My Favourite Pics

Some time ago I decided to start an album for myself that would be all one page layouts featuring my favourite pictures. Normally I scrap pictures from a certain event/occasion yet many of my favourite pictures never get included. These are two pages from this album - both featuring my amazing niece, Kristie. If you continue to follow my blog you will hear more about how special she is to me.
The first one is a picture of her when she was very young (I'll estimate 3 yrs.). I particularly like the fact that the picture encouraged the use of texture. I used a piece of "blurlap" like fabric which I purchased at Dollarama. The zebra print paper is digital paper from a Scrapbook Answers CD (October 2006). The die cut, I think, is from My Minds Eye. Add some velvet textured flowers, some ribbon and snip the back of a little zebra button and tada!
The second page depicts pictures taken during one of Kristie's many figure skating competitions. The routine was "Memoirs of a Geisha" and is my favourite routine by her. One day when she was visiting we were going through some of the paper I had on hand. When she saw the pale green paper with the beautiful silver flower pattern she said it reminded her of the dress she wore in that figure skating routine ... I knew then I had to do a layout that featured that paper and that routine. The paper was purchased at Dollarama. I free hand cut out a "bonsai inspired" tree and added pink jewels to represent Cherry Blossoms. I loved the way it turned out.