More is More, Sparkle City is Too Cute

In my post a couple of days ago called Less is More, Sparkle City Sure Does Sparkle I was all about using less on a scrapbook project. I do this when the product I am using is super bold (like Shimelle's awesome collections are), perhaps are out of your comfort zone, you have so much you cannot decide what to start with, or when you have small photos and don't want to overwhelm them.

Well, this week I am here to tell you the exact opposite - use more! Let me explain ...

I have this super cute photo of my nephew eating the famous John's Place pancake (plate sized, fluffy and served with both maple syrup and cinnamon icing spread mmmm) on our recent adventure to Victoria, B.C. For my nephew this is heaven - the key to this kid's heart is through great pancakes and chicken wings. What a character! I knew I wanted to scrapbook this story with the Shimelle, Sparke City collection that I received to play with this month from Scrap Shotz. The collection is bright and fun and whimsical - perfect!

While the collection does not have pancakes, it does have all kinds of other foods things (fries and hamburgers, noodle box, soda, bubble tea and more) - so instead of going pancakes I just grabbed ALL the things that are food related  and piled these down the left-hand side to create a sort of waterfall of yumminess. Then I mixed in some words and phrase puffy stickers from the American Crafts phrase stickers I also received this month from Scrap Shotz. I love how it turned out!

I added the title "The Simple Things" from my stash as I really do think it is the simple, little things that make life so fun. The little smiley faces that are in the phrase set with this title were also a perfect touch. 

Before I put it in my album I will draw some lines with my journal pen and journal all about how these pancakes blew his mind and it was the perfect start to our Victoria adventure. I often do not journal on my pages for blog posts as I tend to get all feelings and mushy haha

Try it! Try adding more (all the things) to your layouts. Instead of going less, go more and see what masterpieces you can create! Think about a theme - all the food items, or all the hearts, or all the butterflies and all the same colours for a monochromatic look.

Have a crafty week!

Less is More, Sparkle City Sure Does Sparkle

Hello crafty friends!

This month the amazing Scrap Shotz team sent me some of Shimelle's Sparkle City collection to play with and, wow, talk about colour and vibrant and silly and fun. My favourite!

As with all of Shimelle's amazing collections, this one is full of purples, pinks, reds, greens and all the amazing patterns. The puffy stickers are gorgeous and the die cuts are so cute (think smiling cartoon pigeons and little french fry containers) - some of them are even holographic!

Take a peek ...

To be honest with so much colour and so many options (the paper pad alone has 48 sheets), I was a little overwhelmed. I wanted to play with all the things. So I started small. Small photos and a small amount of product. A 'less is more' approach to get the Sparkle City spark going.

My approach ...

In my photo stash, I had two tiny (2x2 inch) colour photos of my crazy nephew following me around a tourist shop in Victoria, B.C. wearing a plastic horse mask. I was laughing so hard at his antics I could barely take the photos  - so they are horrible. But good photo or not, this memory had to be scrapbooked. Besides how good does a photo of an 11year old in a plastic horse mask need to be?!

Now usually with a bright collection, I use neutral or even black and white photos and very large photos to help bring some calm to the layout. However, this is Shimelle's collection and I feel she is all about colour and would appreciate a more vibrant approach, so I went for it - a big colour, but a small product and photo, approach.

You can probably see that I used very little product - less is more with the super bright and cute collections for me. I used 4 die cuts (the camera and the little city building), two small scraps of paper behind my photo and roughed up the edges to bring some mess and dimension to the layout, 3 tiny stars, 3 phrase stickers and a title. A lot goes a long way with this much sparkle!

I really wanted to draw the eye to the tiny photos so decided to place the photos cluster on a two-tone watercolour 'mess'. I chose purple and red as those are two of the colours of the little die cut buildings but also because I just love these two colours together. I simply found some red and purple watercolour paints in my stash and used the packaging technique to smoosh a puddle of wet paint onto the page. Yes, smoosh is a technical term - all the mixed media gals are using it (wink, wink). 

Once assembled, I finished off the layout with some journal pen stitching around the border of the page - this is where you literally freehand lines down each side of the page with a couple of random squiggles as if the "sewing machine" got all caught up. Then added a few matching purple and red splatters. I like white space but only so much. 

I love how this layout turned out! Off camera and before it went in the page protector, I added some freehand horizontal lines below the photo to the bottom of the page and added my journaling. I was chuckling to myself as I wrote- what a ham my nephew is. Oh he makes me laugh! 

Now that I have cracked open the Sparkle City vault - I am dying to make more, off I go!  Hope you all have a few mins to get crafty this weekend too.