Hi my name is Shanna and I’m addicted to Shimelle Laine’s classes. In the past couple of month’s I’ve taken her Cover to Cover class and signed up to the self paced versions of Pretty Paper Party (which I’m still working my way through), True Stories (which I have printed out and will start looking at when I’ve finished Pretty Paper Party) and a few days ago I signed up for her True Scraps class The Perfect Collection.
As you should know I’m a digital scrapper so some of her ideas take a little adapting, but that morning I had managed to find a site selling a digital version of the original Amy Tangerine collection. I loved it but I had no idea what I would do with it. Then Shimelle put on her blog that the Perfect Collection was available.
I watched the video (with some hilariously bad subtitles – which on subsequent watches disappeared) and I knew exactly what to do with the kit. I printed off the pdf which had cutting instructions, opened 16 of my favourite papers in Photoshop and figured out how to cut the papers into different layers of the right size and then it came to putting the layouts together I go stuck. I labelled a copy of the cutting instructions with which paper was each cutting instruction. I had so many windows open that I trying to use the pdf to piece together the sixteen layouts (three double page and 10 single page layouts) was just giving me a headache. So I left it and went to bed.
I woke up at 4am and a flash of inspiration took over. I had all these cute little diagrams of how to cut the paper that were all the same size. I could cut them out. So I printed off another two copies of the cutting instructions and cut them out. I drew around one of the squares onto a sheet of twelve by twelve cardstock making myself some little pages. (after which i realised I actually needed another double page so I drew around the square onto some white paper and stuck it over.
I sat there and arranged all the pieces one by one until I had the plans for sixteen pages all sort.
After that it was easy. Using all the pieces that I had made into the correct size layers. Before I left for work at seven that morning I had all the layouts down to the stage where they are what Shimelle calls ‘starting points’.
It has taken me three days (I was out for almost twelve hours yesterday) and I have all the layouts done.
Once I had made my discovery the hardest part was picking which group of photos I wanted to use and then narrowing the 305 down to the stories I wanted to tell about my day trip to Paignton Zoo.
Here are my 13 finished layouts. (In no particular order as of yet)
and after that I even drew out the shape of a 12x12 and a 12x24 layout and cut out two more sets of cutting instructions I figured that I could take them on holiday with me next week and play around with own starting points and take a picture with my phone and add them to my Evernote account so I they will show up on my computer when I get home.
I think that’s the most layouts I’ve ever done in 3 days.
Shanna.
