Doily Border

Way to go, Kris!!!! Our new American Idol!

When I got my Expression back in November, the first thing I cut was Diane's George Doily. I figured it was a good cut to make sure everything was in working order. lol My husband swears it took 45 minutes to cut and 45 for me to get it off the mat and the pieces out of it. I cut it in a color that I knew I would be using for my next Minnesota album and set it aside.


My husband's mother was born and raised in Minnesota. Most of the family is still there near the farm where they were raised. They have a picnic/family reunion once a year come rain, shine, snow or bugs. We go when we can and I make an album for each of our trips. Our last one was 2007, and I decided it was time to get it done as we had hopes of going again this year.

Aunt Fran writes a picnic summary afterwards and sends it to everyone that attended that year. This one is going to take care of most of my journaling. However, by the time I remembered it, I had already pretty much used all of the pictures that I planned to use but had to have a 2nd page to go with it. (I can't handle one-pagers other than the title page and last page and had already completed the last page.)

Then I realized that I had not used my doily either. Yikes! So I started working on a page for the doily. I decided it would be neat if I could find enough small shots to fill the circles with as many faces as possible. So I had some photos reprinted and put some into collages to make them smaller and started punching out faces using one of my circle punches that just happened to fit perfectly. After punching and laying them all out, I worked my way around the frame one face at a time applying adhesive (glue pen) to the back of that circle and positioning the photo. Then on to the next one until all 19 were done.

SO what goes inside? I had originally intended to use it for a group shot. Oh well, best laid plans.... I decided to do a collage of "special" aspects of the picnic--sign that we have every year proclaiming which picnic, hayride stuck in the river, bonfire, and barn stating the "beginning of history". Although I had the collage printed on 5x7, I needed to cover up just a little bit of border and decided a black border would help it pop a little. I used my circle cutter to cut the photo and the black border.


OK, that page looked great but sure didn't do anything for the summary page. Now what? Finally decided that this was going to require some creativity. I opened Diane's files to find out what elements she used and at what size. I then started my own file using those elements and created a border. I didn't want the two sides to be the same, so I started cutting, pasting and moving to make another border using the same pieces. I cut them out, added them to the page and OMG!


This is now one of my favorite layouts! (Please pardon the cut off pages. My scanner scans to 11 3/4", so the bottom gets cut off.)



Doily Border

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Jill