Sun-Ripened Strawberries

I look at these photos and I can practically taste the strawberries and feel the sticky juices running down my chin. There is nothing like summer fruit directly from the garden. Jim has planted strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and we have apple, pear and peach trees. He calls it our orchard, and no one knows better than Azzy how good fresh fruit is! It was adorable last year to see her toddle out to the garden and pick herself a snack. When strawberry season was over she was so confused when she went to look for her sweet treats. I have so many adorable photos of her in the strawberry patch and the raspberry bushes, and in all honesty, there are some of my favorite photos to scrapbook.

Scrapbooking Tips

I had a sketch from Allison Davis that I had been itching to use. And when Echo park released the Little Ladybug collection, it was a match made in heaven! This was one of my favorite layouts to put together because I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like and it turned out better than I imagined - that seldom happens! But when you have pictures this adorable it’s easy to make any layout look good! ❤️

This is the back of the layout. You can see where I took a chunk out of the center of the paper. I fussy cut my strawberries and vines from this part of the paper to embellish the photos.

I created my base page by cutting out the center of the sheet of pattern paper. This paper was too good to hide, but I knew I wanted a border of those adorable strawberries, so I carefully cut out the center. I then trimmed a coordinating red paper down to 10.5x10.5 and my white cardstock down to 10x10 inches and adhered it to the red paper. I then centered the red on he pattern paper. I tried adhering the white Cardstock directly onto the pattern paper, but it really needed that pop of red to frame it and make it stand out.

The next step was to cut scalloped circles to frame my photos. I was trying to stick to the measurements in the sketch I was using, so I had to use the Silhouette Cameo and it took a little trial and error to get my sizes right.

In order to fill the scallop circle frames, I had to enlarge my accent photo to a 5x7. I wanted to trim it down to a 4.5 inch circle, so I needed it larger than a standard print. To cut photos into circles, I only use the Creative Memories Cutting System. So far it’s the only way I have found to cut a photo while being able to see exactly where I am cutting. I am able to lay the clear plastic template on top of my photos and determine the size I want to cut and am able to see the photo the entire time I am cutting. This is one of my all time favorite tools. It takes all the guesswork out of cutting photos.

One of my favorite elements of this layout is the fact I incorporated the title directly into my journaling. In full disclosure, this was a happy accident. I did not have a lot of room to fit my title and journaling. The solution I came up with was to build the title right into the journaling. I was able to use journaling strips to wrap the text around the title.

I also used a combination of letter stickers which helped save space. One trick I learned a long time ago to help stretch my sticker “stash” is I limited what brand of stickers I bought. I love Doodlebug Design stickers. One nice feature is there are many different styles and sizes but the colors are the same. That way it does have a cohesive look if I want to mix and match. I used the Tiny Type letters to spell out “Sun-ripened” and Sunshine letter stickers for “Strawberries”.

Finally I embellished this layout by carefully fussy cutting the strawberry vines for the pattern paper - complete with lady bugs! This is what turned out better than I thought! I attached them using foam adhesive and was able to tuck some random strawberries under the vines, and it gave the cluster a fuller look. My final touches were the red enamel hearts from Echo Park.

I love how this design captured that moment in time with Azzy!

Supplies Used:

Cardstock - American Crafts

Pattern Paper, red paper and enamel hearts - Echo Park

Letter Stickers - Doodlebug Designs, Inc.