Encre, papier, ciseaux: 2 Little Hearts for Valentine's Day

My niece turned one-month-old the day before Valentine's Day and my sister sent me this adorable picture of my two nieces together that I just had to print and scrapbook right away. I had previously purchased the Cream & Sugar collection from Doodlebug Design and when I knew some of the die-cuts would work great with that picture, so they became the starting point for this page. Because I was using 4" x 6" die-cuts, I decided to do pocket scrapbooking, and ended up choosing the layout with four 6" x 6" pockets since my die-cuts were horizontal and my picture was vertical. I used the Lawn Fawn valentine dies (Outside In Heart Stackables, Lacy Hearts, Lacy Borders) to decorate the inserts.

For the title, I got the idea to write "2 little hearts for Valentine's day" and instead of spelling the whole thing with alphabet stamps, I was pretty sure those were common enough words that I could find everything I needed in sentiments stamps. This is where the Excel spreadsheet that I created a while back came in handy, I used to stamp my sentiments on sheets that I filed in a small binder and I would leaf through it when looking for specific sentiments. The upside was that I could see the shape, size and fonts. The downside is that I had to go through the whole thing when I was looking for specific words. That's where I got the idea of typing the sentiments in an Excel spreadsheet where I could use searches and filters to find what I was looking for quicker. It took me a few sessions of sitting down with my pile of catalogues and typing those in, but let me tell you, it turned out to be well worth the effort. I'm never using my little binder anymore, just going straight to the Excel. As you can image, this file allowed me to find the words I was looking for for my title in 2 minutes. I stamped the sentiments on paper scraps and cut them out to glue on my die-cut heart (ransom letter style ;D). I like the mix of various fonts and the pop of colour with the various little rectangles. I think it works well with the style and scale of the page.

One my trick: I love Doodlebug Design's cute papers, but they tend to really load their pages with heavy prints. I think it's important to also have bigger, more subtle prints to keep the balance on a project, so recently, I invested in a couple of their petite print paper assortment. Those kits are basically one-colored pages that have gingham, grid and polka dot prints. The assortments I have are Booville and Milk & Cookies (so basically, a Halloween and a Christmas collection). Because Doodlebug uses consistent colours between their various collections, I was able to find matching colors to the Sugar & Cream collection to create my borders and hearts and tone down the heavy prints a little bit.

Inspiration: Naughty of Nice #48 (All Loved Up!) + Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge (Add a die-cut) + Little Red Wagon #431 (Luurve)

Supplies
Stamps: Sourire de fin d'année, Une prnsée pour ta fête, Mots coordonnés, P.S. Je t'aime (Stampin' Up!)
Cardstock: Barely Banana, Whisper White (Stampin' Up!)
Patterned Papers: Cream & Sugar, Milk & Cookie Petite Print Assortment, Booville Petite Print Assortment (Doodlebug Design)
Ink: Basic Black Archival Ink (Stampin' Up!), Candied Apple Distress Oxide (Ranger)
Lawn Fawn Dies: Outside In Heart Stackables, Lacy Borders, Lacy Hearts
Accessories: Very Vanilla Grosgrain Ribbon (SU!), Glitter Gloss Brush (Nuvo), Blue pen,
Black Calligraphy Pen, Pocket Protector (Project Life), Washi Tape, Cream & Sugar Icons (Doodlebug Design),
Plain Digits & Punctuation Grungeboard (Tim Holtz Idea-ology)