1st of many School Days

Hi you all! We are having beautiful weather here in PA this weekend, such a treat :) While your reading this we will be picking apples and making applesauce :) Not what I originally thought I would be doing this weekend but I'm good with it. It's nice to have the canned up goods for the winter to enjoy a bit of summer and fall from the previous season :) Speaking of summer ending it's also time for the return of school and it's fun to see all the 1st day school pictures on facebook so I snatch this one of Albert's 4 younger kids to scrap:

This layout was made the night that Stash Bash did a speed scrap. Now this was the first time for me to do something like this. The hostess would give out the instructions and you would follow each step now we were lucky enough to get over 12 hours to do the layout but you had a step criteria. After the steps had gone through I hurried up and found a sketch to use for my layout:

I used the sketch from Creative Scrappers #277 which was perfect to make this layout.
This was a 1 photo layout so I went through my current envelope of pictures I had recently had developed and found this one of the kids :) Perfect photo to scrap.
Step 1 was to get a white, cream or tan color cardstock.
Step 2 was to do something to the background: mist, stamp, paint etc
I chose to mist the background:

 you can see the misting in this photo.
The next step was interesting to pick out 2 different patten papers and use it to embellish the page. There were so many questions asked about this one: mine was if I can use it for a paper strip with a punched edge. Yes! I got the go ahead so mine consisted if the letter border with the punched edge and the scallop punch out piece of the number pattern paper.
The next step was something flat, something long, something 3d and something with words on it:

 Flat was the washi tape strip, Long was the jute string around the picture with the bow and tails going about the layout, 3D was the fun sticker of books and apple

and the words on it was the project life card that I had in my current counterfeit kit (I also used this for my journaling spot too.

The next step was to use word art for part of the title. (school days came from a me & my big ideas package perfect for this layout). Use 2 different alphas for the rest of the title easy to find in my counterfeit kit.
The last step was to include  lines of journaling that I added to the project life card I even added the lines to write on.
If you ever want to try something out of your comfort zone this is one way to do it. But boy was it alot of fun and not my regular style layout. Another thing I learned about speed scrap that I am well blessed with organizing my supplies I was able to easily find the stuff I needed and also to come to find out I can tweak my organizing a bit by having like things together so there is only one place to look for that item when I need it :) Of course I couldn't have put it together that fast if it wasn't for haveing my counterfeit kit there within reach of for the layout.