Embellish With Flair DT: Double Page using CKC for Sept

Hello Lovelies!

Would you believe me that I had actually finished the filming and the layout a couple of weeks ago?  I think we're all getting the hang of having a semi-permanent recording set-up, but we're always making improvements along the way.

This layout brings together all-the-things!  What do I mean by that?  Sorta kinda killing two (or in this case more) proverbial birds with one stone.

Firstly, I used supplies from my  September "Counterfeit Kit" to make this layout.  You can read more about that here.  Need a refresher of the inspiration kit for September's Counterfeit Kit Challenge (CKC)?  Just click on over HERE to visit them!

Here's the process video below.

The other thing I manged to incorporate into the layout was the use of a sketch.   Remember, September's Product Focus in the Rediscover Your Stash Facebook group is sketches?

The sketch came from Shimelle's free 4x6 Photo Love class from Two Peas days.  I stumbled across the sketch on Pinterest and upon recognizing it as one of the lessons, I had a look on her blog and there it was!  Shimelle didn't post the sketch, but she shared photos of the two layouts she made and posted them on them on her blog.  Here is Shimelle's blog post and it contains a video of this lesson.

The reason I chose this sketch that CHALLENGE 1 in this month's CKC is "'Curate' Your Project".  This turned out to be quite the drama.  i spend days hunting for the photos but they remain elusive.  I reeeaaaallly wanted to use some museum photos (I knoooow...kinda obvious interpretation) but with Shimelle's "Field Trip" being a museum inspired collection and us having lots of museum photos over the years, it seemed like a good fit.  Especially the number and orientation of photos of one particular trip and this particular sketch

Butterflies were Plan B (more about in the video)!  I guess the zoo is a kind of museum?  And I always imagine "curators" as pinning down insects and butterflies (see where I'm going with this?) onto those numbered plates.   It ended up for the best, because who makes butterfly flair better than Embellish With Flair?  I was spoiled for choice and I don't even have all of them! 😮

I tell you, sitting down to a layout frequently takes you down a rabbit hole and it tells you what it needs.  (What? don't your supplies talk to you??)

Hands up if you have plenty of "vintage" stash that you can't part with.

Yeah I thought so.  I have a lot.  Today I'm reporting that I successfully got them (OK OK THREE of them) on a layout after languishing in my stash for...I don't know...maybe 6-8 years?  I have maybe 4 different packets of these rosettes.  I know I manged to use up almost a full pack some years ago, so it IS possible. 🤔

Regardless of WHAT type of item it is that you're hoarding, the important reason is to ask yourself WHY.  This will be different for everybody and may include a combination of factors.

Is it the fact that you paid money for it and don't want to feel like you're throwing money away if you get rid if it?  You don't have to throw them out.  Ask around at local schools, preschools, childcare and community centres...and hospitals too.  They often have arts and crafts type programs and are grateful for the donations.  You can feel good knowing your stuff will be enjoyed by sick kids.

Not you?  Still clutching your preciousssssesss? 🤣 (Don't worry, clearly I am too!)
hoarding it for a sentimental reason?  Are you waiting for the PERFECT project.  Larger, pre-made embellishments tend to be expensive so I can understand that.
If that's you, then I encourage you to read this article by Shimelle on what COULD happen to "special" supplies if you hold onto them too long. Gives you something to think about for sure.

What if you WANT to use them...TRY to use them, but they just look wrong every time.

That's me, BTW.  🙋🙋🙋 (Actually they're all me, but mostly the last one.)

The first tip I have at getting something to work is to go back to the same collection.  Collections are designed to go together,  They're made so you really just need to add photos, a pen and glue.  I usually mix my collections so this is a step back and chance to refocus for me.

Chances are, if they're older supplies, you likely don't have much (if anything) left from the original collection.  So go back to manufacturer if they are still in business.  The rosettes I had were all brands under the American Crafts umbrella (I have two packs by American Crafts, one by Pebbles and one I can't remember now). Usually the colours have a certain familiarity about them.

You can also try and pull in motifs similar to those in the original collection, paying close attention to the colours.

For my part, in this particular case, I often felt they were too big...as are many supplies I LIKE, but just struggle to use (often due to size).  In this particular instance, spreading them over a two-page layout seemed like a logical way to start.  It was going to still take a bit of work since the photos took up a fair bit of space.  What I DID like about using these rosettes is that they make a perfect nest for a flair badge! 🙌

They're so old the foam pads on the back just fell off!  🤣
Many are topped with a button and the button is almost always without thread. 😱 Naked buttons make me twitchy!  Whatever adhesive was used to attach the button to the FRONT of the rosette was certainly more effective than the one used for the foam dots on the back! 😂 That rosette slightly popped open.  Glue Dots fixed this, attached the flair and then the rosettes to the layout (don't even get me started on chipboard Thickers)...along with some of the other bits and pieces.

As you saw in the video, I chose the colours carefully to co-ordinate with both the flair and layout itself.  The Pebbles ones had white circles with tiny "happy birthday" text that I never noticed before.  Since I don't celebrate them and it's irrelevant to the story anyway, I pulled them off.

This is where you can start to bring the supplies into the modern era by replacing the various layers with punched circles of papers from your layout.  Suddenly they don't stick out as much!

Since I was trying to draw attention to the flair badges,  I chose not to replace the circles.  The white flair against the blue/aqua looked really good. Flair, rather than buttons, gave them a fresh new look and I'm really pleased how they turned out.  I can't say the same for all the other parts, but overall pretty satisfied given  don't two page layouts

I think what I'm going to do is place all my "too hard" supplies in one basket nearby, so I'm looking at them and through them more often and don't miss opportunities to use them.  An actual "too hard" basket! 🤣🤣🤣

Oh you probably want to see the rest of the layout, right?  😳😂

OK here is the title and journaling (yes I added the butterfly and black faceted gems after I stopped filming!):

 

And the whole spread:

The Butterfly House

Looks like the resident photographer had some "halp" and rather stringent quality control.  It appeared to be the subject matter was all wrong, but as you can see below she fixed it!  Phew!  🤣






I hope I've addressed most of the reasons why you might be holding on to supplies and how to get past this road block.  Leave me a comment or email if you have any questions.  I'll be happy to have a chat about it.

Love and Embellish With Flair,

DT Project for Embellish With Flair (22 July)

Hello Lovelies

I'm here with the final installment of my Lost Mojo (or Finding Inspiration) series that I've been writing for the Embellish With Flair blog!  If you missed the first five installments, you can find them here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5 

This one will be about using challenges to find inspiration. 

There are many sites (usually in the form of a blog) which host weekly or monthly challenges.  Sometimes they’re specific like a different colour challenge each week or the type of challenge might vary.

Facebook Groups relating to scrapbooking or cardmaking or more general crafts sometimes have special challenges.  Some commonly found activities include some of the things we’ve already looked at like scraplifting and commonly sketches.  Others frequently found are things Tic TAC Toe (also referred to as bingo) (like noughts and crosses where each box contains a prompt or item to use and you can choose a line in any direction and must include those items), mood boards and many others.

In April, such a Facebook group for the store Anna’s Craft Cupboard were celebrating their 13th anniversary with a cyber crop.  There were plenty of games and challenges and I’m going to go back and complete one that I wanted to do at the time but didn’t get around to it.

There were two "Blind Crops” and for me, your pink, self confessed control freak. these are the most difficult of all!  A blind crop usually is most successful when completed “live” to eliminate the temptation to peek ahead.  The leader has everyone making a layout step by step according to their instructions!  Eg “cut paper B into a 6x8 rectangle and stick to top left of paper A”.  Supplies to have on hand are usually available for some time beforehand, although the level of detail often varies.

The designer of the blind crop I’m going to make is none other than Melinda Sweetman who is probably well known to many of you.

I’m pleased to say I didn’t cheat on terms of peeking at the finished layouts, but I had a tiny cheat which I’ll confess in due process!  The list of supplies was more or less straightforward - except I had 5 papers picked instead of 4.  One was from a paper pad and single sided, so more like 4.5! 🤦🏼‍♀️

Since I rarely pull ink, mist or paint when making up kits, I felt I could justify the “wait and see” approach” when it came to this step.

Not knowing when and how much of each paper would be used was driving me crazy!  After following the cutting and sticking for the pink and woodgrain papers, I pretty much was sure my remaining paper would be the blue/lilac striped one (in the photo cluster) and not the green one.

Once I figured out we were cutting photo mats came my cheat - not only did I use the two specified papers (would have been the woodgrain and the purple) but I decided to also cut a mat from my pink paper and my green floral “spare” paper and do messy offset mats.  I use a lot of paper layers and doing this was like a security blanket! 

At the point when texture paste was required, I went with a "frankenpaste" as I sometimes do.  I mixed Colour Blast in Snow White with Vicki Boutin’s iridescent glitter texture paste (which has a clear base).  I wasn’t super happy when it was drying a bit more translucent than I hoped after 2 steps.  Then I saw paste was required for a third step so I dried off what I had already done enough to put the stencil back exactly as it was.  I mixed a bit of Dreamweaver pearlescent embossing paste into my frankenpaste and after doing the third area I went back over the first two lightly.  This made for some thick paste and in hindsight I should have probably used a more densely patterned stencil.

Here are the three pastes swatches separately.  The fine glitter in the Colour Blast is hard to see, but it's gorgeous! 

I also wasn’t thrilled with any of my mist choices, but didn’t want the fuss of mixing anything so I knew the shimmer pigment in Heidi Swapp Color Shine should show up even on darker paper.

I had to leave the layout to sit overnight so the thick paste could dry all the way through.  The waiting time and scant adhesive causing the pink and paper to lift a lot at the edges.  I decided to machine stitch for some extra interest.  It's subtle, but adds some texture.

I also had to stitch down the yellow Thickers (not my first choice, but I simply couldn't make the ascending letters of a scripty font work no matter what I tried. 😒

I fussy cut virtually the entire sheet of that gorgeous floral paper from Shimelle's Little by Little collection and eliminated the red flowers and kept the others.  While yellow doesn't appear in the background pattern, it definitely worked as an accent and gave me the option of yellow in the title since both pink and white alphas seemed to blend in too much.  I added the lion die cut from the same collection and some critters from Box of Crayons also by Shimelle hidden among the flowers since the photo was taken at the zoo even though the journaling isn't about the outing itself.

A word of warning - trying to use regular adhesive to stick paper onto the lumpy rough paste is not an option!!  Melinda suggested liquid glue, and for me that's always a last resort.  I used my beloved Glue Dots, but this time I decided on a pre-emptive strike and used the Craft Glue Dots (in the red dispenser) which are generally intended for off the page type stuff needing extra strength.  It was definitely the right move!

I used Permanent Glue Dots for the flair as always and for the round Thickers.  Stitching them down would have made them hard to read and been a challenge on that slight angles, but the Glue Dots were perfect for the job.  Minis and Micros for the sequins as always!

I left the choice of flair until later since I wasn't sure where the blind crop was going to take me.  I opted for the Captured set which was black on white.  The white was going to stand out and co-ordinate with the paste and I wanted to include some camera motifs in the embellishment clusters anyway.

I used the silver, holographic circles from the Thickers phrase set from Shimelle's Sparkle City and some sequins from Spiegelmom Scraps to finish!

Embellish with Flair product used:  Captured

I'll see you again soon with something new!

Love, and embellish with flair!

Design Team Post for Embellish With Flair (17 June)

Hello Lovelies!
(giveaway now closed)

I'm here with the next installment of my Lost Mojo (or Finding Inspiration) series that I've been writing for the Embellish With Flair blog!  If you missed the first installments, you can find them here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Today we continue to look for inspiration in work by others.  The natural progression from scraplifting would probably be a sketch, but there is something a little in between.  I'm talking about CLASSES.  Classes offered by other crafters.  These can be either face-to-face or online.

I love online classes myself as they can be worked through at your own pace and access is usually life long.  I regularly sign up for classes by other crafters.  BUT WHY?? I hear you ask! You TEACH classes, so why TAKE classes?? 🤔

Well everyone's style is different.  I believe that you never stop learning and if you don't try something new, you'll never know whether it's "your thing" or not.  Even the most well known crafters or artists can misplace their mojo for a time, and taking a class can reignite it (not to mention supporting fellow artists).

Today's layout takes inspiration from Lesson One from a class I recently signed up for called "A Touch of Whimsy" by my dear friend Sara.  Before you ask, no I didn't sign up JUST because she's my friend!  Her style is VERY different to mine and I love what she makes, but it's definitely out of my comfort zone!

Like me, Sara is both a cardmaker and scrapbooker and I definitely think you can apply the techniques in the class to cards as well...and...I think I'll do exactly that, so watch this space! 😉😉😉

I HIGHLY recommend you check out the class.  It's excellent value at only $7USD, self paced so there are no deadlines and you also get access to a Facebook group which is really useful for thrashing out ideas and sharing your work.

💡Tip: Getting out of your comfort zone could be just what you need to get that mojo back!

I figured I'd better practice what I preach and since the last layout was a scraplift of Shimelle's (and I've taken MANY of her classes) which is very much within my comfort zone, I should probably show you something different!

One thing Shimelle does say about scraplifting (or trying something quite different) is that you still want to make it look like YOU made it when someone flips through the pages of your album. 

As a general rule.  if you've never taken an online class before, it's totally OK (and usually encouraged!) to share what you make online and across the socials.  What's NOT OK is to share the actual videos, PDFs and images of the artist's layouts.  This is why I can't show you Sara's actual layout.  You may know her as Sara Scraps across the socials, but she put this little SNEAKY PEEK on her Insta so you kinda get an idea what it's about.

❓What do you think of when you hear the word "whimsy"?  Go ahead and tell me your thoughts in the comments.

My thoughts are:
Organic shapes rather than geometric
Curves vs sharp angles
Butterflies
Flowers
Hearts
Clouds and floaty stuff
Unicorns, rainbows, dragons

Sara's first lesson in the class focuses on hand stitching or alternatives if you don't like to stitch.  As soon as I saw this I knew EXACTLY which photos and story I wanted to use.  I had set them aside for a layout I DID plan to hand stitch!!  What I hadn't planned on was having to SKETCH my stitching lines! 😬

Plan A was to ask my SmallCraftyDude to help, but he refused point blank upon learning I required hearts.  🙄

Plan B was to use a cut file.  Paige Evans has many cut files with the holes already there for stitching, or use the pen holder in the Silhouette to get it to sketch the design in pencil and I poke the holes myself,  That's almost like not cheating, right?  😉

Plan Q, R or perhaps S was to put on my Big Girl pants and get on with it.  Sara gave me such encouragement (and I realized I wouldn't be setting the best example by cheating), so a whole white eraser later I decided to start poking holes before I changed my mind. 💪

So, what I had in my head was inspired by this layout by Flora Farkas using one of Paige's cut files.  Except I wanted more whimsy...and I promised I'd draw it myself.  You'll see how I take inspiration from Flora's layout without exactly scraplifting it, but it does incorporate at what we looked at in the previous post about scraplifting with this one.  While I'm not exactly scraplifting the layout Sara made in Lesson 1, it's a sort of mix of hers and Flora's and turning out to be unique in its own right. 

I needed both pink and purple so it would draw attention to the colour of the dresses my nieces are wearing in the photos.  The colour is pretty washed out being taken indoors with less than ideal lighting so I wanted to draw attention to it.  The story behind these photos is about their outfits as we watched the royal wedding last year at a high tea my sister organised.

Naturally there are flairs for every possible occasion in the Embellish With Flair shop and this set called Royal Crowns even had the perfect name! 😍😍😍

The background needed to be subtle.  A white tone-on-tone was definitely on the list, but I've always swooned over this subtle yet gorgeous ombre Paper 8 from Paige Evans' "Take Me Away" collection 😍

It’s at this point where I normally start layering photo mats like crazy.  I wasn’t sure what to do here.  I didn’t want the photo block to look too heavy, but I did need to add my own touches to make it my own.  I don’t usually stack multiple photo mats ups evenly.  It looks really formal and just not “right” for most of my stories.  And another thing - I’m not sure I could stack anything evenly if I tried! 😂🤷

💡Tip: You don't have to copy a sketch, scraplift or class lesson down to the last detail.  You want to find the balance between trying something new and still being true to your style.

Since I was trying to keep the photo block reasonably small (not to cover too much of the painstakingly stitched background raiding my box of scraps (when a certain cat isn’t holding them hostage) is a perfect opportunity to pot a small dent in them!

Then I went through my die cuts and stickers and pulled out what I felt qualified as “whimsical”. I found a couple of frames from Paige Evans’ collections.  I struggle to use frames, but this time I was determined.  I backed them with patterned paper as I would a cutfile and they formed a kind of bridge between the paper and the embellishments.  

I love how most of the embellishments are small and paper based (die cuts or fussy cutting or stickers.  It makes them less heavy and more "whimsical".  I only used a single piece of chipboard and tried to keep the non paper elements delicate.

I was trying to be a little restrained there as well since part of the class lesson was to scatter little floaty bits along the stitched areas. I stitched down two butterflies with a cross stitch and attached the tiny metallic butterflies.

The butterflies help make a connection between the metal flair and the more whimsical floaty elements.  As always, Glue Dots is the only thing I use to adhere flair badges and some of the embellies that didn't want to sit nicely on the raised stitching! 👍

Placement of embellishments was kind of decided for me since there were many areas of the stitched chains of hearts I was unhappy with. 

I put the journal in the space underneath in grey to make it less intrusive.  It’s more legible IRL I promise!  I picked an older set of Thickers by Dear Lizzy (going back to her Polka Dot Party collection) in white (trying to be soft and subtle yet girly at the same time).  Hands up if you have the song from Princess Diaries 2 in your head when you read the title? 🙋😂

Since I was unable to decide between pearls or diamantes,  I used both!  Plenty of royal jewels mix the two so on they went!  I was in two minds as to whether to add any gold mist.  I know I’ve been doing a lot of it lately, but there is a bit of gold in the die cuts and stickers so I went with it.

Here's my final outcome and I'm not entirely displeased with it!  😂👍

It was a labour of love.  I even cut into one of my super special "Love Elsie" papers, and believe me that doesn't happen often!  Besides, it was the only "right" shade of purple among the 37 others I tried 😂🤷!

Most importantly,  I achieved my aim by started off with something which looked very different to what I'd normally make, yet I was able to mould it into something that looked like it was my work and included all the things I loved...and all from taking one class!


I do encourage you to try this approach whether it be Sara's class, a different online class or a face-to-face class if you are fortunate enough to be close enough to someone who offers them!

Crowning Glory

 

 Embellish With Flair products used: Royal Crowns

Giveaway Details - closed!

🎨I'm going to give away a spot in Sara's class!!  😍
(If you're a cardmaker, I'm going to show you how this class can still be adapted to card making and I promise you'll learn some awesome new techniques!)

🎨 The giveaway will remain open until 11:59PM AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time) on Wednesday 31 July (extended)
If you aren't sure what that is in your timezone, here's a TIMEZONE CALCULATOR
🎨 The winner will be drawn on Friday 2 August so PLEASE CHECK BACK HERE!
🎨If the winner and I can't make contact by Friday 16 August, I will have to draw a new winner
🎨Please try to email me at alex@pinkcraftymama.com This really is the easiest way for me to get in touch with you since not all blogger profiles have an email attached and if you JUST leave comments, I have no other place to search for you.

Until the end of July, I'm going to be making stuff (on and off) inspired by this class.  (You'll know the post relates to it because I'll have "GIVEAWAY" in the title and basically shout it from the rooftops!😜)

You will receive ONE entry for each of the following.  You absolutely don't have to do everything - just however many you like, but you need to leave a comment somewhere so we know you want to play along!

So...what do you have to do to get entries?
Follow Alex's blog (in the left sidebar)
Follow Alex on Facebook
Follow Alex on Instagram
Follow Sara on Instagram 
Subscribe to Alex's YouTube
Subscribe to Sara's YouTube 

If you already follow our socials then that bit is done for you!

Comment (once per day per person) on a post related to this giveaway (look out for the pink whimsy graphic) between now and the close of the giveaway :
Alex's Blog post
Alex's Facebook share
Alex's Instagram Post
Alex's YouTube Video

So today...if you want to leave a comment, What do you think of when you hear the word "whimsy"? (or anything else if this doesn't grab you) and please don't hesitate to  email me with any questions at alex@pinkcraftymama.com


Love and Embellish With Flair,

TTCRD 21 May DT Project

 Hi Lovelies!

Today is challenge day for Design Team B for the Through The Craft Room Door Challenge.  This is a WEEKLY "anything goes" (any type of project and any theme) challenge with 2 design teams who alternate weeks to make projects showcasing the sponsor who often offers PRIZES!

This week's sponsor is Morgan's Art World. You can read a bit about her below.
Prize: 3 Digi images

I’ve been trying out alcohol ink backgrounds this past week and enjoyed it so much that I decided to use it on these butterfly images.

The complication is that being a digital image it needs to be printed.  I have a laser printer which is great for colouring images, but not all paper can be put through the printer since the heat would melt it.  The best option for alcohol ink is Yupo.  It’s so cool!  It looks and feels like paper, but it’s 100% polypropylene!  That sounds like a disaster in a printer!

Glossy paper is the next best option, but it’s unlikely to print well even in a laser printer and I was still not convinced it wouldn’t kill the printer.

I remembered that the black foil that I used with the foil quill for my last card looked much the same!  The quill is hot, so slightly nervous (not gonna lie) but it’s fast and you can heat emboss on Yupo and glossy paper so should be OK.

I wanted to use foil on the alcohol ink so I decided to make the backgrounds first them foil the images last.

As you can see the first page I did wasn’t as clear as I’d like it so I set the quill to do two passes for the next one and it was much better.  The left one was a single pass and right was 2 passes.

I'm not totally thrilled with the composition - I think I cut the butterflies too large, but I do like the white with the only colour being the butterflies.

That's all for today!

Love and fabulous foiling!

Ode to Joy with CKC Jan Kit and three challenges!

Well this is a very efficient page in terms of challenges (unless you count the two backgrounds I hated and tossed along the way 😂)

I'm using my January kit that I put together for the Counterfeit Kit Challenge, I'm still working through the January challenges over at Rediscover your Stash and this layout will count for Challenge 6 - "Floral Frenzy".

The cutfile is a freebie from the lovely Jen Schow and she has challenged everyone to use it and post in her Facebook group - Crafty Use it or Lose It (incidentally I was gonna do a series with this name but she beat me to it!!)

Lastly, Virginia Walker is challenging everyone in her Facebook group (Confessions of a Paper Addict) to dust off the mixed media and make a mixed media layout by 2 March.

Since Joy suggested adding a bunch of mixed media items to include in our kit, it seem to be the right time!

The journaling on this page will a lot more in depth about how we became friends and how it evolved over the years and other little bits and pieces.  Far too much to write straight on the page or put on a single journaling card, so I'm doing a pocket next to the photo. I have plenty of glassine bags and I'll slit the page protector in the approximate spot to make retrieval of the journaling easier.  It's not super private, but a bit personal maybe,

So...on to the layout then.  The first thing I did was cut the floral bouquet by Jen Schow in 2 sizes.  I backed them with papers from 6x6 paper pads (and the odd bit from my scrap box) so that's a yay being the product focus for the month of January at Rediscover your Stash

Next came time to recap of the mixed media items I put into the kit.

Colours - Soft Greens, Peach and some Pink
12 x Patterned Papers -
*1 x 6 x 6 Paper Pad
(Paper pads are also the product focus of the month on the Rediscover your Stash Facebook Group so I'm picking two)
*Wooden Embellishments
*2 x Mists
*Texture Paste
*2 x Stencils
*1 x Cut File
*1 x Washi Tape
*Stickers
*Alphas

I ended up choosing more than 2 mists to get a better rainbow effect, but only so the basic colours of peach, pink and green would look OK when mixing so a bit of yellow was needed to separate them and I threw in some deeper turquoise to balance things out.

This is all after treating a sheet of patterned paper (I wanted one with roughly painted black stripes and this one by Dear Lizzy was the first one to fit the bill.)

I did have a different paper which went horribly wrong so I got another sheet of the same paper which was better but also horribly wrong.   I can still use the reverse side of those so it's not an entire waste!

I really really love the look of layouts that use large cut files and mixed media, but I'm just not that good at them,  I don't want all my layouts to be like this, but I want to include them often enough in my albums to be something that's a change from most pages, but not super rare either.  Maybe a bit more frequent than that.  Am I making any sense?  (cos that'd be a first! 😂)

I started by prepping the page with the customary layer of gesso.  If  I wanted the stripes to remain uncovered I could have gone with a translucent or clear gesso, but I deliberately went with white to tone them down a bit.

Next step was white texture paste through a butterfly stencil before adding the colour with the "smooshing" technique, but gave up pretty fast since it was too slow and I wanted the colour to be more intense, so I sprayed right onto the layout (but aimed close to the page to reduce cast off spray) and if necessary adding a spray of water to help it move around,

It lightened a lot as it dried so I just layered more mist.  So much for my plans to have just a little bit of colour in the middle which peeks just beyond the flowers and photos I layer over it.


I felt like I wanted some stamps or stenciling or something else, but you can understand my reluctance after previous disasters at this point 😂!  Joy specified TWO stencils so I should have added some before I even added the embossing paste, but at worst under the mist.

What if I use something opaque and not too runny on top?  🤔 I have some distress paint in bronze which I used on the leaves of the cut files.  It's still a bit runny, though.  Would it look really bad if i added gold instead?  I'm thinking Viva Decor Inka Gold.  I only have it in gold and silver, but it's more like a waxy polish and doesn't have thickness so it's perfect (except for the colour!).  The bronze leaves aren't hugely obvious and I'm sure I included rose gold, copper and yellow gold together on yesterday's facing page!!

I have been putting aside any kind of embellishment with "Joy" on it for months.  This cut apart sheet is actually from a Christmas line by Studio Tekturek, but it has some great neutral B side patterns in black, white, red and peach so there is lots to use even for people like me who don't celebrate holidays,

The heart was just open so I punched a few holes and hand stitched to bring in the green and I had another punny title in mind so I let the journaling card form part of it and black Thickers made it look more like a title.



The plan is to try to bring in some of the papers from yesterday's layout and layer up a nice thick stack under the photo and determine a space somewhere for the pocketed journo. 

This ended up being to the right of the photo and balanced the title card on the left.



I positioned the floral cut files roughly where I wanted them, BUT I wanted MORE flowers!  I fussy cut the Maggie Holmes paper from the Gather Collection (the one with the green roses and peachy leaves).  I shoved these under the cut file bouquets, but it still wasn't enough. 

Out came my box of flower die cuts and fussy cut flowers (mostly Maggie Holmes and pulled out some pink and peachy coloured flowers.  Much better!👍👍👍

At this point I remembered the original CKC inspiration kit had some kind of tulle embellishment so I made up this super fast tulle flower. 

While searching for something unrelated, I found an unopened packet of Maggie Holmes mini tassels in pink, peach and mint,  After threading them onto paper clips, they weren't even that hard to use!  No idea what all the fuss was about. 🤷


As I looked at the layout and lamented that all but about 2 of the texture paste butterflies were now covered up, I found some of the Maggie Holmes paper called "Monarch"  from Chasing Dreams which I started fussy cutting for other layouts.  Naturally, I wasn't going to leave them like that - I punched some smaller butterflies from vellum and stitched them together,  They're kind of subtle since the colours are so similar to everything else, but that isn't a bad thing considering how out of control this page is getting and I haven't even got to the small things!


There was this large sticker with the map of the world on it when I was struggling to use and Joy suggested I use it on on of "our" pages.  I wanted both UK and Australia to show so I did trim it down then slice it in half and split it across the page to make it less heavy,  I added arrows just to point out the relevant countries.

As I double checked the list, I realized I was still missing Washi and wood veneers!  I went with black washi to break up all the other colours and not make the title look like an anomaly.  Three small wooden hearts added to three groupings.  I probably wouldn't have if they weren't on the list, but at this point it was so out of control and even exceeded my limit of stuff that I just rolled with it!  Besides I don't use wood veneer as often as I'd like.


I didn't even add any crafty motifs or other word stickers - just the ones I pulled out about "Joy".  Stuff about out day out or travel or "today" wouldn't have really worked with the journaling.

I added some small postage stamp style stickers to give the words somewhere to sit, but that was about it (besides some bling at the very end!!)




It was about this point that I realized I needed somewhere to write. The journaling cards needed to be custom cut since the glassing bags were narrower than 3".  I figured a paper pad might be the answer since I could have a pattern on one side and white on the bag for writing, 

The search as over when I found the Maggie Holmes paper (aptly named "Library") from Chasing Dreams which has all those book covers,  I fussy cut them since THEY were the perfect size for the pocket!

I can use as many or few as I need.  I tried stamting one on the plain side with a notebook style stamp.  The lines were too widely spaced so I stamped twice,


OK brace yourselves.  This is a bit much even for me! 🤣🤣🤣

Ode To Joy

Love and excessive embellishing!