My happy place...: Happy | Off the Rails Tutorial

Hi everyone!

Today I'm sharing my design team layout that I created for this month's mood board over at Off the Rails Scrapbooking, and I have some tips and techniques for getting the most out of your patterned papers!

Now I have a confession to make... I was planning on sharing a step-by-step tutorial for creating this layout, however the photos that I had taken of my procedure were on my phone which I unfortunately dropped in water last week and was unable to retrieve anything off it. I lost a few months worth of photos since I last backed them up :( The moral of the story is to back up your photos regularly!!! (I'm now using iCloud so that my photos are backed up automatically).

Here's my layout that I created for our gorgeous 'black and anything goes' mood board this month...

I must admit that I struggled a bit with this because I don't usually use black as the dominant colour on a layout, but I loved the challenge and I'm happy with the end result! The photo that I scrapped is of my eldest daughter taken when we went strawberry picking while we were on holidays last year! She was wearing a black hat and a dark floral dress, so I thought this would be perfect for this mood board!

So today I want to share some tips and techniques that I use to get the most out of my patterned papers! I used the Maggie Holmes Bloom collection for this layout. When I purchased this collection, the chipboard and ephemera were not available, so I was limited to the patterned papers and the puffy stickers, but I didn't mind, because it just meant that I had to get a bit more creative with using the patterned papers! So here are my tips...

1) Don't throw away the branding strip on your patterned papers!

I always try to think of ways that I can incorporate the branding strips onto my layouts, and on this page, I added it as a strip between the dark patterned paper and the white cardstock. I like the extra detail that this adds, and it looks like I've included more patterned paper onto my layout than I actually have!

2) Fussy Cut!

Look for elements in your patterned papers that you can fussy cut! The teacup on the bottom right hand corner of my layout was fussy cut from one of the patterned papers, as was the word 'beautiful'. I often like to use those busy floral patterned papers to fussy cut the flowers to use as embellishments for my pages.

3) Cut up your patterned papers!

I love to use my Silhouette Cameo to cut out shapes and words from my patterned papers. If you don't have a die-cutting machine, trace shapes and cut them out by hand. I didn't use my Cameo for this layout, but I did cut a little banner out of patterned paper to include on my page.

4) Don't waste!

If there are any parts of your patterned papers that are hidden, cut them off to use on a future project! For instance, on this layout I have backed my photo with patterned paper, but only a thin border is actually seen. So I cut away the middle section behind the photo, which is hidden, and I kept it to use for layering on another layout.

There are lots of ways that you can get the most out of your patterned papers! When we have to scrap on a budget this can be particularly important. I'd love to hear your tips if you have some!

Here are a few closeups of my layout so that you can see all the details...