Up All Night

This weekend I made my first attempt at creating a totally original layout. When it's done I'll scan it and post it here but it was an idea I got from scanning a bunch of other people's layout idea webpages. It's titled Our Garden and it includes lily of the vally like flowers with pictures of all my and my husband's immediate family members, the centerpiece being us with daisy like flowers of our faces. Since I'm just beginning and being one that makes things a bit harder than they have to be, I've basically created everything so far by Paintshop Pro, clipart I found off the internet, and my own imagination. I'm sure I could spend hundreds of dollars on similar items making my scrapbooking a lot easier but my thoughts are why spend all that money to get something that is not exactly what I want? The drawback of course is that I spend at least 4 hours last night cleaning up the clipart of the flowers and stems to the way I wanted them to look, sizing them to the right size (reams and reams of paper printed on both sides) and then cutting and pasting everyone's faces to fit on the flower bells and sizing those. What a mess! The end result, however, is that the page is looking exactly how I want it. I'm still not done. I have yet to figure out how to make the flowers that my little family will occupy. I think I need to buy some flower templates and a compass.