McKayla @ seven

In April, my mom and I flew down to Southern California to see my sister, Nichole, my niece, McKayla, my mom's parents and my mom's brother, Tom. During our visit, I took some close-up shots of McKayla. I posted the pictures in a blog post entitled, The many sides of McKayla.
The photos were way too cute to remain only on my blog, though, so I crafted a 12 x 12 layout to showcase three of the five pictures. Here it is...


I titled the layout, McKayla @ seven. I inked the @ chipboard symbol (by Basic Grey) with Impress black ink and then set it aside to dry for a few minutes. I hand wrote mckayla, drew a straight black line with a ruler, and used American Crafts thickers to spell out seven. (Originally, I was going to spell out McKayla with black or white thickers, but I didn't have enough "a" letters.)


The structure of the layout was lifted from a sketch in the Scrapbooks Etc. Page Planner. (Love this magazine!)


Having a sketch to work off of makes scrapbooking so much more enjoyable! :-)


I included two journaling cards in the layout. I like having lots of room to share my thoughts and feelings on a layout, but sometimes due to the structure of the layout and its space restrictions, you have to get a little creative! On the original sketch, the designer only journaled on the right card, but I knew that what I wanted to say would not fit on just one card, so I used both.

The white card reads: While in L.A. for a visit, I whipped out my camera and surprised McKayla! I laughed at her facial expression (center) and she grinned!

The pink card reads: What a beautiful smile! Love those cute, little, white baby teeth, which may not be there much longer. April 2009

And it just so happened that less than one month later, McKayla lost her first tooth! :-)


On this page, I chose to mat the middle picture on light pink paper and angle it slightly to draw attention to it. I also propped it up on pop dots to give it a little added dimension.

In my opinion, journaling and photos are the two most important parts of any layout. It's what friends and family members will zero in on and pay close attention to when viewing your pages. And it's also what I find myself attracted to when looking at other scrapbooker's layouts.

{supplies}
Cardstock: Bazzill (white); Stampin' Up! (blue)
Paper: Costco pack (pink); Luxe Designs (white w/gridlines)
Thickers: American Crafts
Ribbon: Michael's Stores
Chipboard: Basic Grey
Ink: Impress inkpad
Buttons/Flowers: Unknown
Embroidery Floss: DMC
Pen: American Crafts Precision 03

Oh, and I have one more thing to share...

...these are pictures that McKayla drew while we were hanging out in the hotel room. (I just love little kids' drawings!) As you can see, Nonni is on the left; I'm in the middle; and Kayla is on the right.

When McKayla showed me the drawing of me, I jokingly said, "I only have *one* ear! Where's my second ear?" To which she replied, "It's under your hair!" Oh...silly me! :-)

I had planned to make a pocket in the layout for these precious drawings, but completely forgot and adhered everything down. So, instead I'm planning to glue these adorable sketches to the back of the layout. That way, years from now I can still enjoy them!