Happy Friday everyone!   I wanted to share with you a project I took to work on at the SISS retreat weekend.  It is a fun little 8 X 8 "brag" book that I am putting together of a 4th of July vacation trip we took to New Orleans last year.  This two page spread was done with a product line from Kiwi Lane that I rely on all the time when I am designing pages.

The Kiwi Lane layout templates help you visualize a page before you cut any very special paper and they help me so much with putting a page together.  I always of course start with the pictures because they "talk" to me and tell me what color scheme, etc they will go best with.

Then I get out the Kiwi Lane templates and start layering and laying out the design for the page.  Kiwi does carry their templates in different sizes but I have only invested in 12" since that is what I do most.  I think the 12" works just fine on an 8" page - you just have to adjust a little bit off the page.  I used a double set of borders and layered them.  Then on the left page a couple of tags and a "badge" form under the cathedral cut out.  On the right side there is a layered star and cute arrow.

When you get everything in place, it's just a matter of tracing out the shape on paper, cutting it out, and gluing it down.  Here are the basic pieces replaced with paper and the photos matted.

I also inked around the edges of all the pieces in a coordinating blue ink to make them pop.

Now it's time for the details.  Some pop dots to make a couple of the pieces really stand out, some Wink of Stella for bling, stickers, and naturally a title.

Kiwi lane templates can help you really put together a page fast!