I've been keeping this project all to myself since it hadn't a title the last four days. Laugh. Ever find yourself in this same sort of situation before? A perfect layout without a title..and the avoidance of adding one because you've difficulty assessing and selecting a worthy matching font to go with it. Silly, I know, but it happens to me ALL the time! Laugh. Of the stock pile of alpha sets I own, I can't bare the filtering that's required to find the ideal one for a specific layout. Ultimately, I end up bringing ten to twelve alpha sets with me to the table before I run into a set that's at least half compatible with whatever is I'm working on. The final decision can often be excruciatingly difficult too - my knowledge of typography is very limited. In the end, what it often comes down to is color, size and style. After about a half-hour, the font battle is won and finally, a finished layout is ready to be photographed. And all this craziness over a handful of letters...Why?
Beyond the title, the layout is about my running passion for a trendy, popular nail polish line that I've been conveniently collecting lately, Essie. Because Essie's specialty is "COLOR", and being that I'm a major color fanatic myself, I've grown attached to painting my nails with it on an every-other-day basis. Normally, I'm not the kind of gal that aspires to follow fashion trends, let alone paint my nails, but I'm totally sold on Essie!! Their color options are beyond spectacular and so are the cute, petite bottles they use for selling the stuff...genius designers over there - no doubt!
Do you stack buttons at all? I frequently use the technique, especially when the center section of a button is spacious enough for a neighboring, smaller sized button. Glue Dots come in extra handy here..and so do layered butterflies. Can't create a layout without one these days!!
Grids, squares, four-sided shapes or whatever else you want to call them, the going trend seems to be collaging them together in a grid-like format and then decorating them with punched shapes or anything else that suits one's fancy. I restricted mine to the background before topping them with embellishments galore. I framed the pattern paper squares with vanilla, square frame diecuts to give them further depth.
A year or two ago, I spent a couple of evenings printing digital elements onto transparency because at the time, I was hugely devoted to the material. This cute black frame was a Two Peas purchase from the well-known scrapbook designer, Jennifer Pebbles. Not sure if they're still available, but it might be worth hopping over to Two Peas to take a look if they're of interest to you. I took to layering one with a brown tag (College Press), a stamped doily (MME), a word sticker (MME) and pearls.
This "Be Yourself"/Bird combination is that of Pink Paislee. It's an unexpected, non-traditional element that lends a little more personality to the overall design, even if it doesn't entirely match.
That just about does it for this Friday evening - have a great weekend everyone! I'll rejoin you next week with updated news of more Crate projects and an upcoming guest design gig! :)
