Hello crafters!  It is Laura here today, and I am so super excited to share my very first post as part of the 2016 Simple Stories Creative Team!  I played with the "Life in Color" collection for both of the pages that I created for this reveal and let me tell you, it does not disappoint!  I am a long time hard-core Simple Stories fan, largely because each release includes so many fabulous patterns and embellishments - that there is something for everyone in each gorgeous collection!
 

My first layout is called "view life in colour" and I definitely went bold with this one!  The page documents  a summer day spent on our boat and checking out the sights, my youngest and my husband really enjoy being out on the water.  I opted for a central focal area for my photo and layered up several of the beautiful patterned papers beneath it.

My favourite part is always the embellishing, embellishments can truly take a layout to the next level.  I love layering up a variety of types of embellishments for impact.
 

With fun elements like wood veneer pieces, bradz, washi, chipboard frames, clips, die cuts, chipboard, enamel dots and two types of stickers I could have just kept adding and adding goodies!  I may have had to tell myself to walk away at one point! ha!
 

I really wanted to use black enamel dots so I pulled them from the Carpe Diem scrapbook collection, I just thought they would pop really nicely off of the yellow base paper. I was right, they look fab!  I am also so in love with the clips Simple Stories has added to their collections, the designs are great and they are so unique! (You can see one on this page above the photo, it is wood-grained with a heart on it.)
 

It is super fun to use a variety of text in a title, for mine I combined a large chipboard piece and the mid sized alphas stickers from the Expressions Cardstock Sticker sheet, and I just love the way it turned out!  I am trying real hard to remember to add journaling to all my pages even if it is pretty basic.  Tucking the journaling into an embellishment cluster helps to pull it into my page.