Inspiration: Allison Davis Video
The starting point of this page was watching Allison Davis' video showing how to use 6" x 6" paper on a large scrapbook page. I loved what she showed and thought the design would be really easy to adapt to any theme or paper pad, so I went looking through my 6" x 6" paper pads to see what would spark an idea. When I saw the Back to School pad from Echo Park, I remembered I had received a school picture of my friend's kid in her Christmas card. I also remembered that when I organized my scrapbook albums recently, I noticed that I still had two unused page protectors in my 8" x 8" album and wanted to make a couple of page to fill it up. Since school pictures are wallet sized, shrinking the page down to a smaller format was convenient, so I kept the same idea from Allison's page, but sized the scale down. Basically, you use the center mat to your advantage and snip your banner pieces in two to stretch them over the page.
I started by pairing the Numeric stencil from Tim Holtz with silver embossing paste on grey cardstock. I put aside to dry and worked on my pieces in the meantime. I went through scraps and used my pennant punches from Stampin' Up! to prepare the banner pieces and picked the yellow ruler pattern for the center block. I wanted the pieces to pop more, so I ran my Basic Grey Classic ink pad alongside the edges of all of my papers. One of the papers from the pad was a cut-apart for borders, so I used the little bus on the road to add to the bottom of the center mat. I matted the picture with diagonal stripes paper, added a piece of torn paper and a scrap of apple paper to give more visual weight to my picture. I added hand stitching using green needlework floss over some of the strips.
For the title, I wanted a big 1, so I paired the Au fil des ans stamp set and the matching Large Numbers dies, then I created the other words using Tim's Alphanumeric Label dies and an alphabet set from Recollections, alternating colours for a more playful look. I punched a few stars from the same grey cardstock, inked the edges with a black Stampin' Write marker and popped them on the page using Mini Stampin' Dimensionals. The centers were too bare, so I went looking through my embellishments and added rhinestones, stars and enamel dots to the centers.
I found my School Days Icons stickers from Doodlebug and added the cute school to the page corner. I added a yellow enamel dot to the door for the doorknob. I also pulled out the Life In Color stickers from Simple Stories. I used a black label to add a bit of information, and I handcut the three stars from a square sticker and spread them around the page. I also used the Captured word sticker on the edge of my picture mat. I reused the leftover piece from using my banner punch and glued it on the page as a tab, adding a green gingham embellishment to it.
Supplies
Stamps: Au fil des ans (Stampin' Up!)
Cardstock: Smoky Slate, Cork Specialty Paper (Stampin' Up!)
Patterned Papers: Back to School (Echo Park)
Ink: Basic Grey (Stampin' Up!)
Dies: Large Numbers (Stampin' Up!); Uppercase and Lowercase Mini Alphabet (Recollections);
Alphanumeric Label (Tim Holtz for Sizzix)
Accessories: Numeric Stencil (Tim Holtz for Stampers Anonymous);
Life In Color Stickers (Simple Stories); School Days Icons Stickers (Doodlebug Design);
Green Checkers, Red Twinkle Stars, Yellow Petite Posies (Queen & Co);
Faceted Dots, Black Mini Stampin' Dimensionals (Stampin' Up!);
Spooky Cute Gumdrops (Your Next Stamp)
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