Back to School / Pinkfresh Studio

Happy Monday!  Today is the first day of school, so I thought it was fitting to create a Back to School layout for Pinkfresh Studio.  I used the new Office Hours collection, which is perfect for school related pages.  I went with a grid design, which reminds me of school.  I divided the background paper into four big quadrants and went with primary colors, which again, reminds me of school.  I used lots of fun Office Hours embellishments around the page, creating a tone-on-tone effect.

I began by coating a lot of the background paper with clear gesso to prep it for some watercolor.  Once I created the four squares, I used some white gesso to fade out some of the pattern in the center of the page.  I used Distress Oxides first to get a base color down, and then I came in with the Pinkfresh Studio Liquid Watercolors to add some more color.  I love mixing and matching mixed media to get different looks.  I went through all the Office Hours embellishments...chipboard, die cuts, enamel shapes, puffy stickers, fabric die cuts...and chose pieces in yellow, blue, green and red.

I placed all the red pieces in the red section, all the yellow pieces in the yellow section, and so on.  I popped my photo up using some adhesive foam.  I love this big binder clip piece!  Perfect for the edge of the photo.  This photo is from 2016...and it's a challenge to get both of my girls to stand still together, let alone pose on the first day of school. They are ready to get in the car and GO...haha.

I love these adorable pencils!  I was so happy to see so many pieces that were perfect for a school layout.  I popped up some of these pieces with adhesive foam and added matching colors of tangled thread.

I created a smaller secondary title in the blue area using the matching small puffy alpha stickers.  You can also see here that I machine stitched using grey thread to make the grid lines a bit more crisp and to add more texture.

I love how the main title turned out!  I used the Adore Alpha Stamp Set from Pinkfresh with the Distress Oxides.  I love how the tone-on-tone effect looks here.  I did overlap the photo onto the red letters, but it's still easy to see what the title says.

I chose to place the photo in the lower right section since the girls are looking toward the left.  I like to have faces looking in towards the middle of the photo if I can design it that way.

Here are a few more close-ups of all the fun details!

I really love how this turned out!  I hope it inspires you to create a fun back to school page using this collection...it really is great, and the colors are perfect for school!  I hope you'll check out my process video here to see how I made this from start to finish.

Thanks so much for stopping by, and have a great day!