4 Squares, 3 Lines

I visited the website of a 2 Peas Garden Girl, Shimelle, for the first time a couple of days ago, and found this really simple page starter in her post, Scrapbook Starting Points. "Hmmm...cute concept," I thought and filed it in the back of my brain. Later that day, with nothing in particular to scrapbook and no particular products in mind to use, I retrieved the thought and said, "Why not?!"

The challenge was to use 4 squares of patterned paper, and 3 lines of ribbon or trim. I pulled out a photo that didn't mean a whole, whole lot (it wasn't one of my kids or a particularly memorable vacation) and dug out the only 6x6 paper pad I owned (a prize from a few months ago) and went to work. And it WORKED! Of course I had to change things up a bit: I did lay out the four squares of paper, but made a little three piece banner hung vertically to satisfy the three lines concept. Yes, banners are still an obsession of mine...sigh.

I liked the finished page so much that I transferred the concept to a photo that actually DID mean something, found four papers, old and new, cut them into 6x6 squares, and did it all over again. This time I used the original idea of three horizontal lines, but also included a 3-piece vertical banner to hide some of the very busy paper in the upper right quadrant. The equation for this page is 4+3+3=done!

What is really amazing is that both of these pages were completely in less than 24 hours. And for a slow scrapper like myself, that's quite an accomplishment. The most time-consuming task was shirring the ribbon! Shimelle's starting point certainly shaved off a significant portion of time for me. Getting started IS the hardest part. :)

Updated layout #2: