too cool for school | iris fox

Hello fellow cut file fans!  Iris here with a back-to-school layout using not one, but two recent cut files: School Days and Too Cool for School.

It's not easy to find school products that compliment the purple both my daughter and her boyfriend are wearing in the photos, but I happened to have this multi-colored lined paper from Shimelle's Sparkle City.  It was kismet.  I left the branding strip to ground the page and cut off from the top to make it 12x12.

My idea was to create a doodley background, having the two cut files cut in black to be part of the doodles, so I cut both from black cardstock. Too Cool for School is cut 6 inches high and the backpack is 3 inches high.

I strategically placed the backpack diagonally from the title, and a speech bubble-shaped clip at the top, giving me a visual triangle of deep black outlined elements. Then I gathered lots of fun embellishments that would go with teens at school and complemented the colors, from a variety of manufacturers. I scattered them them along the diagonal starting from the bottom left going up to the top right.  

I nestled my journaling under the photos between a cluster of embellishments and the title.  I then stamped some doodles and phrases from Crafty Jen Schow's Here for It stamp to fill in spaces between embellishments and to add a little bit of layering.  The date fit snuggly within the speech bubble.  The final touch was to sprinkle purple acrylic paint.

With back-to-school season in full swing, you'll want to stop by The Cut Shoppe to grab some fabulous back-to-school cut files!