Hi  Wendy here today :) 

Here in FL where there is no Autumn I had this picture of the one tree that dropped its leaves (in January).  Since my photo was so pitiful I had to rely on the amazing journaling cards in the new Sweater Weather collection to carry the layout.  To do this I also framed the card to add some more weight/interest.  I embellished the area further with leaves falling (wishful thinking) and some flower bits & pieces.

To further add interest to my sad Autumn page, I started with the sticker "Count your Blessings" at the top of the page and finished with some stickers and die-cuts beside my page, "even when they don't fall" 

Some sewing and enamel dots added texture on my page giving me a perfect Autumn page, even without pictures to prove the story!

This layout was built because of all the fun pieces in this collection.  I loved the die-cuts and brads and the cute foxes; perfect for our little boy!  I loved the red and black floral pieces, but they were too intense for my layout, but by using the woodgrain as the base I was able to use smaller portions of my other colors.  I then lined up my journaling card and insta squares and filled in with the various bits and pieces that matched my theme.  

The layout came together really quick as Simple Stories thought of everything you could want in this collection.

I love the enamel dots that are now a part of the collections, but how do you get them in the perfect location?  Here's a little trick I found, grab a few wooden veneer pieces and scatter them.  

Then when you are happy with your scattering that is natural since you didn't have to place them, remove the veneers one at a time and put your dot.

As you can see on this version, the base of my layout is complete, but my layout feels empty and unbalanced on the bottom, so...

add some lines and put in your journaling!  It is an easy way to include the who, what, where, when of a layout and it doesn't have any weight, but can balance the empty areas of a layout!

I have one more layout using Sweater Weather on my blog and some more fun journaling tips, http://antenucci.blogspot.com, see you there!