Citrus Twist: Home is Where the Heart Is, LOAD 2/17-2/24

The sneak peeks of the January Citrus Twist kit made me nervous, since it seemed all I could really see was the Crate Paper chipboard accent sheet, the floral paper and the pink ribbon. Ummm..really not my thing. But...all together, I really kind of liked the kit and I ended up with 8 layouts, the most of any of my kits so far. And I'm still ahead on LOAD, because no one needed me this weekend. Really. Rick took over the bedroom/TV and worked, Brandon took over the living room/TV and played on the xbox between chores, and Jacob was content with his computer and an occasional bubble bath, leaving me to play. It felt weird.

 

The kit:

 

 

(February 17). When I first took everything out of the box, my eyes settled on the Dear Lizzy house paper and the Echo Park title strip. As I was playing around with it, I got the idea to cut out some of the houses and see what I could do with them. Then I thought maybe I could ground them with the pink ribbon. Then came the green swatch, and then the gray to tone it down a little. It was looking a little disconnected and very pink/green, so I used the inker on a new Ali Edwards house stamp and tucked them behind. I kind of like how they look. I don't do a lot of fussy cutting, or cut-out stamping, or even a lot of misting, so this was something new for me.

(February 18). This doesn't even look like something I made, right? LOL. I loved the floral pattern because it was just so pretty, but I never would have bought it because more than likely it would sit in my stash for a couple years before I sighed and gave it away. Being in the kit forced me to use it. This was a self-portrait I took with my ipod on my birthday, so that made the "theme" of the layout easy. The rose ribbon didn't come in the kit, but since it was sitting on my desk and matched, I figured, why not? If I'm gonna go girly, I might as well go really girly. :) I had taken out several of my embossing folders samples and was going to use the swiss dot one on some of the pink cardstock, but liked the white better and just used...my sample. Ooops. Sprayed it with some green glimmer mist, which I ended up really liking.

(February 19) Complete change of course! The green is seen in the first layout, but the stripe is the backside of the floral pattern and the red hearts is the backside of the teal days of the week page. I was waiting to figure out what I wanted to do with this photo, so once I opened my Silhouette program to look at my phrase/title options, everything fell into place. The "adorable" tab is left over from the CT November kit. I have a ton left and will be using them up forever, I think.

(February 20) This little quote card is also from the November kit and fell out of my baggie when I was getting the tab for the last layout. It reminded me that I had some Instagrams I had taken early on and hadn't even printed out yet, so I grabbed the blue chevron paper to add to the "blue" theme. Then I saw the "3" on the chipboard sheet and wanted to use it but had to find out ways to balance out the pink, so that's where the banner, washi and strip of pink patterned paper from my scrap pile comes in. The arrow was part of the stamp set and stamped with the chalk inker. I'm really loving those inkers.

(February 21) Another girly layout, can you believe it? The pale stripe paper is the backside of the Dear Lizzy house paper and I knew I wanted to somehow use it. I also knew I wanted to use some more of the floral chipboard pieces, so it just kind of evolved from there. I even used some MM ribbon from my stash :)  I tried to take an ipod self portrait each month last year, and it feels a little good to get a few pics of me in the scrapbooks.

(February 22) Not sure I like the monochromatic look. I was going for a no matter the time (days of week paper) or the place (strip of city map paper), we're still in love. The manila card is actually a February flash card; not sure why I don't really use them as they are. I had already completed my January PL pages by the time I got to this kit, so it seemed like a good base for my title, if nothing else. "Crazy" is from a Pink Paislee stamp set (weird story: I ordered it from 2peas last year, but didn't open it until a couple months later. When I did, I realized that the "newsflash" stamp was missing and had been replaced with a heart stamp and then the package was resealed. I guess somebody really wanted that stamp). And yep, I know my N is upside down. I wondered why it was upside down in my box, and after I stamped it I remembered that that stamp was manufactured upside down and I was trying to remind myself of that. Obviously that worked well!

(February 23) Still needs a photo! I want either a photo of the 4 of us or to make a Diptic collage of pics of us. Can't decide. Again, I wasn't thinking and used an embossing folder sample on the layout. Also used was one of the stamps from the Studio Calico January PL kit.

(February 24) I thought I was done, but this leaf pattern (the back of the green dot paper) made me think of birds. Which had me looking at the bird chipboard piece, so I printed out a pic from last spring (Rick yelled for me to grab my camera and pointed out a baby bird on our fence behind the garage).

 

Thoughts on this kit: I didn't expect to, but I really loved this kit and enjoyed working with it. This was really the first time that I played with misters, even though I have several from October Afternoon. And (insert embarrassed smiley face here), I actually liked it enough (especially the glimmer mist with glitter in it) that I used my Michaels 25% off everything coupon to buy 6 bottles of the Heidi Swapp Color Shine that they carry at Michaels now.