Grand Palace (Pages 14-17)

This is such slow going!  It takes FOREVER to sort through the pictures and choose what one's I'm going to print and what size I want to print them!  The journaling takes a fair amount of time too - sometimes research as well.  In addition, space is at a premium on the page if I'm going to make sure we can see them well, so I find myself being less creative - not much space for embellishing if I DID want to.  However . . .

Page 14 (above): This page DOES have a vellum pocket on it that holds the visitor's guide to the Grand Palace.  It's always a bit challenging to fit things like this visitor's guide on the page.  Placing the journaling on the bottom of this pocket helps.  Pretty much everything else is computer printed - except for the little arrow that helps make it clear which picture I was talking about.  Oh yeah - I also inked around the edges of the title block to bring in a bit more of the dark blue color.  I should probably also mention that sometimes I end up with pictures that are just a tad to large for the space.  That happened here.  I sliced edges off the sides to crop them - then glued cut off strip in place so I didn't lose my white border.

Page 15 AB:

Here I mimicked the gold and blues in the pictures by using a solid blue background with a blue/yellow/orange print to serve as backdrops for the words on the page.  As I've often done, these two half pages are the outside of a gate fold. 

Page 15 CDE:

This is what you see when you open the gate fold.  Background papers are from a Recollections paper pad called Green House.

Page 15 CE:

Here's a closer look at the flaps. For the matting, I used a green marble paper from HOTP.

Page 15D:

And here's a closer look at the middle page.  I have gold foil tag board die cut corners (Spellbinders die called Antique Corner) in the upper left and lower right side of the page.  Since the one in the upper left went over the white part of the photo, I decided to mat the lower one on white so they'd look similar.  I'm pretty happy with my focal photo on this page.  I had 3 pictures to choose from, but didn't like any of them.  2 had a large object smack dab in the center so you couldn't see the building as well, but the 3rd had the spire cut off!  I found a way to merge the two photos to make this focal!  That title is quite strategically placed to hide the fact that the tree cuts off right there. :)

Page 16:

It takes some creativity to find a way to show all the different things I want to show from our travels without making the book HUGE!  This time, I showcased 3 different buildings by dividing the page into vertical thirds. As you can see, I added a red patterned paper strip to the center of the background paper - and used a pretty washi tape along the edges. I also rounded the corners and used a distress ink to color the journaling and title blocks so they weren't so stark.

Page 17 AB:

This pair of pages forms the outer flaps of a gate-fold page.  Once again, I used washi tape along the edges to add a decorative touch.

Page 17 C&E:

And here are the outer flaps that you see when you open the gatefold.  This time, though I used washi tape on the first page, I used Dazzles stickers on the second page.  I DO like the look when I round the corners.

Page 17D:

It's a bit hard to see on this page (the middle page that you see when you open the gate-fold), but the picture in the upper right-hand corner is being used as the page title.  I again colored my journaling block - blending two colors to get the color I wanted.  I printed the brown border around the pictures in the middle row.  Before adding the picture at the bottom, I fussy cut a flower from the background that I then added to the title/journaling block as an embellishment.  I matted the pictures on the top row and the bottom row using Mirri card stock from Hunkydory.

Whew!  Sure glad to have these pages done!  They took a lot of time in sorting/printing pictures and text.