SB layout in process: Bach's Cactus Nursery

Making this scrapbook layout is an experiment in (hopefully) streamlining  my process of choosing materials for a SB layout. To that end, I'm sort of 'talking' through my process, here, so if you don't want to read that, you can skip over this post, and wait till I show the finished product! (I won't be offended, I promise!)

Choosing supplies is one of the parts (besides photo editing- but that's a topic for another post) that takes the longest for me, so I want to see if I can speed that part of the process up some. 

I decided I would start this layout 'backwards' from what I usually do: instead of starting with the photos, I started by first pulling together  a bunch of potential choices for embellishments, letter stickers, and papers that I thought might work. The only things I had already decided were: 1) that the background would be cardstock in some darker color- no white or cream, and 2) that it would be a 2-page layout, so I'd potentially be using larger pieces of paper rather than scraps. And okay, I guess didn't disregard the photos altogether: since the photos are of a desert plant nursery I knew I probably wasn't going to be using pastel blue, or purple, or gold, or anything like that- but I wasn't trying to 'match' any specific colors or pull together a 'theme' at that point.  

I rifled through my boxes o' stuff (you can see my current organization method in this blog post), and grabbed anything that caught my eye in colors that I thought might work... I decided to limit myself to items in olive-y greens, orange, golden-yellow, along with some random pieces in red, brown, and blue. 

my pile of potential embellishments, stickers, and borders

Next, I went through my patterned paper and pulled out any pieces that looked like they might work with the same color palette. Again, I didn't make any choices yet, just pulled out colors / patterns I thought might work and set them aside. Lots of yellows, a few greens, orange, red, a couple blue, etc. I probably ended up with, maybe, 10-12 pieces total?

first pass: my potential patterned paper pile
(say that 5 times fast, lol!)

Then I very quickly made a second pass through this entire pile (it only took a couple minutes). Many papers I liked at first glance didn't make the cut (a couple examples:  the too-tropical-looking green pattern, the red paper that turned out to be on the pink side, the blue paper that looked way too much like the other blue one, etc.). I narrowed it down from 12-14 pieces to approximately six pieces that all more or less coordinated with each other in terms of the colors, and set my rejects aside. The picture below is what survived the second pass:

patterned paper + borders, scraps, etc. that made the cut
(at this point there's still no guarantee that I'll use them)

I very quickly did the same process with my cardstock. I knew I needed two pieces (2-page layout), and I knew I wanted it to be a somewhat darker color. This is my first pass, after rifling through the cardstock storage box for only about 30 seconds:

All this cardstock is from the Bazzill warehouse sale, by the way- nothing beats getting a 12x12 pizza box stuffed full of cardstock for a flat fee, even if I did wait in line for an hour to get into the warehouse! And, somewhat embarrassingly, I went to this sale the year before last, I think, and the box is still pretty full. Not much scrapping happened last year, at all. (But, I hope to change that this year in a major way, with some personal goals and challenges posted on the new SB message boards I've been hanging out on.)

I decided to use the very first color of cardstock that I picked out (funny how that can happen, isn't it??) and put the rest of it back in its pizza box. Next, I arranged the photos onto the cardstock, so I could see how much real estate I had to work with for 'decorating' my layout:

the bare bones of the SB layout- photos + cardstock

(I worked out this photo arrangement a couple weeks ago, at the same time I printed the photos so I could decide which photos to choose, and what sizes to print them at. FYI, here's a tip: I worked out the photo arrangement using two 12x12 sheets of white cardstock. Once I had them arranged how I wanted them, I took a picture of it so I could remember it for later! I don't know why it took me such a long time to come up with that idea- it's such a simple one- but I think it's a brilliant one, since 1) I tend to do my scrapping in 'stages' instead of all at once, and 2) my memory is horrible, lol!

So, next up is 'what I did' with all this paper, doo-dads, and photographs. Stay tuned for that! (since I'm still not quite finished with it, lol!)