Georgia..on Georgia's Mind {How Much Is Too Much?}

We've got some exciting changes at How Much Is Too Much? First, we've welcomed six talented and creative ladies to our team: Amanda Torres, Anna-Karin Evaldsson, Debbie Fitzgerald, Georgia Keays, Janet Miller, and Kathleen Glossop.

Next, we've got a new look. Kathleen used her colorful, whimsical style to design a new banner for our blog, and we've added a new background that just screams fun, which is what our challenge is all about!

Our next exciting change is that we're going back to weekly challenges instead of every other week!

Finally, we're adding a new feature, which we are calling How Awesome Is Too Awesome? aka The Weekly Wow! Each week, the team will vote on our favorite layout shared by the players, and it will be posted on our blog and will go into a special gallery we are starting--a hall of fame, of sorts.

So this week, Georgia posed a clever challenge inspired by her name--it seems Georgia is the 4th of the 50 U.S. states, so she asked us to create a layout using a 4-word title, 5 (or more) colors, and 0 flowers--that includes patterned paper. Go take a peek at all the clever ways my teammates interpreted this challenge.

I had a lot of fun with this challenge! I was pretty literal with the challenge, and I counted the neutral cream as one of my five colors. The hardest part for me was figuring out a title with exactly four words. I've been using a lot of flowers on my pages lately, so it was fun to try to figure out other ways to embellish my page. I had this old photo of my brother-in-law and nephew sitting on my desk, wanting to scrap my own childhood memories of playing airplane, and this was the perfect opportunity to use the fun airplane paper from a recent Studio Calico kit. I was getting ready to cut the letters from the Jenni Bowlin Bingo Alpha Tiles, when I noticed how cute the outline of the card was, so I used a paper trimmer to cut out the inside and used the outside as a frame on my layout.

I'm not sure if you can tell from the photo, but I added Glossy Accents to the airplane window to make it look like glass.

Studio Calico makes the coolest stamps! I used the stamp included in the kit to add a little sun behind the clouds. I recently used a fancy stitch on another layout, and I really liked how it added texture and interest to the border, so I used this stitch again.

Since I scrap 8 x 8, it's a challenge to fit pictures and decorations AND story on that little space, so I often have to resort to hidden journaling. I used some of the fun tear strips from Cosmo Cricket papers to point the way to my journaling hidden on the back, which reads:

When we were little, we used to pretend we were airplanes too. Mom or Gram would lie on their backs on the floor, and we'd climb aboard their legs, wrap our little arms around their shins, and get ready for lift off. They'd sway their legs and make us go up and down and they'd make airplane sounds and we'd giggle and giggle and beg them to keep us flying when we came in for a landing.

I hope you'll join us at HMITM. It's such a fun challenge for using up stash!