Today seems like a good day for posting this. It's a 12 x 12 scrapbook layout I made last weekend expressing my joy at discovering it was Saturday morning. I really like scrapbooking and, for the most part, really like the things I come up with but I'm still new at it and I am very slow. This layout took me two days to put together.

I started with the picture. In fact I started with the idea of taking the picture while I was laying in bed waking up. I knew how I wanted the picture to look before I took it. I framed the mug against the kitchen table and then played around in Photoshop Elements to make it a little warmer and fuzzier and give it a frame. I printed it a few times because of various issues with ink levels and differences between what I saw on my screen and what my printer produced. Once I had a nice printout I went through my stack of papers and pulled out some that I thought had the right feel to them. I especially liked this woodgrain one. After the paper I gathered interesting bits and pieces - scraps of paper, cutouts, buttons, etc. - and added them to the pile.

Then I stared at everything for a while.

Then I walked away and made a cup of tea.

After a bit I came back to my computer and looked up my favourites list on Studio Calico. I looked for things I'd tagged that also used a single, largish picture and tried to decide what it was I liked about them and then borrowed those elements: strips of paper behind the photo, clusters of small objects, a mixture of buttons and brads, a tag on the very edge of the paper, washi tape, and something round. I think one of my favourite elements is the scalloped edge on the bottom of the floral paper. It was originally part of the cut-away edge with the designer name on it. I used a craft knife to cut out the scallops and leave them attached to the paper.

The button placement was really hard.

I took pictures of the layout with the buttons in different places or missing all together to try and make up my mind. They ended up waiting overnight before I really decided on where I wanted to put them. It seems silly - they are so small - but they really seemed to change the feel of the layout.

One thing I'm still a little undecided on is whether or not to put a date on the layout. The photo was taken on a particular day but the idea is a pretty timeless one. So far I've settled for writing the date I made the layout on the back - just in case I need to look it up later.