Shape Up or Ship Out!

Another twist in my crafty journey.  Shapes!  Not my paper but my photos.  When I started scrapbooking cropping your photos into shapes was all the rage.  I really didn't like the shaped photos.  I would crop them down smaller but rarely into shapes.

I don't know what came over me but I decided to shape up my photos.  The first one I shaped the photos into triangles.  Photoshop Elements has the shape of a banner so I used it to crop my photos into shape.  In the "old days" I would have had to use a template, make a pattern, or forbid it cut by hand.

The Story
This is my husband's mother, father, and sister.  I've heard so many stories of Jim and Judy growing up.  I know their adventures and the love their parents have for them makes them strong.

The Layout

What I Learned

• Scrapbook more of Jim's family and his stories.  It's easy to scrapbook the familiar stories.  I know it will be an adventure in and adventure to hear more of the stories and put them with photos.
• Triangles are not bad.  I think they turned out pretty sharp.  The only problem was getting them the right size for the photos to be large enough to see, but small enough to put on my layout.  With trail and error printing using regular copy paper I got what I wanted.
• I didn't layer paper!  Instead I used a Prima mask and created a design using Clear Snap's Smooch SPRITZ.  They are so cool.  They are pearlized a  and gave my paper a little sparkle.  This was my first attempt using Smooch SPRITZ.  Easy to do.
• I used my Epiphany Crafts Button Maker.  Once you've created your own buttons it is hard to do anything else.
• I had a blast with the lower right hand corner.  I stamped the flowers with Clear Snap's Watermark ink and let dry.  Then I used their Design Adhesives and added flocking to it.  For the third layer I added Prima flowers.  The twist to the flowers is that I melted my UTEE in the melt pot and dipped the flowers into the hot UTEE.  After they dried (quickly) the flowers opened up a bit.  Totally incredible!  I learned this technique on Graphic 45's blog last week. 
• I painted the center of the flower with Clear Snaps Smooch.  It's always a learning experience to work with new-to-me products.

Overall I'm wonderfully happy with how my shaped photos turned out.  I have several more shaped layouts I will be sharing this week.  So far I'm going to have to add shaped photos to my "I like to do that" list.

Have a Crafty Day!

Gratitude List

1.  my family
2.  another birthday
3.  God's strength and wisdom for my son
4.  people who have walked through my life and caused me to be a better person
5.  God's provision of my needs