Happy Birthday Page with Heart

For at least twenty years the only place my daughter has wanted to celebrate her birthday has been at Kabutos, a Japanese style restaurant where they cook at the table.  Until she was diagnosed with Celiac we would purchase the birthday package where they delivered, with great flourish, a decorated piece of cheesecake, sang happy birthday, and took a picture.  Now we have cake at home and ask them to take a picture with our camera, or in this case because I forgot it, my phone.  One of my New Year's resolutions is to make at least one scrapbook page a month, so using this layout by Kim Broedelet that I found on Pinterest, I made one featuring this year's Kabutos picture.  

Now one of the Heart 2 Heart challenges for January is "By the Number" which should be no big deal since we all date our scrapbook pages.  Right?  In the spirit of the challenge I decided that rather than bury the date at the end of my journaling, I would make the date and her age a little more prominent.

First of all I have to say that I absolutely love Close to My Heart's new Charlotte paper, so you may be seeing a lot of it from me.  I cut the picture mat (page 66) and numbers using the Artbooking Cricut cartridge and the ticket (page 25) and banner (page 49) with the Art Philosophy cartridge.  The Artbooking cartridge is designed to cut everything on a given key in proportion to fit a specified page size, so I had to make some adjustments.  In this case, the picture mat I wanted to use is sized for a 4x6 photo on a full 12x12 page when you set the dial at 11 inches.  Because I cropped the picture to 3x4.5 (three quarters of the original size), I multiplied the specified dial size by .75 to determine what dial size (8.66) to use.  Does this make sense?  The numbers were cut using real dial size which overrides the "cut in proportion to the page" feature and cuts at the dial size you select.  Much easier, no math!

You may wonder why I did the corners like I did.  You see, my handwriting is so bad that people often tell me they can't read it which makes me so nervous as I write that I make mistakes which makes the situation even worse.  For this reason I prefer to do my journaling on a computer.  I wanted to have the journaling go around the perimeter of the page, so I needed a way to hide the seams created by the strips of paper.  I think the black of the journaling around the edges adds an extra pop to complement the B&T paper.  Here is a "before" picture for comparison.

By the way, sharp eyes may notice that two of the squares are from Nervermore, a Halloween themed paper which has way more possibilities than just that one holiday.  I used the Charlotte accompaniments to embellish the page along with some black bitty sparkles in the centers of the flowers.

My scrapbooking resolution has been met for January, although I am working on a layout for Heart 2 Heart's "One" challenge that I hope to post this weekend.  Thank you for stopping by!  Until next time, Hansi

Materials used, all Close to My Heart unless otherwise noted:

Paper:  Charlotte, Nevermore (retired), Whisper, Black, and White Daisy cardstock

Ink:  Champagne and Black plus a Black ShinHan marker

Stamps:  You Mean the World to Me (retired), Cherish the Day (retired)

Embellishments:  Charlotte Accompaniments, Bitty sparkles, Whisper thick twine

Other:  Art Booking and Art Philosophy Cricut cartridges