Blog: Guest Designer | Ashley Horton

We're thrilled to have the lovely and talented Ashley Horton as one of our guest designers this month and are excited to get to know her better today! Be sure to follow Ashley here at Studio Calico to keep up with her and see more of her beautiful work.

Hi! I'm Ashley Horton, and I live in southern Alabama with my husband, Tyler, and our three children, Madison, Emma, and Reese. I'm a work-at-home mom and homeschool teacher...among a few other titles. We also have a sixth family member of the furry kind named Baxter. I love to take photos of our family, and scrapbooking has always been a fun way to get my photos from the digital world to the real world. My favorite type of project is a 12" x 12" layout. You'll usually find a lot of color, patterned papers, and a mix of cut files on my layouts. Most of my layouts are one photo pages, but occasionally, I may add a second photo. The thing I love most about scrapbooking is the opportunity to be creative and make what I love. Other than scrapbooking, I also enjoy cooking and reading...and have recently become an HGTV addict. I'm not sure if that qualifies as a hobby, but it's pretty fun!

Always Together – The tags in the "Candyland" Scrapbook Kit make a great design element. I used them with the diagonal design on the patterned paper and added some stamping and several embellishments. The alpha stickers were perfect for my diagonal title, and the contrast of the light blue against the orange background really makes the title stand out.

Be Original – It's been a while since I've had the chance to add any mixed media to a layout, but the fun stamps in the February "Candyland" Kit motivated me to try it on this layout. I stamped several of the designs on white cardstock using Color Theory "Flamingo" ink. Once I finished with the stamping, I painted over each of the stamps in coordinating watercolor. Pink, orange, and black have always been one of my favorite color combinations, so I pulled embellishments from the kit that included those colors.

Emma & Sadie – I LOVE a fun circle paper! Once I saw this patterned paper in the "Candyland" Kit, I knew I had to use it on one of my layouts. I continued the circle theme with my photo cut into a circle and placed my embellishments inside the circles on the patterned paper. I kept things fairly simple on the rest of the layout to avoid covering up the fun design of the paper.