Doing the double

I don't often make double layouts. Probably because I feel that I can tell the story and share enough photos to prompt the memory on one page. But every now and then I do. In this case it happened because the photos just didn't seem to work together and I couldn't decide which photo to leave out. Moving them onto two pages was a lightbulb moment. And it meant I could add far more writing without overwhelming things as well.

It may seem rather indulgent as there is still an awful lot of white space, but I am glad I switched things up

On the rare occasions when I do the double I tend to treat each page as a mirror image of the other rather than trying to move page elements across the middle (e.g. chopping a photo so part of it is on one page and part on the other). I find this works so much more easily for me. In this case, just for a change, the main focus area of each page looks almost identical.

Each one began with a wash of mist. I used 3 colours - the peach from the kit, gold lame Colour Shine and Scarlet Glimmer Mist. I started with the gold in each case but on one page painted it at the top of where the papers and photos would go and did it the opposite way round on the other. I then added some peach mist to my little bowl holding the colour and painted that layer, overlapping slightly, then did the same with the red to give an ombre effect.

I then cleaned out my bowl and added a little bit more of the gold which I painted onto the tags and the gold/white striped paper. I do like the subtle sparkle it gives.
While I was in a painty mood I decided to work on the thin coloured strip of paper. This was the cut off strip from one of the papers (I forgot to note which one, sorry). The colours were not quite right so with a set of watercolours and the gold mist I made them a bit more muted.

Once everything was dry the fun began

I added a few strips of paper and backed the tags with some of the Websters Pages paper.  All the papers and cardstock were given a distressing with Pumice Stone ink and a small sponge. I added in some left over painted crepe paper on the left hand side and painted some more of the white with red mist for the right hand page. I tucked in some of the Elle Studio Snippets ("Shine" is the name of the card but I thought it would fit with my page). The blue diamonds are leftovers from a Silhouette cut out that will feature on another layout but the blue went so well with everything else I thought I would add some to this layout.

I enjoyed going through all the nautical embellishments from the Tide Pool embellishment kit and deciding which to use, along with the Kraft label stickers, more of the rub-ons and some Prima sparkles.

The journalling - words from a song by the Rend Collective was printed on white card using Carbontype font and then cut into snippets.

The other side of the layout is pretty much the same...

with a title cut on the Cameo using the Kaisercraft Dream Big paper and Amatic font.

and there you have it.
If you have never tried a double page spread, why not give it a go?