Working a backlog

With holidays, illness and injury I have a backlog of Scraptastic Kits sitting on my desk. I started the club in September of ’13 as I talked about here and here. I’ve been really pleased with the usability, trendiness and quality of the kits that have come in the mail, even though I haven’t touched most of them. Well, the past two weeks have changed that! I worked a little bit from each of the backlogged kits and I have to say that I’ve loved most of what I used. Let me show you a sampling.

This one cam from the December Just Breathe kit + extra wood veneer + extra cut apart sheet. I used the sketch featured in Scraptastic’s blog about teaming up with Page Maps to provide a sketch challenge. I really enjoyed using the sketch. My process usually involves drawing up my own sketch before I start a page. But for these photos I had a really lackluster idea. This Page Maps sketch fit my two small photos perfectly and added some pizzazz to my layout that I don’t think I would have come up with on my own.

Then from the October Never Tear Us Apart kit, I made two layouts using the same basic sketch (my own). I don’t mind making very duplicate layouts when they are stored in separate albums. I’ve done this before and I’m sure I will do it over and over again. It saves me energy and I can get more scrapped! I just made slight adjustment to accommodate different numbers and sizes of photos. When I use lots of pictures I keep the layout very simple to let the photos and story stay central.

Here is one more set of duplicate layouts using the October Never Tear Us Apart kit. I was running low on the large alpha stickers for titles in this kit so I used them to emphasize the date and made a more detailed title on the Cricut and cut it from some of the colorful chevron paper for more interest. On the second layout I added in scraps of pattern paper on the left hand side to add more detail and to fill in the “gap” that was used for extra journaling on the first layout. Plus using bits of pattern paper helped me use a sheet of pattern paper (the blue and pink stripes, reverse side is pink and white scottie dogs) that I really didn’t like at all, neither a nor b sides. I can throw in bits of my less favorite items to still use up the whole kit without feeling like the “ugly” product is ruining my page. (I have to say this is the ONLY thing so far I have really disliked in a kit.)