Life Documented with SMARTY PANTS

Hey everyone!! It's Kelly and I'm so happy to be back on the Simple Stories blog today! I'm even more excited that I get to share a bit about a couple of my favorite things that, amazingly enough, are related! I'm talking about the return of back to School and the brand new Simple Stories' SMARTY PANTS collection!!

I was always that kid that loved the return of fall and the start of school - most especially I adored back to school shopping! The smell of a fresh box of crayons still gets to me and I could (and do) spend hours browsing the aisles when the new products come out. Lucky for me I'm a scrapbooker and I can often justify the things I buy that aren't for my kids. So it shouldn't suprise you that I have an affinity for scrapbooking products that are also school related. I admit to quite a stash, but I have to say that Simple Stories' SMARTY PANTS collection is easily one of my favorites.

This was the first layout I made with Smarty Pants and it quickly became a favorite - I adored how easy the patterns mixed together (one of my biggest priorities when picking patterned paper) and how quickly this layout fell together. And those cute kids didn't hurt either.. ;)

This line is just so easy to work with that I decided to finally take the plunge (with a ton of inspiration from the talented Laura Vegas) and make complete school albums for each of the boys. I have oodles upon oodles - seriously that's no exaggeration - of school stuff that really needs to find a home. And while I swore I wasn't ever really going to make albums other than family albums, I finally took the plunge. It just.needed.to.be.done.

Using the Pocket Pages and my gorgeous new teal SN@P! leather album #4042 was a no-brainer. I wanted easy-peasy, folks, 'cause I have three kids that are going to need these albums and besides, that blue is my favorite color in the entire world!

So I started with the most current year's and the youngest kid. Truth time: I started there because I'm totally lazy and won't have as far back to go! Carson started 4th grade a couple weeks ago so I can actually feel like I'm somewhat (HA!) on top of things by documenting the first day of school!

I wanted a large page to introduce the famous and madatory "Back to School" picture so I chose the Design 1 #4048 12x12 Pocket Page for the start of each year. Don't you just love those cheesy 4th grade smiles?! Sigh. But what I do love are all the embellishments for this line. The stickers alone are amazing, but did you even see that clock brad?! Seriously cute stuff but still not my favorite with this line. My favorite has to be the SN@P! Cuts #3426. I can't get enough of those laser cut album pages and pocket inserts.

Here's a little close up of one of the fun ways I used the SN@P! Cuts #3426. To get this round apple embellishment, I simply punched around the apple with a 2" circle punch and got an instantly different look!

And for the right side of the page, I picked the Design 4 #4051 Pocket Page mainly because it was the most accommodating of the photos I wanted to use. That makes sense, right?! But it's also one of my favorites. I love how that 2x8 strip can house any pattern paper so it makes it really easy to tie together with the other side of your layout spread.

These photos kill me because it makes me realize just how big the boys are getting - this little monkey will be 10 in just a few days and he's my BABY! (sob!) I think the photo on the lower right is my favorite though. Big brother (my now 8th grader) came with us to drop off his little brothers and walked them down the hall.

And again one more close up. This is of the right page and shows how you can truly have fun playing around with the Pocket Page inserts - any of them! Don't be afraid to customize them to your needs! I wanted a "Back to School" card so I made my own!

As you can tell I used a TON of product on these pages. I couldn't help myself there was just so much to love. So to help out, here is a quick run-down of everything I used to make my Life Documented spread with the SMARTY PANTS collection:

Fundamentals Cardstock Stickers
Expressions Cardstock Stickers
Chipboard Stickers
Decorative Brads
SN@P! Cuts
SN@P! Pages
Smarty Pants 6x6 Pad
Blue Composition/Ledger Paper
School Spirit Paper
2 Cool 4 School Paper
3x4 Journaling Card Elements

I hope this encouraged some of you that it's not too late to get those school albums and projects organized with the ease of the Life Documented, SN@P! and Simple Stories sytem! And what better time to get started than NOW as the kiddos are heading back to school!?
I can't wait to see what you create!