Created by Anne Pennington using Scraptivity’s November 2009 monthly kit.

Pretty exciting to receive my first kit from Scraptivity in my mail! I just sat and looked at all the lovely items for the first few minutes, then my brain got too excited to just create in my head. I had to get out the glue, cutters, and ink and start working with it!

I lost my mother this year after a devastating stroke, and whatever else I did with this awesome kit, I wanted to give her a tribute with one layout. The postcard included with the kit’s embellishments was just the thing to write her a lovely note to honour her memory!

I used the brown paper with the embossed swirl for my layout background. I found that by sanding the embossed swirls on the paper lightly, they seemed to “pop” out on the page a little more.

I then carefully removed the stamps from their packaging in order to use the green boxboard backing from their packaging. I sanded off the bit of labeling on the upper side of the green boxboard gently and distressed the sanded area to give it a bit more interest.

I added coordinating ribbon to the lovely shaped holes that had been pre‐cut on the packaging. To coordinate with the brown cardstock used for the background of the layout, I stamped brown ink “corners” with the kit stamps. I added two rhinestones embellishments from the stamp packaging for decoration to the boxboard. I now had a lovely “frame” for the photos I would add later.

I created the title for the layout with my Cricut, using Cricut Design Studio and Cursive 101 font (photo four). I love how Cricut Design Studio allows you to weld letters together, creating a continuous lettering script, mimicking handwriting.

The words “Missing you” captured my sentiments simply but well. I coloured the edges of the lettering with brown ink. There was leftover “bling”, so I used two more rhinestones from the kit to dot the two letter “i’s” in the title.

The photos I used were smaller than the sketch instructions, in order to fit proportionally in the green boxboard frame I had created. To create, I placed all 3 of my photos in a 3.5 x 5 canvas in Adobe Photoshop, allowing for a white border around each, and printed them as one 3.5 x 5 photo. During assembly, I substituted the postcard for the circle symbol on the scrapbook sketch. 

The final result was pleasing to me, and will be the first page in the scrapbook I am making with my mother’s mementos.

I hope you have as much fun as I have had with this month’s kit!

Annie