project life: the embellishing essentials

all my september pages are scrapped!  and i'm super happy with the results.  this was the second month of doing the photo challenge at get it scrapped!; the topics were very inspiring and the weather was warm, so i got lots of great pictures.  i wanted to take my time and do a good job with them.  this is actually one of the things i like most about project life; i love that it's the perfect place to put all my random pretty pictures.  there are several of these sets that i could have made layouts with, but i'd say that 75% off them would have stayed on a computer hard drive.  now they are in the album to enjoy.  happiness.

i completed all of these pages with the january jbs mercantile kits plus a little help from my stash.  as i've gotten more proficient at knocking out project life pages, i've found that there is a small set of embellishments that i grab on almost ever page.  these are:

1. washi tape
2. small bits (most often enamel dots, but also rhinestones, sequins, buttons, and brads)
3. label stickers
4. flatbacks/flair

you'll see these four things scattered on all these pages.

i find  the washi tape really helpful in organizing my pages.  for example, on this spread, i've used it to divide my photos into four columns of related ideas/events.  the fuschia column is plants, the green column is me and the critters outdoors, the black column is g sleeping, and the orange column is g playing basketball.  admittedly, i was worried for a while that i'd gone a little crazypants with the color and washi on this one, but in the end i love the way it turned out.  i think the vibrant hues match the photos well.

i was also excited to finally use the stitched journaling cards from the historian add-on.  they were my favorite, but it took me a long time to find the perfect place for them.  i used two of them to frame photos on this side (one i trimmed out to make a real frame while the other just has the photo laid over it).  on the page above, i added a little coloring to the stitching and then used it as inspiration to do a little stitching of my own to the arrows.

this spread and the one below are of a 12x12 page protector paired with a 6x12 page protector.  these spreads are both events rather than a random assortment of things, so i found that this size nicely held the amount of photos i wanted to include.

i used several bits from the antiquarian add-on for this one.  they added a nice woodsy feel.  i noticed this page is also very photocentric.  i like that.  since it is one event, i didn't necessarily need to say a lot about each photo (there's a tag with journaling behind the thread card).  i actually like adding just a little writing and embellishing directly onto the photo.  also, more photos in less space is usually a good thing.

and here are the last few random pics from september and the photo challenge.  on to october!