iTune you out!

How many other parents have experienced this? I just had to do a layout!

I actually started with my son's iTunes gift card...it was really cool, but also really pink! How to make a boy layout with such a vibrant pink and not have it overwhelm the layout? Easy answer! The "gidday" paper from the American Crafts everyday line includes several colors you can choose to coordinate with - green, blue, brown, light pink, yellow...and a bold pink! I loved the multi-colored dots and the brown background helped tone down the pink. It is a very busy pattern, though, so I brought in the solid blue to create a place for pictures, ephemera, embellishments and a title.

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I wanted to keep it a little bit funky, so I went after another collage style layout. I added plenty of dimension with Thickers for the title, pop dots under the stars, and UTEE on the musical notes. This was my first experience with UTEE and I am happy with the results, although I did find it a bit more time consuming than I had hoped to add and melt all those layers. (The notes are die cuts I made at Scrapbooks Plus - there is a wide selection of dies in the classroom so be sure to check them out for an accent for your next layout.) The musical notes, in addition to fitting in with the theme, helped to tie in the color black, off of the gift card and from the background of the photos.

I really like the collage style because you can include all kinds of materials! I found the directions on how to operate the ipod laying around, and instead of just pitching it, I decided it would be a fun little piece to add to the collage. My son wrote down some of his favorite tunes on the tag, I added a "word bubble" for some journaling after it comes home, and I stretched some ribbon across both pages to unify the layout. The last thing I added was the index prints. I love finding ways to include my index prints...even tiny pictures shouldn't be thrown away!