Yesterday, we saw how guest designer Meg Gundlach documented her Thanksgiving holiday in pockets using our new November 2019 Kit and add-ons, and today we’re switching gears from the holiday to the gratitude that we focus on this time of the year with Steph Grimes! Let’s take a look at what she is most grateful for!
Hello friends! I am so excited to be sharing my project with you during Thankful Week on the blog. I have worked over the last few years to cultivate a strong gratitude practice that I follow all year long, not just in November and around Thanksgiving. Part of that practice is writing about and documenting my gratitude. That’s what this layout is all about.
I knew right away that I wanted to make a layout celebrating my gratitude for my husband. I am grateful for him every single day, but lately he has been going above and beyond for me and I wanted to recognize that. (Scrapbooking is my love language!)
I know I’m not the only one short on time, especially as we head into the holiday season! So I wanted to come up with a project to document some of my grateful thoughts in a fast way. This project, including printing my photos, took me only 20 minutes! I could hardly believe it myself. Here are a few tips for how I pulled this together so quickly:
Supplies | November 2019 Kit, Tiny Holiday Label Stickers, Home Sweet Home 6 x 6 Paper Stack, Everyday Tabs Stamp, Say Cheese Stamp, Winifred Alphabet Stamp
Work in a grid. Initially, I thought that I wanted to use a pocket page for this layout, but didn’t have one in the right configuration for the supplies I wanted to use with my photos, and I definitely didn’t have time to break out my Fuse tool, so I decided to just make a 12” x 12” grid page to accommodate the sizes of supplies and photos I wanted to use. For this grid, I chose a simple 3-column design based on the size of my photos and journaling tags.
Keep your page elements the same size. I chose three of my favorite recent photos of my husband and I together and printed them all at 4” x 6” to make up one column of my grid. That column was then DONE, and took up half my page! I had already chosen my journaling tags from the November 2019 Kit, all in 3” x 4” size, and knew that the other two columns of my grid (or other half of the page) would have to be 3” x 4” spots.
Paper punches make great fast embellishments. I don’t use my punches nearly as much as I’d like to, but I knew they would help me fill the spaces in between my journaling tags on this layout. I used a heart punch with the heart pattern paper from the Home Sweet Home 6 x 6 Paper Stack. I also stamped out the “You & Me” phrase from the Say Cheese Stamp and then punched it out with a fancy label punch to add to my hand-cut tag. To make the tag, I simply used an old Elle’s Studio tag from a previous kit that I had in my stash as a template for the green patterned paper in the Home Sweet Home Paper Stack.
Add dimension for visual interest. Since this was such a flat layout, I used pop-dots behind half of the elements to add some much needed dimension. You could also use chunky embellishments instead of creating yours from paper to add dimension.
Keep your embellishments to a minimum. The element of this page that took me the most time was stamping out my title using the Winifred Alphabet Stamp. Other than that, I kept things really simple and that always makes for fast scrappin’! I added a few Tiny Holiday Label Stickers and stamped on one journaling tag with a sentiment from the Everyday Tabs Stamp. One final touch was a heart from this month’s die cut sheet and then I called it finished!
Work from a single kit. This is actually a HUGE tip! Working from elements in the same kit or same product line makes fast work of any project. The hard work of picking coordinating elements has already been done for you by the designers! All you have to do is add your photos and personal style and you can make fast work of your scrappy to-do list.
What’s your preference? Do you like to move quickly through your work and make fast decisions or savor the process and move a little more slowly? I hope this provides some inspiration on making attractive layouts in a short amount of time. I’d love to see some of your quick creations using this month’s kit! Be sure to share on Instagram using the hashtag #ellesstudio so we can all see your awesome projects!
