown challenge, which was to create a layout about your hometown [duh] using the november kit. the journaling briefly covers how reno came to be a city. i printed it on thin graph paper, and i really like the way it looks in person. i used the same thin graph paper to stamp the title letters onto, then cut them out and traced around the light teal ink with a black pen. i had fun going back through my iPhoto gallery to pull out some photos for this page. plus, it made me think of an honors seminar that i took freshmen year of college that was all about reno. good times.

as part of the challenge, i made myself use only things included in the kit, which may be a first for me. i genrally just pull out pieces of the kit to use on a page, or add stuff from my existing stash to the kit. i realize that's not really the point of a kit, but it's just what i tend to do. for example, the flowers and basic grey alphabets on the corn maze layout are pulled from the october kit, but everything else was mine.

i also experimented with using flowers on both of these layouts. they tend to include some prima flowers in the studio calico kits, and i rarely use them. i don't tend to like using those fake flowers because well... they look like fake flowers to me. ha. i don't mind them on other peoples' layouts, but i've never had a whole lot of luck using them and liking them on my own pages. by layering them up with some paper and other elements, i was able to create a look with the flowers that was to my liking. plus, since these ones are printed, they are kind of fun. maybe you'll start seeing them on more of my pages. after all, i do have quite a few of them to use up. :]

anyway. that's about all for now. i think i might try to convince james to go to a movie tonight. i feel like we're falling behind because it's been nearly 3 weeks since we've gone to a movie. too long, i say!

i hope you all had a good weekend. :]