Scrapbook Starting Points

Have you stopped by Shimelle's blog lately? She has started something called Starting Points where she has a picture of a starting point of a layout.  The latest one (full details here) was this:




Love how she has used stripy paper because I hardly ever use it and it is a satisfying feeling to use a full piece of paper every now and again.  I chose some Jillybean Soup papers from the September Scraproom kit and my starting point turned out like this (crap phone pic)

which then became this

Ack.... I hate the photo of the layout.  I need a scanner or lessons in how to photograph something 12x12 so it doesn't look like this.