December Citrus Twist Kit, LOAD 2/10-2/16

That's right, I'm ahead of the game! :)  I want to keep layouts that I do with a kit together, so since I'm going through kits right now, there will probably be a couple days delay in posting new layouts while I'm playing with the January kit.

 

The December Citrus Twist kit:

For December, I had either lots of photos (decorating the tree, opening presents, etc.) or single photos. It didn't seem like there was much in between. I also started using Instagram again, so a lot of the single photos were squares. I decided to use the kit for my single photo layouts, so I could "play" more, since I like the single smaller photo/lots of layering/clustering look but not sure how to go about it.

First up (February 10), the Best Quality tag was unintentional until I got to making the title, then it was kind of awesome, LOL.

Next (February 11) was my single lonely Memories in the Park photo. This one wasn't Instagrammed, just made into a square using Photosheet, since it wasn't that great of a photo. I was having trouble with putting something up in the right hand corner to balance the layout, and ended up grabbing the All is Bright (the name of that paper line) from the cut off strip and using a small tag to cover the designer's name. I think it worked well, but then I needed something blue on the right side to make a triangle between the blue felt flower and the blue in the background of the All is Bright. Enter the never ending roll of tickets :)

This one (February 12) didn't quite end up how I planned. "Celebrate Your Inner Elf" was a round shaped Silhouette cut, but I wasn't sure how to really separate and cut out the circle part and wasn't in the mood to play around with it, so I just moved the text around and then cut it out. My Silhouette did something weird, so it took awhile and I think I need a new blade already, because the "your inner" was very chewed up. As it happened, when I put the photo into Photosheet to print, it was put in sideways (I seem to have that effect of electronics), but I wasn't worried because it's a square and I could trim it. Anyway, I realized that since it was facing sideways, I could cut it into a Polaroid shape, which gave me a little mat for part of my title. After that, I just put "elf" on a tag to help it stand out, trashed the chewed up/ripped words, and stamped the rest of the title. I knew I was going to have long journaling, because I wanted to tell the story of why I do Elf even the the boys are older. I have no patience for learning how to do wrap around text boxes and figuring out spacing for them, so I tucked my paper in where I wanted it, created a light tracing with a pencil to give me borders, then typed it up on the typewriter. Easy peasy, took about 5 minutes. There really was no green in the kit (other than the washi tape), so I used some Coredinations cardstock, because I just really felt this layout needed some green. I used a section left over from cutting the title to use a My Favorite Things label tab die and stamping it with a stamp from the kit.

(February 13) I kind of wondered what I would do with this North Pole paper, and thought about using it with the pic of Jacob's last trip to Santa, but I had a large title I wanted to use with it, and a fair amount of journaling, so it would have covered most of the paper. As I was shuffling things around, I picked up this photo of Rick and me, which I had a different plan for, set it down on the paper, and "no one else in the world for me" popped into my head, and after that it was easy. Not sure I like the confetti stars in the corners of the mat, but they're on with glue dots, so they're likely to stay. I just noticed that at the bottom of the photo mat, the sideways 8s on the tag look kind of like an infinity symbol, so that totally works for me.

February 14 - I knew I wanted to use this photo with this kit, and on the first pass through, I knew I wanted to use this collaged paper for it. That was pretty much all I knew. The woodgrain and blue looked pale, and it didn't really stand out from the background, so I added the red strip, but then it seemed bottom heavy, so the only other red I really liked with it was...the packaging from the Pink Paislee City Sidewalks tags. I was able to scoot it down far enough to hide most of the packaging text.  As a bonus, it's long enough to create more of a base for the other patterned paper. It still seemed blah, so I bordered it with strips of the blue cardstock, which I liked, so I threw in the blue felt flower to keep the blue from looking so random.

February 15 - Since it was a phone pic, my starbucks pic didn't get printed with last year's Christmas photos and I had forgotten about it. I still had it, and still wanted to scrapbook it, so it seemed fitting to use the red snowflake paper for a coffee layout. I didn't figure I would use the larger, ornate rectangle tags from the Pink Paislee set, so I flipped them over and used them as a base for my stack of stuff. I had no plans for the December calendar card, and I had already completed my PL pages, so I tucked it under the photo for interest and ended up using it for my title. I used a scrap of green to balance out the green in the photo and used one of the stamps for my subtitle: NEWSFLASH: I still don't like coffee.

February 16 - I had the idea for this layout ever since I saw this phrase cut in the Silhouette store. Since Christmas is the only time I like to shop (well, other than for scrapbooking supplies), I wanted to document that, and since I had this random pic of me (I try and take a self portrait each month for PL), I figured why not? The vintage image is from the October Afternoon Make it Merry kit I bought myself for Christmas. Again, journaling was very easy, thanks to my typewriter.

Thoughts on this kit: Loved it, although I have no idea why there was bright green washi tape, since it was pretty much the only green (other than some trees on one piece of paper) in the kit. It almost seemed like an afterthought.