Left my comfort zone

For me, leaving my comfort zone often means following the directions...sheepish grin. I love and cherish my local Pine Cone Press club--but usually I make a point of doing something very different with the sample projects and materials. This time I missed the meeting because I was still exhausted from my trip to Virginia.

After picking up my materials from Lynn's house, I went home and thought I'd have some good scrap therapy to aid in regaining my strength. I sat down and went through the fun papers and embellishments and turned to page 8 in the book to check out the sample by Debra Jennis. It was simple and brilliant.

Now I usually admire all the sample pages, I just like to give them a little twist. This time, I pushed myself to just make the sample and I'm so pleased with the results. I have a few tiny variations because I cut wrong and my photos fit flowers better on different sides, but for the most part--I stuck to the plan.

And now the rest of the confession....When I sat down with the fabulous (as always) Pine Cone Press book--I was drawn to the layout on page 9 first. I just love how designer Alcia Ackerman Grimm used one photo and white pen doodling lines on this one. Plus those great chipboard flowers similar to the ones we got in the kit from Scrapworks. So, before making my strictly "by the book" spread, I created this one as a warm up:

So the moral of the story for me was: If you want to move outside your comfort zone, do a warm-up first. Remember you can click on the layouts to see larger images and be on the lookout soon for lots of news about my new and revised web site, online classes, and new articles coming to Suite 101. THANKS!