Crazy Love

My brother and his wife have been together for almost 40 years now.  Wow!  My brother has quite a sense of humor and every now and again, he will surprise us when we least expect it.   This was one of those times where he pounced on his wife.  It found it to be a cute pic.

I used the patterned paper with circles so that the clusters could be centered and stacked in them to add interest to the page.  Note that some of the circles are off the page.  This brings continuity to the page and ties it all together.  I use my cricut to cut the title and multiple colors to highlight the word crazy.  It was a fun page to make.  Find a patterned paper with repetitive shapes seperated from one another and find ways to tie them to your pictures using the same shape on top.  Here I had circles and cut doilies from a Martha Stewart punch to center on the circle design.  The same can be donewith ribbon on stripes, frames on squares, bubble journal spots on bubble jpurnal papers out lately.  You just may enjoy the challenge.

Shatley Springs

The birthday of my brother in law and myself are two days apart.  Our family always celebrates them together.  We typically go out to dinner for everyones birthday throughout the year, but this year we went to Shatley Springs, (A mountain retreat) for breakfast.  They are well known for having great food.  The view was wonderful, they had shops selling handmade goods and scenery that was just wonderful.   I could tell, that this year the selection of places was for me this year.  It was wonderful. 

 

I used a lot of Cricut and Silhouette cuts to make this layout.  I ventured into clustering to embellish the page, as well as mixed letter titling.   Clustering is the stacking of individual embellies to create one big one.  I really like this technique for I think it creates unity on the page when you overlap the cle uster on the picture.  I corner punched the mat using an EK Success corner punch to tuck the picture into the mat.  The papers were from Basic Grey, My Minds Eye, and Apocothary by Echo Park printed from the collection found at Jessica Sprague's site.  This picture had a lot of color which allowed me to use vibrant colors in the layout, which is not often the case for me.

 

Best Ever

We went to a distant couin's funeral home viewing with my FIL and his girlfriend. On the way home we stopped at a diner in Lexington called Speedy's.  It was 10 minutes until they closesd, and they still let us order.  We were grateful, for we were starving.  They had the best BBQ sandwich I have ever had with home made potato chips.  I could not believe how good the food was in this hole in the wall off track restaurant was.  When done, I went outside and could not get back in for they had locked the doors.  I snapped this shot of everyone elase sitting the table from outside and loved the picture.

,.

I used kraft cardstock as the base and layered printed papers from the original Echo Park This and That collection, found at Jessica Sprague.com.  I cut the title frotm my Cricut Imagine.  The other embellishments were printed and hand cut from the same collection or from scraps I had in my, now overflowing, scrap bin.  I hand made the buttons using the Artiste cartridge and Close to My Heart stamp set that I picked up at the Charlotte CKS convention this past Summer. I had an old mop that had fallen apart, that I use as string to put into buttons.  It works great,  To add texture, I ran a strip of paper through my crimper, by Fiskars, for the upper border, then added lace to the sides to create the feel of curtains, to align with the window view of the photo.  I wanted a vintage look feel to go along with this old fashioned diner.

 

My Hero

I made this scrap as a fitting tribute to my dh.  He is a wonderful man and I am so grateful that I have him in my life.

I purchased the Charming This and That collection from Jessica Sprague and printed off the embellishments. The title and start were made using my Cricut Imagine and the yellow and white embellishement were cut using my Silhouette SD.  The rosette was made from an offset error strip of paper cut on my cricut, where a blue border was created on a white piece of paper.  (May as well make lemonade, right?)  The yellow tab was from Making Memories.  I just hand cut the arrow.  All item edges were inked with Tim Holtz's Vintage Photo Distress Ink.