My Project 12 - I am in scrap love with Becky Fleck

If you are looking to submit a layout for the Project 12 challenge, click the Project 12 button on my sidebar, or head to this post.

I am extremely excited and inspired by the number of participants! EEK! I am so glad so many of you are taking the challenge with me. I have been swamped with assignments but plan to visit every link to that thread to leave a comment. Bear with me!

Prizes are nice too! The prize up for grabs this month is both the Homefront and Anthology Collections from Studio Calico. Not too shabby!

I wanted to share my layout with you as well as some tips and challenges I faced when creating it.

First I have to say that Becky made it SO easy for me to create this month. I am going to need her in my back pocket for the rest of my life, lol. I have a lot of life to document!

As a reminder, here is the January sketch:

And this is what I came up with:

I tried to follow it as closely as I could, but had to make a few alterations.

1. I wanted to use some photos I took of the girls at a birthday party, but they weren't very good quality photos, and the one of Morgan hurtling herself into the foam pit wasn't the least bit in focus, so I didn't want to make the photos as large as Becky sketched out. Instead, I reduced the size of both photos but increased the size of the photo Payton took of Morgan and I.

2. My spacing is a little bit different as well because I like the white frames on my photos. I've tried not having them, but I just really like how they make photos pop.

3. I had fun with it, but stitching was a challenge. It's difficult to spin a 12x12 layout around a sewing machine while trying to create circles. I love the look though. And where normally I'd stitch down the perimeter paper, with this layout I decided to follow Becky's sketch and only stitch where she has shown stitching. If you don't use a sewing machine, just take a Sharpie to it!

4. Speaking of perimeter paper, that was another challenge. It was hard to go through my stash and look for two patterns of the same print, as you need more than 1 12x12 piece of paper for the largest section of patterned background paper. Knowing I needed two pieces, I went immediately to my Cosmo Cricket stash, as their Collection packs come with two of each piece.

I mixed the Cosmo Earth Love paper with Crate Paper's Brook line. The colors don't perfectly mesh, but there are so many different shades of blue and green in the Brook line that in the end, they do go together. Loved that. It made it very easy to work with.

For my title I wanted to use my Maya Road calendar sheers, and to make my year cohesive, I chose to use Studio Calico calendar stamps as well. I plan to use both of these elements every month, along with kraft as the base to my layouts.

I also purchased that great big Marvy snowflake punch with a 40% coupon from Michael's (here's the link to the spot on the Michael's site where you can sign up to receive emails with coupons, etc). I'm in love with that snowflake punch and don't know why I didn't already have it.

So there you have it.

Remember, the deadline is February 20 at midnight PST (that's tonight!) to participate in this challenge.

The winner's of the two prize packs will be announced on the Scrapbook and Cards blog on February 27, as well as the reveal of the next sketch.

I like seeing the sketches ahead of time, because it helps me plan my photographs. In January, we had Morgan's birthday, and when I saw the sketch in December, I knew I wanted to make sure to get a good vertical photo of her at some point, because I had a 5x7 slot in the sketch.

So, before February is finished, remind yourself what lies ahead with the February sketch:

Fun fun!

Now remember: The most important thing to know about this challenge is that you do NOT have to do the sketch. You do NOT have to do a 12x12 layout. Just document a month in your life and link it to the comments section so you can win a prize.

Have a great day! Davinie