Freedom Festival

Hi everyone!  Just wanted to share a layout with you that appears in the August 2011 issue of Scrapbooks Etc (out on newsstands now!).  I originally created this layout for the Pebbles Inc blog so almost all of the products used are from various Pebbles collections. 

The Freedom Festival is an annual event held here in town.  We love remembering our nation's birthday (as it so happens my birthday is the day before! hee hee!) and there's no better way to celebrate than with good friends at the local parade and carnival.  I took tons of pictures that day but chose to highlight some of my favorites (10 in all) on this two page layout.  One trick I've learned when creating layouts with lots of photos is to convert some of the pictures to black and white - it helps to cut down on the overall "busyness" of the photos and keeps your layout from getting too overwhelming. 

And here are just a few more detail images of the layout that you won't see in the magazine article ... 

You'll notice that I replaced the "o" in "freedom" with a dimensional star sticker.  Truth be told that was not my intention when I started to lay down my stickers.  I quickly realized that I was running out of room for my title so I stuck the star down instead of the "o" since it took up less space.  I thought it looked cute so I left it - don't you just love happy accidents? 

That's all for me today.  I hope you're all enjoying this beautiful Father's Day weekend.  Thanks so much for stopping by!  :)