Let's Celebrate - WM#100 Guest Designer Michelle

Today I'm thrilled to introduce another of our WM friends, Michelle. We initially connected through LOAD and then Michelle was the second to join in on our prompts over at Flickr. Her first prompt was WM#13 which is a very long time ago! She has been a regular ever since and I'm so happy she agreed to contribute to this week's celebration with her very own 100 prompt. 

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Hello, Michelle here.

Excited to be a “behind the scenes” part of WM for a change! I have been scrapbooking since about 1994 - was introduced to it by a co-worker. Loved the idea of creativity AND photos combined. One of my first layouts was in a spiral album about a trip my husband and I took to Arizona – lots of stickers, die cuts, and colored marker journaling back then! 

Michelle must be so happy to have the story and photos in this album, even if her style has changed "a bit" since then.

During one of the LOAD challenges, Lisa mentioned the Whimsical Musings blog she and Pam had with the weekly challenges. I thought it sounded fun, and had admired Pam and Lisa's work during LOAD. So I started following it. I'm not sure if this was the first challenge I actually tackled, but the “triad color scheme” inspired a whole mini-album of my oldest daughter and her stuffed bison, Buddy, during our Yellowstone trip. My favorite part is that the “triad” jumping-off point was just the spark I needed to start AND complete the album. I loved that about WM.

I remember when Michelle first shared this album with us over at Flickr - we all loved it. You need to go back to the beginning of the gallery entries to find it, but it's worth it. Such a cute album.

When Lisa asked me to contribute to the 100 celebration, I was thrilled. I always have to think for a bit about the challenge. But this one came to me pretty quickly, as it was something my daughter mentioned a couple weeks back. 

When she was little she LOVED the book Barbie 1 2 3. We would read through it many nights, looking to answer the questions on each page. But her favorite part was the last page, number 100. It had a collage of different items that combined together to represent 100 items. She had a little box with her “collection” of some of those items, and would get the box out and lay the items on top of the similar ones in the book. In fact, in 3^rd grade she even brought the book and her collection to our Brownie Girl Scout meeting about Hobbies & Collections. She (now 12 years old) grumbled to me a couple weeks back that she can't believe I talked her into giving up that book. When I started looking at this layout, she was reminiscing with me. I love that we have a permanent memory now of her childhood personality.

A perfect colour combination for this girlie, Barbie page. 

Michelle sprayed this background paper herself. The colour scheme is so well carried through across both sides of this layout.

Pink was chosen to represent the girliness of Barbie and green because it's one of Michelle's daughter's favourite colour. A perfect combination. I especially love how she has used strong black accents with the title and washi tape. It works so well as a contrast.

Michelle told me how it was pure coincidence that she came across this green bling which had been hanging around in her craft room for YEARS to dress up her chipboard flower. Not planned in any way,  you would think that the flower came ready blinged. What a lovely surprise.

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So our next prompt for this week is:

Be inspired by... 100 items. 

Can you find a way to include 100 items on your page? Michelle did this by referring to it in her journalling and making the simple but eye-catching 100 title. She has also included misted number background paper that she made herself (don't you just love that!) as well as washi tape with numbers and even the photos are full of numbers. Extra brownie points to Michelle for all those great ways to get numbers on her layout and the clever way to make a layout that really is about 100 things! And I have to admit to being ever so slightly in love with that bold "100" title. 

Don't forget to post your creations over at the Flickr Gallery (here) with the tag WM#100-3

Be sure to check out the Whimsical Musings Flickr Gallery (here) for more of Michelle's creations. She is a regular contributor and you have to make sure you look at the rest of the Buddy at Yellowstone mini-album!