Love is in the Air

Even if you aren't a big Valentine's Day person, there's something about February that still tugs us toward talking about love (for people, for things, for places, whatever it may be). I kind of love the nudge to remember old stories as well as new ones, and the minute I saw the February digital kit from Ali Edwards, I knew I wanted to go back in time and use one of our wedding photos. 

I love taking a digital embellishment like this banner chipboard piece and making them HUGE, and I love starting with words, so the right side of this layout came first. I'd initially left everything as-is except for the size, but once I'd picked out my photo, I knew I wanted more green than pink, something to echo the story of our shoes and my memory of that day, so I recolored the element to match (digitals for the win!).  For the left side of the page, I knew I wanted something behind the photo, so I started playing with patterning the digital chipboard, and making the journal cards larger to use their pattern as a base, and when I went to try out the striped 4x6 card this way, I accitdentally knocked the track pad and it flipped at an angle. The minute I saw those stripes running across the page, I knew I wanted more of them, creating an almost woven effect.  

I deleted the white background so that I'd be able to see the stripes through the stripes, and just placed the on the page going a few directions.  I ended up with them crossed in a way that made a kind of frame for my 4x4 photo to sit in the middle.  

For a little extra, I added a digital stamp to the corner of the photo, and topped it off with a physical chipboard embellishment from Ali's shop, as well as some detail stitching to give the banner a little something extra. 

I always make a birthday layout about my age, but this year's been a little tougher, so I've decided to wait until I am ready to tell that story.  That said, I really wanted to tell the small, but important story of our snowy drive that day. Using the same digital kit, I once again found myself with the perfect pieces, but needing a different color.  This winter has been so much snowier than we've had in a while, casting our days in so much blue light, and I wanted this layout to really capture that look and feeling.  We listening to the audio book version of Harry Potter all the way, so I used the words from the first chapter as the background to the awesome XO chipboard piece, and made the letters blue.  This piece was so great all by itself that I wanted it to be the focal point, so instead of putting my journaling on the same page, or a facing page, I tucked it behind, using the tag embellishment to loop some reason for easy access to the words.

If you've been wanted to add some new life to your supplies but can't bring yourself to add one more piece to your overflowing stash, these digitals are such an awesome (and obviously flexible way) to tell more stories with both style and fun.