Freedom Scrapping!

I'll admit I am not one to jump on a bandwagon of any kind, and it can take me a while to get my head around any current trends in all aspects of my life - I think there's a little part of me deep inside that like to be different; whether it's a form of rebellion or pure stubbornness I don't know!

One such scrapbooking trend that has passed me by is the week by week/month by month multi-sized scrapping in a single, pocketed protector. I think it looks absolutely fabulous and I love the work I see by all the talented scrapbookers out there, and the idea of having a detailed photographic account of daily life is so cool for the future - but it's just not for me at the moment. I scrapbook in a nature that I can only affectionately refer to as "shambolically" ( I scrap whatever I fancy whenever inspiration grabs me, it could be an old photo of a special occasion from when I was a child, or a mobile shot that I snapped the day before) which perfectly suits the limited time I have to enjoy my hobby. And to paraphrase a famous scrapbooker from across the pond, I'm ok with that. I just go with it.

Unfortunately for me though, sitting back from this trend does mean that I'm less inclined to look at products which are designed with this style of memory preservation in mind, as I pressume they won't work with "what I do".........so it's just as well that, being an Echo Park fan, I decided to check out their brand new Photo Freedom range, and I was really excited by what I saw! The 12x12 sheets are primarily intended for multi-sized scrapping projects, with their designs split into journaling cards that are perfectly sized for that method. But I was drawn to the beautiful colours and patterns of two of the releases, and we all know I can't refuse a nice bit of patterned paper, so I snapped some up and set about working with them - A4 style!

Here's is my first page, using products from the "Today's Story" release:

Using a piece of grey chevron paper as my base (don't forget you can find links to all the products in the shop at the end of the post!),  I set about utilising a single sheet from the range to provide all the other colour and pattern I needed.

First, the bright, geometric "Love" journaling card made the perfect anchor for my design to flow from, and with a sticker from the amazing value-for-money matching Elements Sheet (the 12x12 sheets are absolutely jam packed with really useful stickers and elements and costs just £2.99!!) layered on top, provided a title:

Next, I used a selection of other journaling cards from the same sheet to cut pretty hexagons to use as a mat for my photo. I added interest to them by cutting away/adding heart shapes to them, and adding a doodled border to give them all a uniform feel.

A further journaling card from the sheet, decorated with ampersands, provided a perfect base for a note of who was in the pic and a little embellishment cluster.

The very generous Element sheet was laden with stickers that I found hard to choose from - I have loads left, including tags, arrows and alphas that are super useable and I'm looking forward to popping them on future pages. You can see here how I made a little cluster at the top of my page using a few:

and here how a couple were the perfect match for each other to add a bit of interest to what was just a random silly photo:

For my second page - I decided to see how far I could push the Elements stickers from the "Happy Moments" range.....would I, a patterned paper addict, be able to create a page I loved using mainly stickers?!

This time a sheet from Lily Bee's Persnickety formed my base, and a journaling card from the "Moments" 12x12 sheet helped form my title, along with some of the cute alphas from the stickers sheet.

I used lots of stickers to form my compulsory embellishment cluster - pretty border stickers were chopped down to size in place of patterned paper, and given the doodling treatment before being adorned with photo corners, arrows, starburst stickers layered together to make a flower, and a couple of washi flags!

To the right, more stickers from the sheet provided a date, and some of the fab speech bubble stickers made ideal spots for my journaling.

I popped a pretty frame sticker in the bottom corner of my page, and filled it with more from the sheet, layering them with 3D foam to add a bit of depth and interest.

Again, I used doodling around my page and around the elements to bring them all together.

I have lots of stash left over after making these two pages - I was really surprised and pleased at how far the supplies went, even when used in a "traditional scrapbooking" manner. The colours and patterns of designs also work easily with other things I already own so I'll look forward to mixing these in on future projects. Both pages also came together really quickly too by my usual standards; and even limiting myself to just one 12x12 sheet and the elements stickers from each range still gave me plenty of scope to create a page without wasting time scrabbling around for extra supplies.

So, whether you're a Project Lifer, a Document 2012er or an "old fashioned" scrapper like myself - be sure to check out the Photo Freedom ranges and see how they could be incorporated into the way you preserve your memories :)

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