Simple Stories, Full Bloom

Happy Spring! I am celebrating spring here on the West Coast by playing with pretty flowers in my garden and in my scrapbook room! The Simple Stories, Full Bloom collection everything Spring you could hope for - flowers and bees and ladybugs and gardening and sunshine and rainbows! 

In classic Simple Stories style, there are a ton of different goodies with this collection and we have a whole host of them in the Scrap Shotz Shop! I am playing with the Collection Pack, Bits & Pieces Die Cuts Journal, Chipboard Stickers, Puffy Stickers and Decorative Brads. 

Tags, Tags, Tags 

For my first layout I just had to use the tag cut apart sheet - literally a page of tags on both sides of a whole 12x12 paper and not one of the tags are the same. Wow! 

I cut out the tags that made me most happy, and specially picked that ‘happy day’ tag (I added the heart) as my title. After adding some white acrylic paint splatters to the page, I layered the tags and my 2x3 photos across the middle. I focused all my embellishments in and around the title tag and, of course, those cute little snails just had to find a home on my layout. 

All The Patterns 

For my second layout, it was all about the fantastic pattern papers in this collection. I had too many favourites to pick one, so decided to create an angled and ripped paper design to   show off a bunch of them! Creating a bit of a mirror image on the top and bottom of the layout, with the top much smaller. 

When I secured the papers down I made sure to only adhere near the bottom edge of each giving me the little pockets to tuck and layer all kinds of goodies from the collection - and yes, the tags made another appearance! I was going for a fun, crazy, mess of happy things - which is a perfect depiction of me and my nephew’ adventures.

I did add a little bit of stenciling just peeking out from the ripped papers with Tim Holtz, Distress Ink in Mustard Seed and a few splatters to break up the white space a wee bit. 

Photos Dictate the Design 

For this layout, I wanted to capture a ‘all the things growing’ vibe. We bought a new house in fall and it was so amazing discovering all that the prior owners had planted and started to grow and bloom the first spring. So exciting - these are just the best of the pics!

I focused on creating a little garden with the embellishment clusters at the top and bottom of the photo grid. A couple of  the little sign die cuts were blank - so I added a couple of stamped words to each. I also added the botanical stamps around the photos using a Vicki Boutin stamp and Tim Holtz, Distress Ink in Evergreen Bough plus a few puffy sticker leaves from a Vicki Boutin collection too. I love the green on green look, subtle but cute. Some white splatters and outlining the page messily with a white pen finished it off. 

Use Black to Make it Pop 

There is a lot of soft orange and yellow and pink in this collection with only a few contrasting patterns and sometimes I like a really strong contrast … so I made my own contrast. 

The background is a bit of an intentional mess really - I used a stencil to add colour here and there with Tim Holtz, Distress Inks in Mustard Seed and Barn Door. Then added some circles with black ink using a variety of circle stamps from my stash and finally some black splatters. 

I backed the entire layout in black and my photos too. And a black title from Vicki Boutin combined with the collection embellishments gave me that contrast I was looking for! 

Are you playing with the Full Bloom collection? We would love to see, pop your creations up on the Scrap Shotz Paper Crafting Group or tag us on social media. Or looking to get your crafty hands on some Full Bloom goodies, pop over to the shop at Simple Stories, Full Bloom.