You & Me

One day last week when I got about an hour or so in my room I wanted to create something. But I didn't want to jump into Halloween yet and the other two pages that I need to finish I was waiting for pictures to be printed at Costco. What I really wanted was to work with specific products that I hadn't had a chance to work with yet, namely, Echo Park's Little Girl collection. So for this page I started with products and then searched for pictures. What I found in my little power sort box of photos waiting to be used was some random pictures of Kaley & I that have just never found a home.... well, there was my inspiration! Here is my 12x12 layout that I created for her...
Each sheet of Echo Park paper is so cute on both sides and I don't have the extra money to buy two of every pack just so that I have two of every sheet so I have to be creative in how I use their papers and stretch them out as far as possible. Which is where this idea comes from: I took one sheet of patterned paper and cut out a 10 1/2 inch square out of the center using my trimmer, I then adhered an 11x11 inch sheet of white cardstock onto the top of that. Then I stitched around it twice, once pretty straight (as straight as I can stitch!) and then once very wavy.

That 10 1/2 inch square that I cut out of the base paper? I flipped it over and adhered it to the center of the white cardstock! One sheet of paper but used in two different ways and giving me lots of color and layers. Here is a view of the back of my paper.
Once I cropped and lined up my three pictures I knew that I wanted to title to be in that empty square so I cut some paper out just big enough to cover my Tim Holtz Alterations label die and ran it through my Sizzix. But I found that just the label wasn't enough to really fill that space. What did I do? I used the negative space that I just cut out and flipped it over! It looks like two sheets of paper but really it's one. Here is a close-up.
I stitched around it as best I could (it was not easy!) and then added one of their cute little journaling cards that is on one side of their paper and then added some letter stickers that come in the pack and I stamped the ampersand symbol.
This little cluster consists of the i love you sticker from the collection pack and the little heart I got at Michael's in the dollar section. It was attached to little clothespins but it seemed just too bulky so I took it off and just added the heart.

I journaled around the outside and voila! A pretty cute page using very little of my precious Echo Park paper.