Milestones in Pockets with Guest Natalie Elphinstone

We are so happy to have Natalie Elphinstone back with us today to share not one, but TWO more projects using one of our favorite collections in the shop—Live Laugh Love. She’s reminding us that we need to give this collection a bit of love with some fresh, colorful pocket pages! Let’s take a look:
 
I’m very happy to be back again this week and sharing with you a different style of projects than last time. Today I’ve got some pocket-page spreads that I created with the Live Laugh Love collection.
 
I’ve got a dedicated baby album for my youngest which is filled with every day moments and stories, but which also has a section for these monthly pages. The pages follow a fairly consistent pattern of what they ‘need’ to include—things that I decided on right at the beginning, so a lot of the guess-work has already been taken out. All that’s left for me to do each month is make them pretty, and that job was made very easy with this gorgeous collection!
 

 
Supplies | Hand Drawn Acrylic Hearts, Live Laugh Love Double-Sided Journaling Tags, Live Laugh Love Wood Veneers, Live Laugh Love Stamp
 
So here’s what my monthly spreads always contain….
 
Firstly it has the main photo of just Shiloh on the same pink blanket with the same soft toy so it can help show how much she’s growing each month. I add some text in Photoshop to list off some of her accomplishments.
 
Next I also attempt to take a photo of all four of the kids together—no mean feat I can tell you! Four kids all looking in the same direction and pretending to be happy? Doesn’t always happen!
 

 
The journaling is simply a description of her daily routine at this point. I printed it out on vellum and then sew them onto the tags from the Live Laugh Love Double-Sided Journaling Tags I’ve chosen. Journaling is really important to me, so I love that all of the tags in this collection have ample space for me to say what I need to say.
 

 
I also make sure each spread has one tag that makes it very clear what month it is she’s turning (these ones being 6 and 7 months) and one tag that contains a visual representation of that number in embellishments. For this spread, I splurged and used the whole packet of Hand Drawn Acrylic Hearts since there were 6 of them, and for the next pag,e I simply added a little cluster of 7 dots from the Shapes and Dots Puffy Stickers straight onto one of the photos.
 

 
Supplies | Shapes and Dots Puffy Stickers, White Puffy Alphabet Stickers, Live Laugh Love Double-Sided Journaling Tags, Live Laugh Love Small Blank Labels, Live Laugh Love Wood Veneers, Live Laugh Love Stamp
 
I think this collection must have been designed with me in mind because I couldn’t get over how well it coordinated with my photos for both of these pages! I never plan what the other three kids are going to wear on these days so when I sit down to scrap these pages I’m always trying to match up colours. Well I barely had to think about it here—everything was just perfect!
 

 
I performed a little bit of surgery on a couple of my tags just to customise them to my album. I had previously cut the strip of teal, yellow and green hearts off of one of the Double-Sided Journaling Tags for another project but didn’t end up using it, so I adhered it to the bottom of this ‘just the facts’ card for another punch of colour.
 

 
And the woodgrain ampersand card? That was originally 4″x 6″, but I was desperate to use it here and I only had 3″ x 4″ spaces left, so I simply cut it in half; which is just as well really because I also desperately wanted to use what was on the other side (that pretty floral pattern that’s the base of the “6” filler tag) and this way I got to use both!
 

 
I finished off both spreads with the addition of a single piece from the Live Laugh Love Wood Veneers—I love the extra bit of texture these give, as well as a little bit of stamping. The Live Laugh Love Stamp has so many practical options in it, especially for story-telling, but today I went very simple and used “good times” for the title on my embellishment tag for the 6 month spread. Can you spot where I’ve stamped on the seven-month spread? It’s actually directly onto my photo of the four kids! My photos are matte and I’ve used pigment ink, so I like to use a stamp positioner to prevent smearing.
 
Anyway, those are my pages for today. I am feeling very accomplished to get these done because I’m almost up-to-date (Shiloh’s only 8 months old now so I’m not too far behind!) I hope you’ll come back again next week and see what I’ve been creating because I’m going to change project direction once again!
 

 
I’m Natalie and I’m waving hello to you from the bottom of Australia! I’ve been paper- crafting since the birth of my fist child which must make it over 11 years now! I’ve gone on to have 3 more children who are 8, 3 and 8 months so I’ve got plenty of photos to scrap and lots of stories to tell.
 
In my ‘other life’ I’m a doctor specialising in Obstetrics and Gynaecology and I feel very lucky to have delivered over 1000 babies. My heart and my days are full, and very very happy!
 
You can find me sharing my creative journey and family life on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
 
Aren’t these pocket pages gorgeous? We can’t wait to see what type of project Natalie creates for us next week! Until then, be sure to follow her via the links above—you may just find an extra project on her Instagram account using ES products!