Hi there friends! My name is Rebecca Larson (ig:@digiscrapbec) I am so excited to be here at Simple Stories, and even more excited about the new digital lines that are givingscrappers additional options and flexibility for collecting the memories we cherish.

For the last couple years, I have been fascinated with family history. Lets be honest, because photography was so expensive and hard to come by, our predecessors went all out when getting their portraits taken!  When browsing the digital The Story of Us collection, I was drawn to the vibrant gold, sleek black, and antiqued white and knew that I had to give life to a classic bridal photo.

One of the great things about digital scrapbooking is the option to correct photos, and tweak colors to match the scheme of the products that you are working with. Take this gorgeous picture of my good friend’s great grandmother:

I was able to clean up the image, by removing the bend/tear in the corner, smooth out the texture, lighten, and change the color to better match the paper and elements in the Story of Us collection. 

I wanted the to gold in the photo to shine (no pun intended:)), and so I used the striped foil paper for the majority of the open space. Doesn’t the quality of the detail make it look like actual physical paper?

Finally, the coordinating elements really make the photo pop, and gives it the timeless feel. Another positive aspect of adding digital components to a layout is the flexibility to resize the item to fit your design, as I did with the photo mat. It is actually one of the 2x3 cards, that I resized to fit and mat the photo perfectly!

I didn’t want to add any additional distraction, so I added name, location and date of the photo in the bottom right corner. 

The possibilities with this kit are endless and timeless! Thank you for stopping by!

Hi everyone! Allison here with a layout using the Snow Fun Simple Set and a new sketch that mixes traditional scrapbooking with the SN@P! Pocket Pages.

You can download the full sketch with measurements and placements here.

The left side of the sketch is designed with a more traditional style of scrapbooking in mind, while the right side uses photos and cards with the SN@P! Pocket Page, Design 3.

Here is my layout based on the sketch.

The last few years we've had some pretty wicked snow and ice storms in my part of the country so I'm definitely not short on snow pictures. Both of my boys love playing outside and especially when there is lots of white, fluffy snow to roll around in or throw at each other.

The colors of the Snow Fun collection were so great for my snow pictures. From the wood papers matching the wood fence in our backyard to the blues and greens perfectly matching my oldest son, Drew's, hat. I did run into a little speed bump with my youngest son, Jackson's, hat. It was bright red! A simple solution was to convert all of his pictures to black and white. Not only did it compliment the papers, it also added a fun and different look to mix color photos with black and white photos. The wood paper with the snowflakes was my favorite of the whole collection. I thought it would be a great background for my layout and the snowflakes would help to frame my photo block design.

I used a combination of cards and photos to create a photo block and then added some hand stitching around the whole thing.

I used 4 x 4" photos and a card for most of the photo block but used 2 x 2" photos and patterned paper squares for one area. I added some snowflakes stickers to accent the snowflakes design on the paper. On the right page I used a combination of cards and photos with the SN@P! Pocket Page, Design 3 I decided to add some embellishments to the empty space on my photos. To go with the snowy theme, I added snowflake circles cut from patterned paper and then some hand stitching. On the snowman journaling card I added two smaller photos and a few word stickers. For my journaling, I let the "today is" card do most of the work. I used a heart sticker to "check" the box that fit the mood of my layout. I used the same snowflake embellishments on the empty space on the second  6x4" photo. I also sanded the edges of all the photos and patterned papers to reveal the white edges. I thought it would be very fitting for a snow themed page!

I hope you enjoy the new sketches! Happy New Year!