Simply Beautiful

Here's a layout I recently did with a picture I took of my brother and his beautiful fiance in Kananaskis Country. I really felt that this picture captured the love between these two and I wanted to do something special with it.


I chose an appropriate themed paper - lovebirds and went for the layer look with my matting. I really like the layered look as it allows me to use different patterned papers in similar/complimentary colors from my leftovers pile. I recently purchased a new stamp set and found this layout the perfect place to use it. So I stamped the boy and girl in blue on the layout. I liked it but I thought it was missing something. I then remembered that I had these little adhesive pearls I bought a while back and thought they would work out great so I used them as buttons on the boys shirt. I then thought the girls dress needed something. I found these rhinestone shapes (hearts, flowers, stars, etc) at the local dollar store on one of Catherine's and mine shopping sprees and decided they would be perfect. In the center of the flower I stuck one of the pearls to pull it all together. Bling, that was it! I love how this layout turned out and came together really well. And the bonus to it all, everything with the exception of the stamp set I already had in my stash! How awesome is that! Yes I know, my stash is quite extensive so really it wasn't that hard.

Hanging Out

We spend hours and hours creating the perfect layout, pouring our heart and soul into everything from the photos chosen to the bling pain stakingly applied and then what do we do? We put it in a Album to be pulled out every once in awhile to be looked at.

Well I saw this idea and thought it was totally awesome - display your hard worked on layouts as pieces of art in a gallery. To get this look simply go to any local store (Walmart, Ikea, etc) that sells curtains and rods and buy curtain rod and loop clips. Remember the longer your rod the more layouts you can clip up. Mine is the length of the couch and I can fit five layouts on it easily. Hang the rod somewhere in your house where it can be seen and enjoy. Just remember that sunlight fades paper so either hang the rod where it doesn't get direct sunlight or switch out the layouts very regularly.

I love this as it allows me to display favorite layouts, recently completed layouts, or themed layouts (like Christmas ones at Christmas time) as decoration. I think it is so clever!

Papparazzi

I have a new technique that am absolutely in love with. I'm not sure what it's called so I call it fraying :) I use it on a lot of my photo mats to give a little bit of a messy look and I love the dimension it adds to the photos. Here's a layout I used it on.


And here's a close up of the photo mat (the teal mat) that I used the fraying technique on.

So I guess you are wondering how to do this cool technique, well it's really quite simple. I will warn you though that it is messy so make sure you do it over the garbage can. Now there are little tools out there that you can buy but I find my scissors work just fine plus I can control how much fraying I get based on how hard I press with the scissors. First thing you do is cut your photo mat to size you want. Next you take a pair of sharp scissors and open them all the way. Then hold the scissors at the swivel point with the blades facing away from you. Place the top blade at a forty-five degree angle to your photo mat. Drag the blade of the scissors in short strides down the photo mat working towards yourself. You can keep going over the same spots until you get the desired look you are aiming for. I recommend trying this a couple of times on a piece of scrapcard stock until you are comfortable. I hope you have fun getting a little frayed just like me.

Water Dog?

This is the sketch I have decided to use for the Pictures I took of Angus the first time he played in the water. I love how the background looks like waves.


I also took this opportunity to play with one of my new favorite paper lines - Snorkel by Cosmo Cricket. I modified the sketch as I needed it to be a 2 page layout. I love how it turned out so much that I think I might just submit it to Cosmo Cricket for their use. We'll see.