International Scrapbooking Day is here!!!

Woop woop! International Scrapbooking Day is here! And I am so excited to be a part of it by hosting a challenge over at The Scrapgals' Facebook Group!!!

So if you're here and it's 7pm pacific/9pm central, then "Celebrate You" is live.  I don't know about y'all, but I have worked hard to be happy with photos of myself.  It's a bit uncomfortable, you know, staring at a photo of myself staring back! But I deserve to be in my scrapbooks and so do all of you awesome scrappy gals (guys too). So for this challenge, go scrap yourself!  Whether it's the latest sassy selfie, a photo of you completing a goal, you being silly, or a photo on one of your birthdays - make a page that celebrates you!  I chose to do a birthday layout, because today IS my birthday! 😆 

So, here are some pretty pictures and a little bit about how I put it together. Scroll all the way down for a freebie and givaway...
The main color that stands out in my photos is the purple in my hair, so I wanted to play that up.  For this layout, I wanted to do something artsy. Mists. Some stamping. I admire the current trend of using white cardstock backgrounds, especially to make colors pop when doing mixed media projects, but I love color. I chose a solid background, but went for this very dark grey, which is "cardstock" from a Felicity Jane kit.

To make the purple (and a secondary accent of blue) pop, I kept the rest in blacks, whites and greys.  I had this idea that it would be cool to have some messy thread bundles and could swear I had a grey paper with white swirls that could mirror that.  I looked and looked and couldn't find it until it hit me - it's a fabric in my quilting stash!  That works; adds texture and is even more a reflection of me.

Another thing I wanted to incorporate was typed journaling directly on the background.  Yeah, that's where the dark cardstock was tricky.  I got this brilliant idea - use the white correction tape on my typewriter.  So I pulled it out, spent way too long changing the ribbon - had it backwards at first - fixing the alignment, writing my draft, and then attempting to type it.  No joy.  The correction tape already had spots where it had been used, and the letters were spotty.  I thought I'd have to do the obvious and type my journaling on some other paper and add it on.  Then my Silhouette Cameo to the rescue.  It took some, fiddling, trial and error, and learning how to fill in a font with the offset function, but I finally got what I wanted!

The little crown brads have been in my stash since around 2007!  I still love brads. I guess they fell out of style for a long time, possibly because they were so fiddly to put on?  Well, recently I learned a trick that has me pull them out more. I clip off the prongs with a wire cutter and stick a glue dot on the back instead.  Love to sprinkle them in with the more trendy enamel dots and sequins. 

I also slipped on a very old metal ribbon slide - I think that's what they were called.  Really am challenging myself to use up some of those old metal embellies.
Oh flair, how I love thee... and here I used two that I never thought I'd use! That's one "best day ever" used, a couple dozen more to go! 😂  This one is from a Felicity Jane kit as well.  Sadly, I'm not sure where the "me, myself and I" came from.  


 I cut the title from one of my favorite fonts.  It wasn't popping enough as a solid white, so I did some distress ink smooshing and painting to get a bit of a dip-dyed effect.


Speaking of titles, I decided to make this a freebie in honor of iNSD, in addition to a few other words that might suit your layout.  Click here to get the .studio3 file, which is all ready for cutting.


Aaaand, for added fun, I will randomly select a winner from all the submissions to my "Celebrate You" challenge to send a little happy mail.  Just post your submission in this thread at The Scrapgals FB group.  You have 24 hrs - until Sunday May 7th, 7pm pacific/9pm central.  I'll announce the winner shortly after!  Have fun and remember to make it all about you! 💜