Scrapbook Page: Clown Around

This layout shows the silly side of my husband.  His birthday is in January and we had not one, but two parties to celebrate.  When his side of our family came down, it was the first time most of them were seeing him after he got out of the hospital.  There was a fire at our house on Christmas Eve and he sustained third degree burns to his hands.  Once everyone knew he was going to be okay, it was time for the jokes to begin.  His mom brought down a battery operated tea light candle to put on his cake - no fire for Stew.  Not one to miss an opportunity to expand on a joke, this picture shows Stew warming his hands over this tea light.  He makes me laugh so much.

In the layout I wanted to focus on how much I love to see him being silly and how much he makes me laugh.

I used a layered sticker from My Mind's Eye (MME) that reads, "I love to see you happy, laughing and smiling."  I couldn't resist that tag from Jillibean Soup - Gnome one makes me smile like you do.  It's just the sort of play on words in which Stew excels.

For the background paper, I a piece of cardstock from October Afternoon's Farmhouse collection and as is the case most of the time when I scrap, I changed my mind on which side of the paper I was going to use once I started the layout.

I originally pulled a piece of Studio Calico paper to use in addition to the Memory Box papers (on clearance at Two Peas for $0.22 - score!); however, there is so much dark brown in the photo that the layout really needed dark brown elements to ground it, so I chose that brown striped paper.  I'm not sure of the manufacturer, it's a piece of paper I've had in my stash forever.

Finding the right letters was also a challenge.  I love those Pink Paislee wood letters, but there wasn't a "c" - so I pulled a large chipboard piece and painted it with a Jenni Bowlin paint dauber in Brown Sugar.  For the rest of the title, I used Studio Calico letters and pennants - the wood pennants went nicely with the wood alphas.

I used a strip from MME's Fun Day collection - it's the dark brown strip underneath the word Clown and the strip reads, "fun day," repeatedly.

For the date, I used a Elle's Studio label and stamped the date using the Smash Book date stamper in Chestnut Roan chalk ink by Colorbox.

Originally, I had chosen blue and green embellishments, but once the page came together, it was clear to me that I really needed something to accent that dark brown paper so I changed up the embellishments and went with some light and brown buttons.

For the journaling, I used a craft tag and stamped lines on it with Lawn Fawn's Schoolhouse Backdrop - because I definitely need lines or else all of my writing will be downhill.  Once that was done, it took me a while to figure out what else to do.  There was an awkward space in between that MME label and the journaling.

To solve this I pulled some chipboard shapes from Bella Blvd - the Brown and Champagne collection from Sophisticates.  I bought these in every color about a year ago from a discount online scrapbook supply store.  I suspect they are pretty old as all of the adhesive on the back is dried up.  This doesn't bother me - I like the way they look and a little bit of Tombo Mono Multi and they're good to go.

In the end I'm pretty happy with the way this layout came together.

If you'd like to watch me put this layout together, you can do so below: