Studio Calico October - Yearbook

Hi all! I'm taking a break from volunteering in Morgan's Kindergarten class, scrubbing paint off Payton after preschool, hanging out at the library, hanging out in the car, driving to gymnastics, driving to soccer.... to share the October kit from Studio Calico. It's about time, eh? Hey, it takes me a minute to resize my photos so that I can fit everything in one blog post. Anyway, this is what I came up with this month.

I know I'm not helping anyone with my add-on choices, as I had to buy all three. But Studio Calico is the best scrapbook kit club on the planet, and I don't really feel the need to shop anywhere else. The shop is always full of fun goodies too. If you haven't, check it out sometime!

This kit was great for summer photos, school photos, fall photos, so it was great to wrap up some fun summer moments and also celebrate what's happening this week.

My first layout was Slip 'n Slide.

Normally the graphic patterns scare me to death but I really liked the color palette, thought this Monstrosity Sassafras paper would work great with these photos, and so I decided to showcase the pattern in this layout.

I used my favorite Fiskars punch on the blue Crate paper and layered it at the top. Then I punched circles in the blue cardstock and layered them across the paper . After all three patterns of paper were layed out I stitched around the border of the layout.

Oh, I almost forgot about the mist! I misted! I'm not much of a mist user but I liked the idea of an orange border, so I trimmed a retched shade of purple cardstock at 11.25 x 11.25 and layed it on top the cream cardstock and then misted in orange around the outside edges.

After that it was flower layering and alpha stickers.

I really liked this new patterned paper from SC. I wanted to showcase it as well but the pattern is a little busy for my photos, so I put Steve and his mower on cream cardstock. After I did that it seemed the opposite, a little plain, so it was after the fact that I decided to hand stitch circles. I'm not very good at spinning my sewing machine in a perfect circle, and I wanted them to be perfect, so hand stitch it was. I punched a circle out of a scrap piece of cardstock that was the same size as the woodgrain, and made pencil lines marking the circles on the cardstock. Then I pierced and stitched.
I was telling Steve that this seemed to be the favorite from my gallery this month and he was a bit upset that people seemed to like the stitches more than his photo. Silly man.

The ribbon was hand stitched to the layout as well.


This layout, this one right here, is my favorite layout from my gallery this month. I was completely inspired by the whole thing. When we were in Seattle last month we stayed at my dad's house. More specifically, we stayed in my stepmom's quilt/craft room at my dad's house. In this humungous craft room are quilting machines. And quilts. Everywhere. Every night as I went to sleep and every morning as I woke up I was overwhelmed with patterns and color and inspiration. She has so much fabric that she even has some on the bolts from the fabric store!

Our first night there, after dinner, as I mentioned in my journaling, Morgan noticed their fruit trees dripping with apples and pears and plums and begged to harvest some of them. We've never been apple picking, so the girls had a lot of fun climbing trees and picking fruit.

After I took the photos I knew I had to do a layout that incorporated where we were with what we did, and this is the result.



I had a lot of fun with this layout too. I was really happy to see how well the kit matched the photos of my girls on their first day of school, so this layout came together really easy.

I should first mention my photos. I saw a photo at 2peas of some little girls and a desk out in their backyard and just LOVED the idea. So I jumped on Craigs List and wouldn't you know it, there was a desk just like one I had in my first years of grade school, and it was $15! I nabbed it within 15 minutes of being listed and it's now in my living room. My girls love doing artwork and homework while sitting there. And of course, on their first day of school, I dragged it out into the yard. Of course, we had about 2 minutes to snap photos because we started running late, and as it was the first day of school, nobody wanted to sit there and let me take photos, but I did get a couple and you get the idea.

Most of the time I am more inspired by my photos, but lately I've also encountered patterned paper that really inspires me. Bo Bunny did that for me this month. I really really liked the patterns in the paper line that we used. For this particular layout, I knew I really had to include the fall tree patterns with my photos. I loved that the trees had pink in them.


I needed a pink felt tree to match that Bo Bunny paper, so I tore apart the Basic Grey feltie so that my tree matched. I then used the fun house stamp from Studio Calico to represent a little school house.

Another item in the main kit that I really enjoyed were these fun Maya Road envelopes. I wanted to use it on this layout but at first struggled with what to do with it. Write a note to the girls about my thoughts? No. I had just recently journaled about my fears regarding school. So instead, I had each girl draw a photo of herself on her first day of school on the Jenni Bowlin notepads. Boy are they cute! And now they are tucked away in envelope so that they will always be preserved! I love that! I save as much artwork as I can find a place for, but this was a fun way to include something else. It also has their signatures on it, and I am anxious to see how it changes from the first day to the last week. Maybe my PJ will graduate to Payton! :) Now, doesn't Morgan in her floral dress look cute? Those are flowers and sleeves, btw. Not bosoms. That girls knows where she came from, lol.

I posted the card I made with this kit here, and I made one more project for this kit before I ran out of time. I decided to make one of the envelopes into a mini album, an interview of Payton as she starts her school career. After doing the last layout, I couldn't stop! I had to carry on with school. I was also very inspired by Cosmo's pencils and the hop scotch on the B side of the Studio Calico paper. I thought the yellow and blue needed to be together.




I used the Jenni Bowlin memo notebook pages to determine the size, and trimmed the patterned paper the same to match. I also kept the design very simple, letting Payton's answers and artwork be the focus.

To create the album, I trimmed three pieces of cardstock, and then hand stitched them in the center to create the album binding. I was worried it might not hold so used glue as well, but as you can see on the very first page, I got a little sloppy, and in the end, I don't think I needed the glue.

I was happy with the photos I used, and included this last photo because it showcases her first backpack, and it shoes her headed out on her journey for education.

This was a very long post and if you made it this far, thank you very much! If you have any questions about my process, please let me know and I'll answer on my next post.

Have a great day! Davinie