Featuring: Half-Circle Die Set

and Spring Green Mosaic Moments Grid Paper

Dinosaurs Roar!

It’s a colorful and fun page this week for our Pairings Layout on a Mosaic Moments Spring Green Grid. I’ll begin the search for the right patterns to pair to use our featured die, the half-circle die set, a 2×2 and 1×1 pair of dies. Dinosaurs, books and boys will serve as my subject.

The search for the right pattern had me sort and select this group of 18 patterns. I wanted to have a series of 2×2 blocks to run a pattern with the die across the pages. That helped me to whittle them down to five pairs. Now to find one pair that will suit my photos!

Eliminating pairs to get what I want went like this:

1st Pair: A single 1×10 strip across both patterns line up and have several squares below. On the first page there are a series of 2×2 and 2 sets of 1×3’s both would accommodate my dies. However on page two the 2×2’s ‘wave’ across the page and there are too many squares to work for the photos I want to use.

2nd Pair: Top rows on both pages great for my intended pattern. A closer look makes me think there are just too many 2×2’s for what I wanted to do.

3rd Pair: While I love the center row on both patterns being a variation of each other and I can see a few options here, for both the 2×2 and the 1×1’s, I actually have some vertical photos that cropping too much off with the predominately square format will not work out for these patterns.

4th Pair: Now we are getting closer to what I need, a nice pair of center rows of 2×2’s, a few horizontal photo spots and a couple of squares. What it doesn’t have is a few vertical spots or any 1” squares, which takes me to the final pair.

5th Pair: Patterns # 277 & #281. There is a single column of 2×2’s and one with a combination of 2×2’s and 1×1’s. Both patterns have several 1’ spots and the best of all, three vertical spots for photos and three larger squares to fill. This is the one with potential!

I had picked up several pattern papers with a dinosaur theme anticipating doing this page on Liam’s latest fascination with dinosaurs. The original book “Dinosaur Roar!” has long been a favorite of my kids and Liam just loves to roar through the story with me. For Christmas I got him a few more dinosaur books this time from Sandra Boynton. I’m not sure if these books will survive any of their childhoods, but I thought it might be nice to document the books and dinosaurs that bring them so much pleasure at this time in their lives.

 

One of the papers was a sheet of Bazzill Basics Ombre paper in green that I thought might look interesting along the side of the page in the 2×2 blocks. Cutting five cornerstones and saving the half circle sections to run through an embossing folder (Tiny Mosaic-Provo Craft) to give a look of reptile hide.

The cornerstones for the layout are all cut in teal and mounted on the reverse side of one of the green papers that is a light teal shade. This lets me arrange them so that the lightest is at the top and darkest on the bottom. The dinosaur pattern paper (Echo Park: Dino Friends: Brontosaurus) fills several of the 1” spots on both pages.

I included a photo of one of the pages from one of the books to remember what it looked like, just in case the books don’t survive!! A nice detail to add to the page.

 

I left the section of 1” squares in the second column of page one to fill in with the small 1” half-circle. I have repeated the color combination of the base and frame but this time I filled the circles with red, orange and yellow half circles for a nice pop of color that matches the mats I’ve used on the photos.

All that remains is a large 4×6 where I’ll place my journaling on top of a colorful dinosaur mat.

 

Now it’s time for you all to play around with your dies and see how you can incorporate the half-circle dies set into your next layout and pair your patterns to accommodate your photos and dies.

Andrea Fisher