Did you know that Pinkfresh Studio has a great challenge up on their blog every month? The prizes for the winner, randomly chosen, are epic. I won months ago and the haul was epic – I am still using it and even shared half with my sister!

This month, Pinkfresh Studio – September 2018 challenge is all about “Inspired by”. In addition to providing a colour palette (navy blue, light blue, peach, yellow and pink this month) they are also challenging participants to create a layout or card inspired by a Pinkfresh Studio Design Team member. Yes please!

I follow all things @PinkfreshStudio on Instagram – this includes their official feed, the feeds of their Design Team members and any Pinkfresh hashtags too. I have a bit of a Pinkfresh addiction, truth be told. This addiction is made worse / enabled / encouraged by my local scrapbook store. They started carrying Pinkfresh when I started teaching there. Not one collection comes in that I don’t offer a class for – I love it so much! (This weekend I am teaching a 4 page layout class using the Pinkfresh Studio, Sweet & Simple collection.)

Any who ..

Looking for one scrapbook layout to be “Inspired By” for this challenge was actually really tough. No joke, there are so many that I absolutely love and it was impossible to drill it down to just one. So I went for two! The recent layouts of @heyelsie_ and @floramfarkas with all their circle goodness make me so happy.

So off I went to create a layout inspired by the circle-y talent of @floramfarkas and @heyelsie_ focusing on the colour palette of the challenge too. The blue, navy, teals of the Pinkfresh Studio, Be You collection paired with dark teal tones of the Pinkfresh Studio, Let Your Heart Decide had me at hello!

I had two fabulous photos of my husband with his cousin and our new cousin-in-law at their wedding. The white of the bride’s amazing gown paired with the wonderful green, forest background in the photos would be perfect with the colours of this challenge. I sadly could not attend the wedding. I was hiking The Camino Way in Spain at the time with my bestie (don’t feel sorry for me right!? lol). I wanted to make up for missing the fun by having some serious fun creating the layout. The Pinkfresh challenge and the chance to use circles all over the place are guaranteed fun.

I selected the green, teal, blue infused pattern papers from the Be You and the Let Your Heart Decide collections and started punching circles. I punched and layered until I had decent coverage of the “white” space around the photo. I used a very simple pattern background paper from the Be You collection so there was less pressure to cover any actual glaring white space.

Then got to the really fun part … digging into my Be You collection die cuts, puffy stickers, etc. to embellish each of the circle clusters. I absolutely love how it turned out.

The colour palette of the challenge suggested not just navy blue and light blue but also pink, peach and yellow. I added the pink and peach with the Be You puffy sticker small floral embellishments and coordinating rose gold alphas for the date.

While I could not find a way to bring in the yellow of the challenge colour palette into the scrapbook layout, I am hoping Pinkfresh will forgive me (wink) once they see the Be You collection inspired me to also add a coordinating pocket page or flip flap to store the invitation and the thank you card. I will adhere this flap to the layout’s page protector once I have it in the album.

This just might need to be a go-to layout design for me. I think the variety of circles and creating little spots for embellishments could be a great stash buster concept too!

Brande