Perfect Polka Dot

I have succeeded. I have finally found the perfect polka dot paper. It's soft, it's neutral, it goes with everything! It's from the new Dear Lizzy line and it's called Sea Breeze.

Here are two layouts I made using Sea Breeze as a background:

A page from Xi'an, China, with 3 4x6 photos. I couldn't come up with a more clever photo design, what with 2 horizontal and 1 vertical photo. I think the grid worked out. I splashed some Pickle Mister Huey on the background, used the stamp that came with my Daydream Believer kit for my journaling. Which I also think would make a great frame for a photo strip, btw.

I added some twine, buttons, and those great butterfly embellishments as accents on the page.

I was channeling my inner Scrappy Jedi with this next layout. I love Melissa's layered style and all of the white space in her designs.

The page is about work, how I've finally filled in the big shoes I had to fill. After 1.5 years it's all come together. Figuring out the work environment, the sector, the government. And although I'll never be an expert on any of these things, at least I know now that I don't have to be. That no one expects us to have all of the answers at the top of our head. And that my friends, is a huge relief!

It's a bit hard to tell, but the shirt I'm wearing in this photo is purple. So I played with a purple/gold/silver/tan color scheme.

I did some splattering with Purple Maya Mist and layered small strips of paper, ribbon & stickers on the ends of the page.

See, perfect neutral right?! It can be dressed up, dressed down, the skies the limit! I will be purchasing more of it and it's cousin, Hazy Horizon, in the very near future.

Do you have a favorite neutral patterned paper? I'd love to see it! Link it up in the comments, won'tcha?

cheers & besos,

Little Wild Goose Pagoda

I have a China page to share today.

It's one of those "sacrificial" layouts that I used to get some creativity going.

It's not my favorite, but it's another layout to add to my scrapbook and more photos actually scrapped so I'm very happy about that.

I loved the designs for Shimelle's June 2011 prompt for 4x6 photo love. But wasn't sure that I had 6 vertical photos of one "theme".

Then I printed me China photos...and was excited to see that I had just enough!

I had to do some tweaking, that photo of me in the middle was originally a landscape shot. But with the help of PSE, I cropped it down to a usable vertical image.

I added some stamped cardstock and patterned paper rectangles to the top and bottom of each photo, distressing the edges for some texture.

And added my journaling in strips.

"On a pretty fall day during the middle of our Chinese adventure, we walked out to see the Little Goose Pagoda inside of the Xi'an History Museum."

"Little? Hardly! It was flight after flight up and each one got narrower and shorter. Here is Patrick bent half way over as we found that his 6'3" frame wasn't exactly suited to China."

xxbesos