You & Me

Hi friends!  Happy Monday to you!!  It's dreary and rainy here and I am slowly getting out of a fog from traveling to the West Coast and back over the weekend.  It was a whirlwind trip, but I attending the Be Crafty Workshop with Amanda and Maggie was totally worth it!  I'll share more photos soon!!  It was dreamy!

But first...this week on my blog is dedicated to the lovely Shimelle!  

Just kidding....kinda...  But, I did manage to get a little carried away with her new collection and created quite a bit, so I figured I could share them here this week!  I have a few other design team posts that will go live, but for the most part, I'll be sharing four layouts and one mini album I put together with her awesome products!  You can also see a bit of her collection sprinkled throughout my Summer Mini Album. 

The layout I'm sharing today was totally inspired by the patterned paper, which is really unusual for my style and process.  I typically always start with a photo, but this pink/gold/red diagonal paper was just calling my name so I knew I had to make it work!

I pieced this layout together in a few different ways before I was finally pleased.  I originally started with the diagonals taking up one half of my page, but I couldn't make the photo and paper layers mesh with the paper for some reason.  In the end, I trimmed down the triangles and adhered them to a piece of white card stock.  I kind of like how it sits on the page.  I also decided to use a black and white photo so the pink/red/gold colors could pop from the page and I think it turned out perfectly!

I used the ampersand as part of my title and added the "you, me" in gold thickers on either side of it (I kind of went overboard with those thickers, so be prepared to see much more of them this week!).

I added a few simple embellishments and paint splatter on my page, trying to keep them clustered around my photo and paper layers.

I stitched the triangle piece onto my card stock, added my journaling along the outside edge and then backed it with a piece of music note paper from Webster's Pages.  I tried to back this page with several different papers of various colors, but the neutral black and white seemed to work the best with my photo.  

So...have you played around with Shimelle's collection??  The embellishments of a collection are usually what draw me in, but in this case, her papers have won my heart!!  The embellishments are a super close second, though!!  

Happy Monday!!