Zoo layout makeover

I asked for some help yesterday on what to do to help make this layout sing. Thanks much to my facebook friends who offered advice! I changed the scallop to Cocoa CS, which helped a TON. Now my monkey reference to Aidan stands out much more clearly.

Yvonne had some great suggestions for the left side. Everything from ruffled borders to burlap! I didn't have burlap, but she mentioned making it look like a lion's mane, and, well... we got a lion! I free-cut the head for the lion from Honey cardstock, based on the lion in our stamp set, In the Wild (retired) and which I'd already used for the monkey. Then, using the animals and trees B&T half-circle as a pattern, I cut the "mane." For embellishments, I'm not the best in coming up with great uses of ribbon and metals, so I went with stamping and some simple antiqued copper brads.

I had already cut Brook's photo down trying out another idea while trying to get it to fit with the oh-so-cute lion, so I added some more pictures from the trip I had tagged for a couple more layouts and trimmed them to fit, each at 3 1/4 x 3". This really helped as the layout is actually about Brook's kindergarten field trip to the zoo, but Grandpa, Aidan and I got separated from them right off the bat, so I never got a picture of her actually at the zoo! Epic failure.  Now the layout is balanced and about each of them separately and equally (how they like it best.)

Warm wishes,

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