Daddy is a daughter's first love

When I think of girls, or at least my littlest girl, I think of flowers and frills so I thought it would be fitting today to talk to you about "dressing" up your page to tell the whole story.  Take a look at the page and I'll walk you through my design and thought process. This can also be found on Shimelle.com today.

When thinking through this page and the photos I wanted to scrap, which feature my youngest daughter dressed to the nines and her daddy in a top hat and ready for the ball, I knew I wanted to create a background that helped tell the story of them going to a daddy daughter dance.  I chose a cut file that featured floral designs that all had a similar geometric shape.  I cut them out of white cardstock and set out to find colors that complimented their attire.  After carefully selecting 4 different patterns, I traced the perimeters of the flowers and then hand cut the pattern paper so that it could be placed behind each of the large floral cuts.  It seems like quite the daunting task but it's really not so bad, since the cuts do't have to be perfect.  You just need enough so that you can adhere them to the back of the flower cuts.

Once the flowers were all filled in, I stitched the large die to another piece of white cardstock.  I stitched around the edges but I may go back and stitch around some of the flowers for a little more added interest.

The next task was to determine where to place the photos.  I started out by overlapping the photos and keeping them together but it just wasn't working for me so I separated them and went to work with layering.  I absolutely love to layer.  I think it helps draw attention tot he photos.  Some of the ways I like to layer are: adding 3 - 4 pieces of pattern paper behind the photo, adding a frame (die cut or chipboard), adding tags and other ephemera and of course stickers. In addition, I will add staples and foam adhesive to make the bits pop a little more. And of course, you want to layer a little bit over the photos, careful not to cover up anything important or distract from the photo. I'm pretty sure I ended up using all of these ideas on these photos.  Yep, I just checked and I did.

Of course no layout would be complete without a title and journaling.  I decided to make good use of the large flower at the top right of the page for the title.  I love the quote that a daddy is a daughter's first love so I used a condensed version of that and used a combo of alphas, placing the individual alphas on the outside and inside curve and completing the title using the lovely script word.  I also added a little sub title in the upper left near the photo to document why they were all dolled up.  Last but not least, the journaling and date is tucked behind the bottom photo. It reads, "You, Rheagan and daddy love going to the daddy daughter dance every year. I love the pre-dance prep, from finding the perfect dress, shoes and accessories to helping with hair, nails and make-up.  Y'all have so much fun doing carriage rides, crafts, flipbooks, having dinner and of course...dancing!"

Hopefully the one thing you will take away from today is to try to look for different ideas on how to tell the full story through all the design elements on your page, not just with your photos.  Thanks for stopping by today!