All Tuckered Out

What is it about a sleeping toddler that makes everything seem all right with the world? After spending a long day at the Carolina Renaissance Festival in 2011, Little Miss was exhausted. She fell asleep before we even made it to the gas station to fill up on the drive home. I just had to snap a photo for instagram.  I'm so glad I did! Those peaceful moments are fleeting and so often we never remember to photograph them. This picture has always made me smile whenever I would flip through my photo stack. It's time it made it to a page!

Two Peas Refugees gave a March challenge that was a recipe.

• 1 photo or photo cluster
• 2 patterned papers
• 3 embellishment clusters
• 4 embellishments 

I've been contemplating that challenge since I saw it a few days ago. I knew I could do it. But...those two patterned papers...just two? Only two? But! There are so many gorgeous papers. How do I limit myself to two??

After thinking, I decided two would be simple. If it were the right two papers. Since a lot of patterned paper is double sided, I feel like using both sides is acceptable. One sheet...two sides. It doesn't say a thing about only two patterns showing! 

I decided to go with two sheets from Shimelle Laine's Starshine collection by American Crafts. There were a few reasons for this. The first was that they are gorgeous papers. I adore that collection as a whole. Another reason is because I bought two 25 packs of each of those papers at Tuesday Morning. I normally don't do that but it was only $2.99 a pack. So, if I used even three sheets from each pack, it's more than paid for itself. The final reason was because one of the sheets was one Shimelle designed to use as a cut apart sheet with various squares and rectangles of patterns. Galileo and Voyager were the perfect choices. 

Aren't they gorgeous? I just love all the different sizes and variety of patterns she used. These two as my patterned paper choices gave me so many options to work with. It was hard to hold myself back!

With a simple sheet of Kraft card stock as my background, all the different layers just came together. I used the A side of Voyager as my primary pattern. The B side is the first layer right under my photo.  All the other patterns came from Galileo - both A and B sides. 

I'm doing another challenge from 2PR called the Bash It Challenge. You pick five new things and five old things from your stash and use them. I used the feather, flair, gold mist (as paint on the wooden pinked circles) and my pinked circle punch for that challenge. I'm delighted to say I've now used up the pack of feathers and the pack of flair thanks to that challenge!

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you'll leave a comment about your favorite pattern papers to use on layouts that you feel limited. How do you use what you have to stay within the boundaries of challenges?