![\"Explore](\"http:\/\/i21.photobucket.com\/albums\/b285\/d2vasquez\/Explore-Your-World.jpg\")
<\/p>\nOk I am really excited to be doing this and praying I don’t sound like a dork that talks too much because she is so excited that she gets to post a challenge on the SSD blog…..ok…so maybe I getting close to that line, huh?\u00a0 Ok back to the topic at hand….mixin’-it-up!<\/p>\n
I was a paper scrapper for seven years and I loved browsing my LSS for the newest letter stickers, foam stamps or Making Memories alphas.\u00a0 But when I got home and tried to figure out how to add those on my layouts, I would always struggle to get them just right.\u00a0 Then after I used them once or twice – they would be tossed\u00a0into the “I-will-use-those-again-one-day-I- promise” pile.\u00a0\u00a0When I discovered digital – I again had the same excitement seeing all the different kinds of alphas and brushes out there….and I thought this time I could use the “undo” over and over until I got it right without having to throw out any supplies!\u00a0 This worked out well but as I started amassing kits – I would find that I would not go back to those wonderful alphas and brushes I loved so much and there they sat on my hard drive just taking up disk space!\u00a0 So when I got this assignment to mix-it-up – I thought “Hey, let’s play with all those alphas I have and mix-it-up!”\u00a0 Ok in all honesty that wasn’t really what I said but as the guest blog writer, I was taking a little dramatic license there!<\/p>\n
When I started my layout, I thought this would be a bit easy – pull together several different alphas and brushes and BAM! you are done…..but being the perfectionist, it kind of didn’t go that way.\u00a0 I learned that although there are really no rules except make sure you spell your title\/phrase correctly – you kind of have to play with it to make it work and this is what I came up with:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
So here is what I did to create this – I took Christy Lyle’s <\/strong>“Circle of Friends”<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0kit and then added some elements from “Wings of Change”<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0kit by Suzy Nunes<\/strong> and Robin Carlton<\/strong> (measuring tape and notebook paper) and\u00a0“Expecting Sweets: The Photo Shoot”<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0by Robin Carlton<\/strong> and Christy Lyle<\/strong> (stitches and photo frame)\u00a0– then I started my hunt for the alphas.\u00a0 I used some from Christy’s kit (the “P” and the “E”) to keep the color balance and as my frame of reference to find what I wanted next.\u00a0 As luck would have it – Robin Carlton<\/strong> released her new “Stick It Up”<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0collection this weekend and right in the middle was my “O” that says “It’s a way of life” – which was absolutely perfect for my whole layout theme!\u00a0 Next I was looking for a more funky flair to add to this and saw Amy Bleser’s <\/strong>“Freestyle Alphas”<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and Christy Lyle’s <\/strong>“Distressed Hand Stamped Ticket Alphas”<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and knew instantly where to pick out my “E” and “L”.\u00a0 Now I needed my “X” and “R” and I found them in Paula Duncan’s <\/strong>“Modern Day Philosopher”<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0kit – which by the way actually has 3 different colors of alphas – all of which I could have used for this particular layout.\u00a0 With a little title size tweaking, a folded corner action (Jen Caputo’s) and a word stip (Jen Wilson’s) – I had the layout you see\u00a0above!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ok I am really excited to be doing this and praying I don’t sound like a dork that talks too much because she is so excited that she gets to post a challenge on the SSD blog…..ok…so maybe I getting close to that line, huh?\u00a0 Ok back to the topic at hand….mixin’-it-up! I was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":156,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[132],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10830,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions\/10830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sweetshoppedesigns.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}