Playing with Simple Stories, Farmhouse Garden

My scrappy desk is full of fun farmhouse cuteness right now. Great florals, vintage barns, fantastic sentiments and sweet little chickens, goats, pigs and cows... hello Simple Stories, Farmhouse Garden! 

So glad Scrap Shotz sent me these goodies to play with this month - I had the chance to dig deep into my photo stash and document some fun but almost forgotten memories. 

For my first layout I pulled out some 30+ year old photos of my Grandma and Grampa at one of our classic family BBQs at their acreage. The photos were in rough shape so I printed in black and white (which also looks great with the colours of this collection). Oh and that little sticker on my Grandma’s photo says ‘sweet confusion’ is actually her writing! She used to add small labels to photos to journal her thoughts or the details - so precious! 

I used some Distress Ink, Black Soot through a stencil and a background stamp to anchor my photos on some black texture breaking up the white space. Then I layered some embellishments and title down the left of the photos. That big ‘family’ title in plaid really pops! 

From there I went even farther back in the photo archive. Grabbing photos of my big sister and cousin as wee toddlers eating a popsicle on the porch steps. Another photo that needed to be printed in black and white to hide the poor shape it’s in. 

For this layout I used my most favourite texture paste Picket Fence Studios, Paper Glaze in Black Peony to create a horizontal pattern across the page. Then used the photo and embellishments to almost fill up the textured space. I knew I wanted to get the blue barn on this page and love the little spot it found. I liked the ‘Bloom & Grow’ title - seems a good one for these little kiddos who were doing just that! 

After a couple of white background layouts, I needed to get some pattern paper into the game. Another 30 year old photo for this one folks - this time me and my little sister on the swing our dad made when we lived on the farm. Perfect for this collection. 

I used some die cuts from my stash to cut a whole bunch of Polaroid frames from different pattern papers in the collection 

 - then scattered those up at the top of the page and added some white splatters. From there I just started adding and layering all kinds of stickers, chipboard and puffy phrases stickers from the collection - using the Polaroid frames as an anchor point. I wanted a really busy look at the top of the page with just a touch of the design at the bottom. 

Such a fun collection to work with - the pink, blue and mustard kit colours compliment the vintage look and patterns wonderfully. I am already thumbing through my throw back photos for more to pair with these goodies. 

If you are playing with the Simple Stories, Farmhouse Garden - we would love to see. Especially what you do with the embellishments that have a chicken standing on a goat standing on a pig standing on a cow - yup! So cute.