Hi everyone, Pam here.

How do you go about constructing your layouts? Do you start with a photo, then choose the papers and embellishments to match? Or do you start with papers you love, and go through your photos until you find one to suit? Personally I think the first way makes most sense, but being on the Merly DT means I mostly start with the papers, and then find the photos. Sometimes this means trawling through folders and folders of photos to find a suitable photo, but  in this case as soon as I saw the colours of the Say Aloha papers, and the sentiments of this collection I knew exactly which photos I would use. How fortuitous that I had taken these photos in front of these advertisements in Barcelona. The ‘Don’t Hide’ slogan of the advertisements  went so well with the Kaisercrafts stamp: ‘Be a flamingo in a flock of pigeons’, and the sticker-‘why fit in when you were born to stand out’!!

So here’s my layout:

This was a pretty straightforward layout to construct. For the background I used the leopard skin print form the Island paper. Onto that I added a rectangle of the pink Papaya paper. The embellishments came from the die cut collectables,  and the sticker sheet. I also stamped and heat embossed the sentiment from the stamp set onto black card stock.

The layout was ok at that stage, but I felt it was lacking something, so I set to work with some black and white pens. I used a fine pen to trace around the outside of all the stickers and die cuts. I added some dots with both the black an the white pens. I used thicker sharpie pen to draw a frame around the pink paper. I doodled inside the title with white pen, and added a shadow effect with a watercolour pencil.

It’s only a bit of pen work, but I think it brings the whole layout together. Do you agree?

Come back soon for more inspiration.

Pam