Jumping in the Leaves Layout featuring Authentique Paper's Grateful Collection

Hi, I'm Julie and I'm here on the blog today to share a layout I created with the Grateful collection from Authentique Paper. When I first saw this collection, I loved it for its color palette and its variety of patterns. From traditional brocade to whimsical acorns, I know you'll love it for your fall projects as much as I do. As I considered my layout, I wanted to use as many of the patterns as possible.

When I think about fall, I think about color and all those leaves. My family's favorite fall tradition is jumping in the leaves. So, each year on a relatively dry day, my husband rakes all the leaves into a huge pile and the kids run across the yard and jump into them. I am the photographer for this annual tradition. Some of our most memorable fall photos come from our "jumping in the leaves" days. After a few jumps, the leaves spread out and my husband rakes them all up and the jumping begins again. Sometimes there's a leaf fight, sometimes Dad tosses a rake-ful on the kids, and sometimes the kids drag Dad into the fun, like they did here.

In order to showcase as many of the beautiful patterns as possible, I designed my layout in the Silhouette Studio software using leaves downloaded from their online store. I flipped, arranged and resized the leaves until they looked like they were being blown across the page. After cutting the leaves into the subtly patterned Gracious paper, I applied the offset feature in the program. These outlines create slightly larger leaves around each original leaf. Next, I moved the outlines to a blank page and cut them, one at a time onto different sheets of patterned paper. I mounted each offset piece with foam mounting squares, to the back side of my layout, matching each piece to its coordinating leaf. You can copy this look without a electronic die cut machine. Just search free clip art leaves on the internet. Print your favorite leaves, trace them onto the back side of your background paper and cut them out with a craft knife.

After cutting the background, I added a strip of the Plentiful paper across the layout and placed my photo on top, between the leaves. I printed the photo in sepia tone, to coordinate with the muted, autumn tones of my layout. (The kids are wearing bright red in the original photo.) Using sepia tone is one of my favorite scrapbooking tricks. Black and white works too!  If the colors of your photo don't match your supplies, try printing your photo in sepia tone or black and white. This will create a cohesive look between all the elements of your project.

For the title of my page, I created my own chipboard word and used some sticker letters from the collection (from the Details and Petite Type sticker sheets). I like mixing fonts and alphabet stickers in my titles. I have a step by step photo tutorial over on my blog, JulieChats, to show you how I used my Silhouette to create the script, chipboard word "leaves" that I used in this title.

At this point, my layout needed just a couple more details. I like to add embellishments to my photos. For this layout, I cut a quick banner and added a paper die cut from the Components sheet to it.

And, since the upper right was looking a little bare, I used one of the cardstock stickers from the Details sheet, backed with a little thin garden twine, from the home decor section at Craft Warehouse, and a placed a punched leaf to the side.

Thanks for following along with me as I created this layout with such a beautiful paper collection. I enjoy creating one photo layouts like this, when I find papers that I just fall in love with.  But, if you take tons of photos, like I do, you may want to know what I do with my other photos.  Well, I will be putting this layout into my pocket page album, so a pocket page protector will be on the right side, complete with a few more photos and a journal card to tell the story of this year's leaf jumping extravaganza.  For more paper craft projects, check out the Learning Center on the Craft Warehouse website. Stop by my blog this month for the chipboard letter tutorial and also to see the 30 Days of Thankful album I made with the scraps from this project.