Simple Stories, More Good Stuff

Hello, I am here today to wax poetic (again) about the Simple Stories, Good Life! Scrap Shotz sent me this collection to play with this month and I am loving it! You can check out my first 2 layouts here. 

Now, let’s show you a few more … 

Wood grain for the Win

For this layout I wanted to bring in a dark background to contrast the bright colours of the collection. So reached for a dark wood grain pattern paper from my stash. Wood grain is essentially a neutral and should go with anything in your stash. When you are struggling to match (which is my biggest struggle) - reach for wood grain. 

I prepped the wood grain by stamping some little hearts in Tim Holtz Distress Inks in Picked Rasberry and Mustard Seed then outlined each with a white pen, and added some white acrylic paint splatters. The hearts I made were my attempt at mimicking those in the collection. 

From there I focused on the cut apart 3x4 cards in the collection and bits & pieces embellishments. I cut a few big pattern paper rectangles to back my 3x4 card grid design, then focused on the grid. Matting each photo with a few layers and letting the 4th spot of the grid act as a title spot. 

I finished off the layout with these super cute photos of my niece (which I printed with a muted filter so they didn’t clash too much with the collection colours), and tucked and added embellishments and enamel dots all about.

Add Some Black to Make it All Match 

For my next layout I wanted to document a fun, fancy donut shop adventure with me and a couple siblings - all of us donut addicts. I was keen to include the Boca Grande logo I cut from the donut box but it looked too dark with the bright Good Stuff colours. So I added some more black to the collection goodies to make it all matchy-matchy! 

I started with this great circle pattern paper and using a washi tape roll and a glue bottle bottom as a stencil, used a black journaling pen to add black circles just off centre on many of the circles in the pattern. Drawing around each a few times and not perfectly. Then I used my favourite Picket Fence Studios, Paper Glaze in Black Peony and a Vicki Boutin stencil to add those cute starbursts in and around the circles and some splatters. I also messily drew lines around the outer edge of the pattern and backed it on black card stock. 

From there it was just a matter of finding all the foodie inspired bits & pieces from the collection and tucking them around the Boca Grande and my photos. I fussy cut the saying from one of the cut apart cards in the kit to use as my title. 

Let the Collection Inspire Your Design 

For my last layout, I let the Collection inspire me - from photo choice, to story and all the way to design. One of the pattern papers featured these 3x4 cut apart a cards that had the titles: Nope, Maybe, and Yes. The titles reminded me of attempting to take a selfie with our dog and the pictures went for bad to worse. Ha! 

I used each 3x4 card as an anchor and then matched a bunch of stickers, bits & pieces, and brads to the colour of the journal card. It was really fun to focus on the colour instead of how much sense the embellishments made - my fav is that thumbs up in the middle, yellow pile. So fun! 

I did add some white splatters to the background and punched out a bunch of these film strips in white to create a break between the busy polka dot pattern and my photos. Then added a few film strips to the top and some more embellishments to balance the page. 

I had such fun with this collection and love that it was so perfect for just the everyday fun stuff. There are still Simple Stories, Good Life in the Scrap Shotz shop!