52 Layouts Stap-by-Step #9 Little Swimmers

Happy Friday to everyone out there - anyone got a good weekend planned? I'm teaching a scrapbooking class all day tomorrow and am totally free on Sunday which is quite a rarity! No doubt we'll spend it clearing out the loft or something very boring like that.

Anyway on to this week's 52 Layouts Step-by-Step: here are the supplies you'll need to play along this week:

3 sheets of patterned paper - one of mine is made up of stripes that I can cut up into individual strips. One is quite plain for the background and I have another smallish pattern in there too.

1 sheet of card

Some border stickers

a medium sized alpha

Washi tape

a few brads and little flowers

one 6x4 portrait photo

Don't worry if you don't have exactly the same papers as me, you can totally join in using your own supplies, just gather some coordinating papers similar to mine i.e. one plain ish, one with a small pattern and one that can be cut into strips etc. 

Step 1:
 Choose your background paper and gut a small piece from the left side of the layout 6x4 1/2 " - approximately 1 1/2" in from the left edge and 2" down from the top.

Step 2
Cover the hole with the small pattern patterned paper 5x9"  - you might want to ink the edges of this so that the pattern doesn't get lost in the background.

 

Step 3
Stick the piece we cut out in Step 1, reverse side up to the layout:

Step 4
Stick on another piece of patterned paper 3x5" to the layout - I've used the reverse of the small patterned paper used to cover the hole.

Step 5
Mount a 6x4 photo onto plain card 6 1/4 x 4 1/4" and position onto the layout. Draw around it with a pencil but do not stick it down.

You can just about see my pencil lines here...

Step 6
Cut some strips of patterned paper out of another paper (remember I said one of mine could be cut into strips...). I chose a scalloped one and a plain one. If you don't have scalloped strips then use a border punch instead to create a pretty edge. Ink the edges of all of those so they stand out.

Step 7
Add some washi tape (or more paper strips or ribbon depending on your supplies) building on those paper strips we already have there. My washi tape hasn't come out too well in the photo but there's some on each area I've already added strips:

you can see it a bit better here...

Step 8
Stick on some border stickers. Concentrate on the areas you already have paper strips and washi tape, as well as creating a feature on the bottom right corner. I cut some of my border stickers up and used smaller parts of them as embellishments too, i.e the pink and yellow ovals and the hearts

a close up of that bit in the bottom right corner. I've cut one of those ovals in half which I think makes it look better there. You can also now stick your photo down!

Step 9
Add a title and write on some journalling...

Step 10
Add your brads and little flower embellishments to the layout, again concentrating on the areas that you've embellished already. You might notice that they loosely form a triangle around my photo: this therefore draws the eye to the centre of them i.e. my photo!

And now you are all done! Here is my finished layout:

Thank you very much for playing along - I absolutely love seeing what you've made following these tutorials so please link your layouts below xx

To join in next week you will need:

3 x patterned papers
2 x cardstock
Some flower stickers
Ribbon & a ribbon slider (mine is a little diamante one, it's sitting on the bottom right corner of the photograph but you can barely see it)
Alpha stickers

You have a week to gather your supplies - see you next week!