American Crafts Abode range

The American Crafts Abode range is a gorgeous set of papers, with a general theme of 'home'. Some of the papers have cute houses and flowers in textured effects, along with contrasting colours on the reverse. However, when I was sent these papers, I decided to show how you shouldn't feel restricted by the obvious theme of a range when choosing what to scrap.

I put two layouts together with these papers. The first is of my niece Isobel at a family party - we spent ages trying to take a photo of her, but she kept blinking or pulling faces! This slightly surprised look is typical of her though. Some of the papers in the range matched up with the bright colours of her T-shirt and bib, so were a good choice for the layout. The papers are all very graphic, so I made them a bit 'prettier' and suitable for a baby layout by roughing up the edges of the papers, and backing them with Kraft cardstock. The layering of embellishments also helps to add texture.

The second layout is definitely not an obvious choice for this bright and springlike range, but shows how versatile the papers can be. I decided to scrap some photos of my family opening their pressies at Christmas - there weren't any decorations in shot, and mum and dad's living

room has got a turquoise theme, so I picked out the tones with my selection of papers.

To fit the theme, I created a simple bow from ribbon - this was very simply done by folding the ribbon back on itself and securing with double sided tape. I then cut another piece of ribbon to secure over the fold and tucked this in underneath the main piece.

I hope this gives you some ideas for using themed ranges for different purposes.