My Valentine

In honor of Valentine's Day, I am posting a layout of me and my Valentine. Oddly enough, I do not have a whole lot of layouts of just Jim and me. I have not finished our wedding album yet because I am waiting for the "perfect" fall paper to complement our photos. Our honeymoon pictures are printed but sitting on my shelf - mostly for the same reason - I want it to be perfect. Not to mention with four kids, an adorable granddaughter and many family vacations to scrapbook, the photos of "just us" never seem to make it to the top of my photo pile.

Another reason there are not a lot of layouts of just us is the fact we've never been "just us." We were parents when we met and started dating, and then we blended our families when we got married. Being in a blended family is not for the faint of heart. Jim and I have been so blessed because from day one, our kids got along and have really grown to love each other as siblings. But there are challenges when it comes to blending two families, two parenting styles, two sets of established holiday traditions. We have kids with special needs, learning disabilities, and kids who are all grieving a loss of some sort. It requires an enormous amount of patience to see situations from our kids' perspective, and Jim and I have been far from perfect. But God has been gracious to us and our children as we seek to grow closer to Him and closer to each other.

We both have acknowledged that we never saw our lives heading in the directions we have gone, but God had a good plan in store for us when our hearts were broken. God knew we needed each other, and I'm forever grateful and blessed to be spending the rest of my Valentine's Days with Jim.

Scrapbooking Tips:

I can take no credit for the design of this layout. I purchased an Allison Davis layout kit from We Create. As soon as I saw it, my mind immediately went to this photo from our honeymoon. My plan is to make this the opening layout of our honeymoon album, and I found papers similar to the ones in this kit so I can make a beautiful, coordinated album that will look unique.

When I make a layout from a kit, I try to learn from all the different aspects of it. The following are the lessons I learned from this layout:

• Soft colors can make an impact! I tend to gravitate towards bright, bold colors. I think it stems from having scrapbooked so many little boy layouts. I loved the soft pastel color palette, and I paired it with a black and white photo to not distract from the paler hues.

• It's ok to match the thread color to my paper. I typically use a contrasting color when I stitch on my layouts. My thought process behind it is if I am going to go through so much extra work and time, I want it to stand out. I followed the directions in this kit exactly and matched the thread to color strip it was on. I really loved the effect of the matching thread. I still will use contrasting thread on my layouts, but I won't shy away from doing tone on tone.

• Creating embellishment clusters is time consuming but worth the effort! Once again I followed the kit directions. I started with the green leaves, then added the larger flowers with foam adhesive. I tucked some flowers under the raised flowers and adhered them flat on the page. Some phrase strips are adhered flat while others are adhered with some dimension.

• Creating a cluster than goes off the page can add interest. When I first started scrapbooking, I would have never placed a cluster that went off the page, but I absolutely love the effect.