Little Miracle

My sister asked me if I could make a baby layout as a gift for her friend who recently had a little baby girl. She wanted it to match the nursery which had a lot of nature elements especially birds and was painted in a soft lavender colour with brown accents. This is what I came up with:

I used a piece of cardboard (actually from a Pampers box...how fitting!) covered in burlap for the background. The branches I cut by hand from brown cardstock and the leaves are actually a flower die for the Cuttlebug that I trimmed up to make leaves. I originally had the title in a white cloud at the top right corner of the page but I just wasn't loving it. Then I thought it would be cute to hang a banner from the bottom tree branch. The word "little" I printed off from my laptop and then used a single hole punch to carefully punch out each letter, gluing them altogether to create a caterpillar body.  For the face I used a Cuttlebug die for a butterfly which I then trimmed the body and wings off of leaving the cute little head. All of the birds I cut freehand and then used a snowflake Cuttlebug die for the feet and the wings of a bumblebee die for their beaks.

My sister had given me the lyrics to Lee Ann Womack's "I hope you dance" which she wanted me to incorporate into the page. I printed them off on kraft cardstock, cut each into a strip, inked the edges and finished it off with a button at the end of each line. I love how the little thread bows turned out on the first and last button. Also, if you look closely in the leaves below you will notice that a "caterpillar" ate a few of the leaves. The paper moved when I was cutting this group of leaves with the flower die and it got cut up by an adjacent flower but I thought it looked like little nibble lines. This is the leaf that inspired me to add a few caterpillars to the page.

My sister loved it and ended up framing it with a white frame. Here's the final product before it was wrapped!



Thanks for stopping by!



Rustic Wedding Layout

I'm back and so soon! Here is the layout I made as a gift for my friend's wedding. She and her hubby live in Banff and LOVE the outdoors. Her wedding was an outdoor affair that took place in Golden B.C. on the riverbank of the Kicking Horse River (FYI the location was STUNNING! Most beautiful wedding I've ever been to AND they didn't even need a decorator ;)

For the background, I went to my local scrapbook store and knew that I wanted something with a woodgrain. I found this paper that was perfect by Echo Park and featured wood planks.  On top of the paper I added a square of burlap accented with a few lace doilies for a bit of romantic whimsy.

In the corner of the burlap, I added their names on a small banner of Kraft paper and then overlapped it with wooden letters of their first initials that I had inked the edges of with brown ink. The title I cut out with the help of my sister-in-law (thanks!) on her Silhouette. I loved the look of the negative so I incorporated this as well for both the title and the date. Originally, the bride Christy had wanted to walk down the aisle to the song "I think I wanna marry you" however this later changed to "Somewhere over the rainbow" (which didn't help me hold back the tears). But I thought it was very fitting of Christy and her hubby Pierre and a fun title.

I used earthy shades of browns accented with whites to create handmade flowers and a few die cut butterflies embellished with a little bit of bling (every wedding has to have a little bling!). The journalling at the bottom is a poem featured on Sex and the City (a favourite amongst my girlfriends) that the main character Carrie Bradshaw had written for a wedding.

I used two different tutorials that I found on pinterest to create a burlap flower with button detail (above) and a burlap rosette (below). The burlap flowers added so much more dimension to the page and accent the paper flowers beautifully!

That's all for now. Thanks for stopping by! I hope to post some pictures from our trip to Banff when I get a chance. First I have to sift through them all and narrow it down (between my hubby and I we took well over 1000 photos....yikes!). I am thinking that due to the shear volume of pictures, scrapbooking them will be out of the question...I will have to investigate a few photo book options.

The Paper Mixing Bowl: Challenge #8

I am finally back with a layout for the Paper Mixing Bowl. My apologies for skipping over layouts 6 and 7...layout 6 is still waiting to be finished and layout 7 I have yet to get around to posting. I have been a bit busy with company, layouts for wedding gifts and trips to Banff!!! (More on this another post)

This month's recipe is a festive Pumpkin Pie:
 

Here's my take on the recipe:

 

SOURCES:  Patterned Paper:  BasicGrey – Motifica>Clay. Cardstock: Miscellaneous scrap pieces. Fonts:  Pea Katrina, Artistamp Medium Embellishments: Coffee Filter, Wood splinters.

Originally I bought a paper for the background from Echo Park that featured a wood grain background (you will see it in the layout I did for a friend's wedding which I will post soon). However, I came across a piece of paper by Basic Grey that I purchased years ago that was perfect for it. Not only does it feature the main ingredient pumpkin (orange) but it also has black lines that look just like cat scratches on it.

The cobweb I made out of a coffee filter from my cupboard which I cut up in the same way you would make a paper snowflake. I used this as the backdrop to a picture of Arabella dipping her hands into the belly of the pumpkin. So much fun!



My favourite thing about this layout is the wood accents I used. These are actual splinters of wood from an old picnic table from our cottage. A lot of history in that wood...we used to eat at it when we were kids! So I saved a few slivers of it with the hope that they would make it onto one of my scrapbook pages, and alas, they were perfect for this one! I used the thickest piece to carve my title into and also used a black marker to add some depth to the carvings so the letters stood out better. For the journalling, I did my version of a potion combined with the old VISA commercial from TV and described a list of all the things we used to carve our pumpkin.



The pumpkins I cut from an old scrap of metallic cardstock I had lying around. I then scored the pumpkin sections and used a metal distresser to scratch in some texture. This was followed up by distressing the edges and then adding some ink and black chalk to create dimension. I loved how they turned out!



The last feature I did were a few handcut bats which I glued on with foam dots to make them pop.
 

Thanks for stopping by! And stay tuned...I hope to post the rustic wedding layout I made for one of my Bestie's Christy.