Panoramas & Pocket Pages with Carpe Diem

03.15.16

Panoramas & Pocket Pages with Carpe Diem

Good morning! Brenda Smith (hyperlink to my Instagram: www.instagram.com/idocumentlife) here with you today to share a pocket page spread made using the Carpe Diem collection. I love how fun and vibrant the colors are in this collection and I couldn't wait to make it work with some photos from early March. 
 
 
I was inspired to find a use for the Simple Stories panorama page protectors and decided to create a collage modeled after a watercolored polka dot paper included in the Carpe Diem collection. 
 
 
I made the panorama collage in Photoshop, adding my photos and leaving placeholder circles where I would punch circles from the 6x6 Carpe Diem pad. I decided to make the photos in the collage black and white so they'd pop with the bright colors of the Carpe Diem collection. 
 
 
I picked out cards that mimicked the watercolor feel of my collage. I tried to keep things light and airy by choosing cards with white backgrounds. Because I do type so much journaling, I often find that the dark block of text can be too heavy for my taste without offsetting it with something much brighter (like the white cards). 
 
 
I hand-stitched the outsides of all the circles in my panoramic collage. I used variegated embroidery floss so that it would create an ombre effect. This was a long and tedious process as I am a painfully-slow hand-stitcher, but I think the final effect is quite the statement.
 
 
I repeated the floral embellishments and the watercolor effects throughout the spread. While I love the artistic part of this craft, my main focus is usually on the storytelling. I make sure to include ample spaces to tell our stories. When I go to journal on my cards, I like to look at the photos for a few moments to think about what emotions and words come to mind when recalling this moment. I often find this lends to deeper journaling than just the who, what where, why of it all. 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by the blog today. I do hope I've inspired you to fill those panorama pockets with something fun and unique!