A double page for you....

I do not like making double pages...there i said it..i am naff at them...never have any inspiration in doing them, and to be fair i never get enough good photos to warrant making double pages. But that will change.

So i am going to try and focus on them for a while....and i hope you guys can give me your tips and tricks on making them that we can share with everyone?

I am not good at starting them...so i have found that using a sketch can really help with this...so i went off and searched for some.

Page Maps has lots and i found lots on the Creating Keepsakes blog website...and that is where this one comes from...

I found these...

and for the purposes of this double page..i chose this one to use... sorry the photo didn't behave well when i cropped it down, but you get the general idea?

I like to use sketches as i think on a double page you can be more flexible on what photos you can use as to whether they are horizontal or portrait.

So first off i picked my pictures....as i wanted to mix and match my photos and paper lines it was easier to convert them to black and white as they had alot of contrasting colours on them. I do this using Picasa...if you don't have it...it is a photo editing software from Goggle.......free and quick to download and perfectly safe from viruses.It is also very easy to use...even for a non computer person like me.

 The theme of this page is from my recent trip to Disneyland...these are photos from the Alice in Wonderland Labyrinth....one thing i do when printing of lots of photos for one page is to un tick the box that says 'fix pictures to frame' this makes my photos just slightly different in size...something different to add to the page..and then i don't have to crop them down!
I then worked on one page at a time and not both together...not sure why but i preferred it that way.

I then typed out my journalling....then i had everything ready that i knew needed to be on the page and i could start. ( i started on plain white cardstock, so at the end i know how much colour or no colour i need for the base )

Here is how the photos and the journalling would go... ( vaguely)....i laid it out like this for both sides and used this as my starting point...

For this page i grabbed my two packs of the last two lines from Crate Paper....Farmhouse and Random and some old and the new line from October Afternoon...Sarsaparilla.

 and then set to work......i found that working on one side at a time really helped it not to be overwhelming!

Here is the end result...

Incase you are wondering the AWL stands for Alice in Wonderland.

Here are the pages separately...

  and the other side...

As you can see i kept the same types of pattern and embellishments on both sides to unify the page.

I had so much fun doing this page......the new wood grain paper from October Afternoon ( which will be up on the website soon ) is A MUST!!!!!!!!!!! and no matter how old this Crate Paper line is, i still love it!

I had so much fun making this page...i am off to make another....and when it is done i will share it on here...link us up to other double page sketches...or tips for making them :)