Sarah's Cards Ltd: {Down by the Shore}

Hi all, Jen N here. Yet another month has disappeared - the year seems to be flying by!
This month I've been creating pages with Fancy Pants Down by the Shore collection, which I discovered quite by accident coordinates really well with Simple Stories Urban Traveller papers and embellishments.
As usual when creating in batch from one set of supplies I've picked photos from a variety of times so that the designs are spread out in my albums. This time I've chosen a pregnancy photo from 2010, Halloween photos from 2011, and beach photos from 2012. I've also created with one, two and three photos, to make sure that I vary the process and the results don't look too "same-y".

First up, a photo from 2010 when I was pregnant with my little boy and happened to attend the most awesome Alice in Wonderland themed birthday tea party! I have scrapped quite a lot of these photos before, but in my opinion you can never have too many pages about walking along the beach in fancy dress! This time I've chosen to scrap the event from the point of view of pregnancy. It amused me somewhat that this unsuspecting little baby would be entering a world where his parents dressed up as the white queen and the knave of hearts on a Saturday afternoon. You'll notice on my pages this month I've used a variety of envelope embellishments. This page features a Patterned Envelope from the 'Down by the Shore' range, and inside is some further journalling - a letter to baby taken from my pregnancy diary. The writing is quite personal, so this kind of envelope is perfect for keeping it hidden from view when people are flicking through my albums. You might know by now that I love wood veneer, and these Classic Calico v3 Circles are great for adding a focal point around another embellishment.

Working in chronological order then, the next page I have to share features photos from Halloween 2011 when our little boy was dressed up as the cutest little Dracula you ever did see! I used one of my current very favourite papers from 'Urban Traveller' - the multi diagonal stripe, along with several smaller cuts from the 'Down by the Shore' 6x6" paper pad, and pieces from the 4x6" brag pad which contains a mixture of journalling, cut apart sheets and feature designs. The gorgeous title was made using stickers from Jillibean Soup - these bargain sheets come in a couple of styles and plenty of colours. At 99p per sheet you could have one of each!
The envelope I chose this time is a design by Maya Road - Kraft Note Envelopes White Polka Dot. My journalling didn't need to be hidden, so I added it to cut down luggage tags and inserted them into the open envelope. The reader still has to interact with the page to read the full story, which I like as something a bit different in my album.

My third and final page today also features the most recent photographs, this time from a beach trip less than a year ago in July 2012. It wasn't a particularly hot day, but that doesn't really matter to kids does it?! My son loved exploring, and soon found some pools down by the water's edge. Before I could remove his socks and shoes he was in! The background paper is the B side of a sheet from My Minds Eye Boy Crazy, and I again used lots of layers of papers from the 6x6" version of Down by the Shore. My trusty wood veneer box came out again, and I chose some Sundrifter Phrases to add detail to my page. I used another different kind of envelope to house my journalling tag this time - the 'Down by the Shore' decorative bags. These are made of lovely patterned semi opaque paper, and you get two different sizes in the pack, 6 designs in total.