There’s been many mash-up posts on the blog, like using the same designer kits with different themes or like using more than one kit with the same color scheme. But today I want to share how I use different styles of templates to create one unique page to fit my needs or artistic inspiration.

I had a photo in mind already and an idea of what I wanted to scrap so I spent some time in the Shop just perusing Fiddle Dee-Dee’s templates and Designed by Soco’s templates waiting for inspiration to jump out at me. It didn’t take long for inspiration to show off and I knew I had to use Big Words New Year Edition [Dressed Up] by FDD along with Simply Clean No. 9 by Soco.

I chose these two gorgeous templates. FDD’s big word series are perfect if you don’t want to think of how to title your page. My layout is about my journey to better health and part of staying motivated is creating layouts about my determination as a little push to myself. With the new year coming, “my year to sparkle” was really speaking to me and I liked the cluster at the top right. I knew I only had one photo though and while I could have repurposed the [1] template I wasn’t quite seeing that vision. When I happened upon Soco’s simply clean series the center photo and unique paper piecing in the background is what caught my full attention and I saw my vision come to life in my head.

I started my page by opening up each of the templates and then opened up a new blank 12×12 page for my layout. This allowed me to pull in the parts of each template I wanted to have on my working layout and then I could close the templates out and focus on creating my vision.

Once everything was open I selected the paper pieced background, the dotted border and the photo spot layers from Soco’s template and dragged them all into my blank page. I positioned them how I wanted them, which was exactly how they were in her original template, center top. Then I went ahead and clipped my chosen photo to the photo spot.

Then it was time to bring in FDD’s big title and of course that beautiful cluster. I also grabbed the flower that was sitting on top of the word ‘to’ in the big title. I positioned those pieces where I felt they looked good, since the big title was covering the tab under the photo, I went ahead and removed that. I closed both of the original templates and started bringing the vision to life on my layout.

As my page came together I decided that I didn’t want the “inner” paper pieces of the big title and kept only the outline, clipping a black paper to it. This really made it stand out while allowing the outline effect to keep the page from looking too “cluttered” to my eyes. I filled in the cluster with flowers and leaves and switched out the journal tabs for a camera element. Adding other little details filled in that empty spot but not too much to look messy. I cropped a journal card to create a sort-of preface to the title underneath my photo at the top. A scatter of stars and some butterflies rounded out my page and I loved the end result.

Here’s my finished page – full credits are in my gallery.