Falling For You

This is one of those layouts that just tugs at my heart strings. When the boys were three and four, Dave had the boys all to himself one day a week while I worked. They never seemed to do the same thing two weeks in a row. On this particular fall day, Dave had set up an obstacle course in our driveway with little mini traffic cones and just let the boys run and play.

He grabbed my digital SLR camera and snapped close up photos of their faces with the zoom lens. Dave never even told me he had done this until the next time I went to use my camera. I was blown away by beautiful images of the boys as they played - there were probably 50 photos. Dave managed to capture a variety of emotions from serious to silly!

I pulled eight photos from the batch that could easily be cropped into 4x4” squares to put together this layout. I love each thoughtful, contented and contemplative expression.

These pictures are so precious to me because I am seeing the boys through Dave’s eyes. It is so hard to communicate to Caleb and Zach how much their dad loved them and how much he did for them because they have very few memories, but I can pull layouts like this out and show them how much their dad loved spending time with them.

Scrapbooking Tips

When I scrapbook pictures of the kids when they were little, I often go to my Doodlebug Design papers. The stickers are perfect for the pre-school and early elementary age group - so fun and whimsical. Another thing I like about Doodlebug is how vibrant their colors are! The red in my photos was so bright - not to mention the lighting of the photos. I wanted a bright, vivid color palette for my layout.

I used a sketch from Scrapbook Generation’s It's Hip To Be Square sketch book. This is one of my favorite batch of sketches because so many of my photos can easily be cropped to a square. You can check it out at Scrapbook Generation.

I kept my embellishments simple because the pattern papers were so busy, and I wanted to use this large sticker from the collection. I adhered it with some leaves fallen from the tree and used three leaves in the top left corner of the photos on the left page to help balance out the tree on the bottom. One of the stickers on the sheet said, “Falling for you” but it was too small for my title, so I grabbed some of my favorite Thickers from my stash and spelled out the title.

On the pattern paper squares on the right-hand side I added some of the adorable critter stickers. I popped the main stickers off the page and added some to directly on my layout to create dimension and visual interest.

The last element of this layout was some stitching in brown and orange embroidery floss - outlining the pattern paper squares and adding a border on two of the three stripes.

My overall goal was to create a happy layout, and I think I accomplished it!

Supplies Used:

Cardstock - Bazzill and The Stamps of Life

Pattern Paper & Stickers - Doodlebug Designs, Inc.

Letter Stickers - American Crafts Thickers

Miscellaneous - DMC embroidery floss