This is How I Do It

Hello Nesters!  Anyone else having Montell Jordan running through their minds?

Dawn here, and today I'm going to share my process with you in pictures (I'm still lamenting the death of my camera, and still researching new ones).  Warning: this post is really picture heavy!

I've been working on using up the April Studio Calico kits.  Today, I'm going to share two layouts I've made, and I'm going to walk you through one of them.

Almost always, I start with my picture(s), and then I decide on the size of my layout.  I'm typically a 12x12 scrapper, but lately I've been enjoying the 8.5x11 pages.  Next, I choose the paper:

I'm kinda random when I choose paper...if I think it may work with the photo, I grab it.  I also don't measure my paper.  I typically use my thumb to mark where I want to cut it and go from there.  

I start with what I think will be my "base" piece and cut that first:

I keep building from there:

I knew I wanted the brown paper as my photo mat, but then it needed some color, so I cut the orange dot paper.  I also added the hexagon vellum under the alphabet paper:

There was a teal blue in my son's shirt, so I brought that in with some strips:

At this point, absolutely nothing is glued down.  I took a moment to glue down the paper (but not the photo):

This part of the process goes pretty quickly for me.  It's the next step - adding embellishments - where I get indecisive.  :)

I started by adding a few things to opposite corners of the photo.  At this point, I adhered the photo with foam dots.  I also knew I wanted my title to be in the upper-righthand corner of the photo, so I started to place that:

Once I had the title down, I knew the layout needed something in the opposite corner, so I added this sticker with foam dots:

I was just about finished, but when I looked at the layout, it needed a little something:

I fixed that by adding a bit more of the border strip to the top left corner (you can see that I made a mistake when writing the date, so I just added a small piece of paper to cover it):

And here is the completed layout:

A few detail shots:

The wood piece in the middle photo is one that I shared with you last week.  The "tab" in the bottom photo is actually a slide frame from Basic Grey that I tucked under the picture.

I didn't stop at one layout though...here's another I created using the same products:

Yes, I am a little bit in love with the wood-patterned star stickers.  :)

Here are some close-ups of this one:

Again, I used some of the wood pieces that I created last week.  I still have a couple left over, so you may see those in a future project.

What have you been up to lately?  Anyone else vary the size of her layouts?