Documenting Celebrations with Simple Stories

Hi Everyone its Nancy here with my post for August, and this month I am focusing on documenting my recent birthday celebration.  There are some fabulous themed collections in the shop, but I decided to go with a couple of different collections from the shop.
If you have read any of my blog posts over the past couple of years, you will know I love woodgrain patterned paper and the Simple Stories Basics collection is just full of the yumminess.  The Simple Stories Life in Colour also includes lots of yummy Woodgrain and great other icons.   I used the Sn@p! Pack from this collection which is great for layouts as well as pocket pages and mini albums.  To add a little bit of a twist to my stash of supplies I added the My Mind’s Eye Happy Camper, which tones wise works really well with the Simple Stories collections.

I have made 4 layouts to document this event and have loads of lovely stash left to make a pocket page layout for July too; currently I am 4 months behind on project life though.

The first page look very blank and showcases the beautiful woodgrain paper, but my plan is to take journaling from my personal journal and add to this page, so please bare this in mind.

The journaling card in the Sn@p! pack come in a variety of size and some of them feature some pre-printed layering on them, which makes for great for minimalist layering.  The pack also contains a few die-cut elements, like this camera, which are fab.

My second page uses the B-side of the woodgrain paper, which features a variety of lined and grid papers in white and cream, and again they are perfect for a background.

I added some texture on the back if the layout using some ink and a stencil from my stash; it helps to highlight the teals from the two collections that I used.


I have again used some of the different sized Sn@p! cards on this page, which are double side and include different elements/icons.  The patterns on the back of them are great for layering without having larger pieces of paper from the collection.

For my third page I really wanted to play with the different patterns in the Simple Stories and My Mind’s Eye collections, so I decided to take a couple of my circle punches.

I also added some gesso on the dark woodgrain patterned paper to help ground the design and add some more circular elements.  As normal I will have videos up on my YouTube channel to accompany these layouts and explain my process further.

I decide to use just one photo on this page as I wanted the background to really be the feature.  I printed it slightly larger than normal and used some simple matting to make it stand out.  I then cut the wording from one of the Sn@P! cards to act as my title.  This page will not have any journaling, but will fall between other pages that do.

For my final page this month, I wanted to document all the other photos and details from an evening out with my family.  I printed these on my home printer using the wallet size feature.

I cut down some of the cards to fit in with the size of the photos to create a simple collage of photos.  I then used elements form the die cut pack to add a bit of layering to these pieces.  The cards in the Sn@p! pack includes cards with the months of the year on so work great both on layouts and in pocket pages.

The finishing piece on this page was a simple stamped title, using some black ink.
Well I hope you have enjoyed seeing how I have mixed together a couple of different collection and using the great Simple Stories Basics to ground them.  That is the great thing of woodgrain; it works with any colour pallet you decide.
I hope that you have a great August and I will see you back in September with another collection of pages, using beautiful papers.