Remember Friends

This is another photo lifted from my future daughter-in-law's face book page. I think the title is appropriate since she and my son are finishing up their last year of grad school and will be moving on from the friendships they have made while in college. I hope that, like mine, these friendships will last a lifetime. I have recently regained contact with my roommate from my freshman and sophomore years of college and with the wonders of this medium, we are renewing one of my most cherished friendships.

This layout was done using K&Company Susan Winget Nature collection, Prima Innocence and Juliette collection flowers, along with my Silhouette electronic cutter to make the white lace border. I hand cut the branch from another sheet of the Nature paper.

I have been asked by beginning scrappers how I make my large circles, and since I used one on this page decided to address that basic question with my very basic method. I used my kitchen nesting mixing bowls to trace patterns on plain white card stock, cut them out and saved them as patterns to trace.


Since I want to use the outer edge of my paper for background, I use my crafter's knife to cut a 3" section following my penciled pattern, then finished cutting out the circle, leaving the outer portion in tact. I can make a ring by following the same procedure with a smaller sized circle pattern. That leaves me with the cuts shown below and any number of options to utilize my one sheet of beautiful paper in a single layout, or stretch it out into several.
I can use one side for the center, staggering the reverse side of the ring and using the space between to add trim or jewels:
or use the ring to create a patterned border:

Or reverse the patterns:
Or use just the ring, like I did for my layout, reserving the inner circle for another layout, or place the outer paper over a sheet of coordination patterned paper, or coordinating card stock, or plain white card stock, or.....you can see the possibilities are almost endless, and that doesn't even include all the ways you can cut up your circle and ring to create more designs.

I created the pretty back ground shape on this layout by much the same means, except that instead of using my kitchen bowls to trace a pattern, I used a die cut I purchased and used on a different page. You can create all kinds of patterns this way. I always ink my cut elements as well because I like the definition it gives them. The same thing can be accomplished with a slightly different effect by tracing around your cuts with pens or colored pencils, which also gives a nice finished look.

Thanks so much for dropping in to take a look!