Scrapbooking Disney: "We Finally Made It" -- Layout 2

Supplies:I found those neat Disney theme scrapbook papers at Michael's Craft store-- they were sold individually and on sale for 79 cents a piece-- can't go wrong! I tore them in half, so I still have half of each to use in another layout. They are vellum. I also used a variety of solid colored cardstocks, decorative edged scissors, and a package of stickers my son fell in love with at Walmart. He wanted me to use them, and they only cost $2 so I indulged him.

1I decided on my theme, of course-- that we finally arrived. I came up with my color scheme based on the Disney specialty paper I found, and decided on orange as the main color because it's so vivid, and as I went through my solid cardstocks it just seemed to leap out at me. When I put the photos on it to have a look it seemed to compliment most of them.

2I double-matted the two feature photos in the same way, just opposite each other. I love to make layered mats with decorative edged scissors or paper punches, putting some centered and some off-centered. You can come up with some elaborate, eye-catching designs that make the photo pop.

Basically here I began with the photo, giving it a white "strokes frame" border in photoshop. Then I took a yellow piece of cardstock and cut it into a rectangular shape, larger than the image.

I cut the left side and bottom with an angled tooth scissor, leaving the top and right straight. I affixed the photo closer to the straight edges. Then I took a piece of blue cardstock bigger than the yellow rectangle and use the same angled tooth scissor, only this time I cut the right side and top. I glued the yellow mat onto it, off-center.

In this photo on the other page, I did the same thing, just opposite. I like the way it came out. I like to double, triple, quadrouple. quintouple (or whatever you call it) the mats for the "featured" photo on the page, to draw eyes to it.

3The rest of the photos I matted on plain yellow cardstock so they wouldn't be overwhelming, and I made them mostly square, with one circle and one oval for some variation. The "swirly" paper was vellum, which is translucent, so I took my craft knife and carefully cut some slits into it where the photos were going, around the swirls. Then I lifted them and overlapped them on the photos so it gives it a sort of 3-D look. Notice how the photo is still visible through the translucent paper? I think that's kinda cool.

4Now we come to that oval... as I said, I wasn't satisfied with alone, so I make the sleeve, which was designed around it. I actually cut out two sheets for the sleeve, the front one slightly larger on the sides and bottom than the back one. I folded the edges of the front one around the back one to create a sort of pocket, then I glued the pocket onto the background. I added the orange, blue and red stars as embellishments.

5I printed the white piece of paper with our story (see below), then folded it like an envelope. I cut out a little gold Mickey head for the "seal" and added two strips of scrap red.

6All the letters were hand-cut with an X-acto knife. I turned the paper face down and put a stencil, backwards, over the paper and traced my letters. Then I cut them out, and when I turned them over, no pencil lines are on the front. I glued them on with a glue stick, as well as some spiral punches punched out of yellow and orange vellum scattered about the layout.

I typed up the story on a word processing program (I use Wordperfect, but any program that you can manipulate fonts & colors will do). I set the width to only 5 inches because my sleeve that it was going into was only 5 inches. I had up to 12 inches in length to work with, but didn't need it.

I decided on the majority of the text being red, in the font "Boopee" at 17pt. Seemed just right, no specific formula. Then I went back and played around. I underlined some things, changed the font and color on some words, made them bigger, or highlighted them. I like to choose words that would be naturally emphasized if I were telling this as a story.

I kept playing around until I liked the way it looked. Then I saved and printed it. I like using this mix-and-match style with bright, bold, fun layouts.