School Life Part 1 – Simple Stories | Amy Kattenbelt
Hello Magpies, Amy here today. I am sharing the first 2 of 4 layouts I’ve created using Simple Stories new collection called ‘School Life‘. As the name suggests, it is a school themed collection which is perfect for scrapping any school related photos. You may have noticed that ‘pie chart’ shapes have seen a surge in popularity recently. I think in part this is driven by the beautiful colour wheel paper in Vicki Boutin’s new collection. Anyway, I decided to go with this ‘pie chart’ idea to inspire my first two layouts.
School Life
I started this layout using a piece of Vicki Boutin’s Foundation Paper (perfect for mix media backgrounds), and used Vicki Boutin’s pie chart stencil from the pack called ‘bubbles‘. I used distress oxides through the mask in matching colours.
To add a little more interest, I used a thin black fine liner and doodled around one segment from each of the pie chart circles.
I cut the white cardstock down slightly and matted it on top of the diagonal striped paper called ‘3×4 Elements‘. I love to use diagonal striped paper in this way. For my photo, which is a picture of my middle son starting the new school year, I used one of the chipboard frames. The title was taken from the chipboard pack. I love that it has great impact because of the large size.
I cut a strip of the book patterned paper to use as a horizontal anchoring point. Next, I also cut a narrower strip to go below this in the yellow patterned paper, which is the B side of the same paper. I decorated the layout with chipboard pieces and stickers from the 12×12 sticker sheet. Using all the pieces that related to ‘first day’ was great with this photo.
Then I fussy cut some of the pencils from the patterned paper called ‘Top of the Class‘. They were placed at the top and bottom of the page, along with some phrase stickers. Lastly I added three clusters of enamel dots from the collection to finish off the layout.
Be Kind….Work Hard
For my second pie chart inspired layout, I’ve gone super size and used a large scale shape. But first I added some mixed media. I used some bubble wrap to create a messy circle effect. I added some green and a little blue distress oxide, squirted with water and stamped directly onto my paper. It was great fun! I also added a little black ink splatter. Leave it until its completely dry.
It was really easy to create the pie chart shape. I started by cutting a large circle on a piece of A4 scrap paper. Draw around the largest dinner plate you can fit fully on the paper. Once that is cut out, Fold it up into quarters to find the middle of the circle. Now draw lines from the centre to the edge to create various sized segments. I created a pie chart with 5 segments as I had five pieced of patterned paper I wanted to use. Next, cut the scrap paper up along your pencil lines, and use these as a template on your patterned papers. Don’t worry if you aren’t super accurate. By distressing the edges it will hid any imperfections in size etc.
I stitched around each of the 5 segments on my sewing machine in white, before sticking to my layout in a circle. To frame the two photos I used one of the chipboard frames. I added a title using Simple Stories Foam Alpha stickers in Robins Egg as it was a close match to the colours of the frame.
I added some of the stationary themed stickers to (and around) the frame. Then I added stickers and chipboard pieces to the segments. To try and avoid too much of a chaotic look I tried to keep to matching the colours to the papers.
Because my circle design ended up slightly to the right hand side of the layout, I added a narrow strip of star patterned paper to the left side. The edges were distressed and then sewn to match the pie chart shapes.
Thank you for coming to take a closer look at my layouts. We would love to see your school or pie-chart inspired layouts over on the Hey Little Magpie Facebook group. I will be back in a few weeks to share another two layouts using this collection. In the meantime, Take Care and Stay Safe,
