First of all, today I'm introducing a new, recurring blog feature for me- Back to the Future. At the end of last year I decided that my focus for 2013 was going to be on using old stash, and you've already seen bits of that during the first two months of the year. Lately, though, I've also been blessed by some of my favorite manufacturers who've sent samples of their new releases, and I'm totally inspired to use them, too! So, while I'm busy using up some of those older collections, I've decided to try to work in the newer ones, too, and that's where Back to the Future comes in. Every once in a while (once or twice a month) I'll take either a three day stretch or a single post (I can't decide between the two and will most likely just end up switching between them) and show three different layouts- one with a new collection, one with one or more older collections, and one with all of those supplies combined together. It'll be the best of both worlds, and like the movie it'll bring scrapbooking's past and present together! And, yes, I totally promise that (like yesterday), there will be many, many posts of just older lines, too! Now that my design team list has dwindled back to a reasonable level, I'll finally have more time for that.
I'm kicking off the series today with the Snippets collection from Studio Calico, which I picked because I fell madly in love with that rainbow triangle paper that you see across the top of the layout below. I've had a photo of a set of Muppet Troopers from Star Wars Celebration VI printed out and just waiting for the right paper, and the mix of colors in this sheet worked quite well with those colorful costumes! I also had fun with the new circle template in the Snippets collection and played around with a way to use it with loose glitter.
Supplies:
You can see how I assembled the page and combined the template with glitter in the video below. I can't promise to do this every time I run a Back to the Future segment, but for this inaugural batch of posts I've filmed a video for each layout! And I've also freshened things up a bit with some royalty-free music, now that I've found a source for purchasing it that doesn't cost a fortune (most places were selling tracks for $10-$30 each for a two and a half minute song!), so no more free iMovie music on loops. While a track will occasionally be repeated between videos, it'll no longer repeat over and over in the same clip. Because even I was getting tired of the same old thing!
A couple of notes about the layout- first, it's probably about time for me to retire this particular type of design (you can see variations on it here and here) even though it's been a successful one for me in the past. I'll admit that I struggled a bit on this page and it's not my best, but I learned from it, which is the important thing! More on what I learned from it next week. For this page I was more focused on playing with glitter than coming up with a brand new design, and it's good to be able to fall back on old designs so that not everything has to be new.
Second, I did make some changes to the page after I filmed the video. When I woke up the next morning and looked at it still sitting out on my desk, a couple of things just looked off. I changed out the embellishment in the top right corner since I felt that the label at the top was out of place, and I added a touch of red paper behind the top left corner of the photo block to help lead the eye in a sort of Z shape between all of the red points on the page.
Special thanks to Lilith for the idea to use a stapler to corral paper layers- it's so much easier than my previous method of adhering! You can see it in her video here.
I'm definitely loving Snippets and will be working with this collection again in the future. Tomorrow, though, will be a chance to look into the past and choose a favorite older collection to combine with this one. Any guesses as to what it might be?