The same day I received the news I will be guest designing at Shimelle, the amazing Paige Evans contacted me if I want to do a guest designer gig for Pink Paislee. I just asked "Are you serious?!" I mean who in their right mind would say no to that?! I mean come on! So it's safe to say it was a pretty damn good day! It was already many weeks ago and I am still over the moon! I cannot thank Paige enough for thinking of me and having faith in me, and Pink Paislee for making it possible! I will forever be grateful!
I was asked to create 3 layouts, a card and something extra with the beautiful new C'est la vie collection. I will be honest, even though I find this collection absolutely stunning, I probably wouldn't have bought it because it's so soft and feminine and I pretty much only scrap my son's photos! So I was a bit worried as to what I will be able to come up with! Then I received the goodies...and held them in my hands...my goodness! So chic! I had this idea that I would ask my best friend to send me her and her gorgeous girl-boy twins' photos and then I will make this series about them. Well she is about as lazy as I am so instead of selecting her favourites, she gave me access to hundreds of photos to choose from ha! Because this is the part I really enjoy the most (NOT!)...going through photos, especially when they are so gorgeous and bring back so many memories! The process takes ages and it's so emotional. But, I managed! In fact I made 7 layouts, a couple of cards and a mini album! I am down to scraps, I have never used up a collection in its all entirety before!
First let me show you the layouts!
Some weeks ago I saw a sneak peek from Heather Leopard on Shimelle's IG account, it was a bunch of stitched hearts. Absolutely stunning. Right then an idea hit me: I'd make balloons from hearts! And then I found the perfect picture, the babies in a basket at their 1-year photo shoot! That totally requires balloons, right?! I pinched two holes in the photo and hung the basket on the threads! There was even a number 1 in the cut apart sheet, great!
Second layout contains several photos, simply because there were so many gorgeous ones in the series, I could not choose. Ashley Horton has a new class at Big Picture Classes called Photo Focus and with each lesson there's a free cut file. So the cut file I am using here is one of those. It's perfect for multiple photos and of course the hearts fit my theme well! I put some photos in the frames and other frames I backed with patterned papers (I love patterned papers, can you tell?!). Then I put the whole on pop dots to give the layout a bit of texture. To finish off the layout I added embellishments all over the page.
The third layout features a big circle cut file which I cropped from Paige's full page background cut file, just because I love circles. Then I backed up the file with patterned papers, added tags, ephemera pieces, frames behind my photos so that they stand out more. For the title I used those awesome mirror letters, they are absolutely amazing! I hope there will be a full alphabet like this one day! I normally add some journaling to my pages, but in this case my best friend has to do it once she receives them, if she wants ha!
For the next layout I wanted to use those gorgeous acetate letters from the ephemera pack! They are so very pretty! Since this one is a boy layout, I didn't use much pink, just as accents, and rather focused on green, yellow, black and white! The camera cut file is also from Ashley's Photo Focus class.
For my 5th layout I got inspired by a sketch from Ashley for Hip Kit Club! I really wanted to use her sketch but I had no time for other layouts that week, so I simply used it for this! Like I said, I love circles, so this spoke to me of course. This is the first layout where I used something that wasn't part of the C'est La Vie line. The gray wood grain paper I used for the background is from Pink Paislee's Cedar Lane line and the white textured card stock is Bazzill. I simply cut several circles in different sizes, layered them over each other, first glued then stitched them down (except for the smaller ones: I just distressed the edges of those with my nails). The photo was also trimmed into a circle shape. I added a few sentiments from the sticker sheets, a couple of acetate pieces and those awesome cork/gold glitter hearts! Some doodling around the edges and I called this page done.
The last two layouts are sort of related! I used the same lace cut file from Just Nick: on one layout I used the positive, on the other the negative pieces. When I first cut this in the blue floral paper and removed the file from my Silhouette mat, I was left with the negative pieces still on the mat. They looked so stunning, I had no heart to throw them away! So what I eventually did was I put glue on every single piece while still on my mat and transferred the whole file onto another patterned paper. Luckily the B-side of this paper was this amazing ombre pink! For both of these layouts I used pieces of the acetate cut apart sheet, another favourite of mine from this collection! On the last layout I used some gold glitter American Crafts thicker words for the title because I did not have enough letters left in the C'est La Vie collection for anything meaningful!
Up next: the card! Well I'll admit, I never do cards! Mainly because I have so many photos I always have the feeling I will never be able to catch up with my layout - so I never spend time on cards. But these last weeks I made a couple and I so enjoyed the process! Something different! On this card I used one of the acetate pieces from the cut apart sheet, I stitched it on in a couple of places with gold thread. Then I fussy cut some of those gorgeous big pink flowers from one of the papers. I had a couple of leaves remaining from a previous project (the cut file is from The Cut Shoppe, I believe it's in the Funky Florals set) and I figured they would fit here perfectly and add a bit more texture. To finish it off I added a cork heart, a sentiment sticker and some twine, et voila!
Last but not least I have a mini album to share with you. I think this was my favourite project! I do not enjoy the planning part (which pictures to select for which background, in what order, what color, what size arrrgh too much for my brain!). But once I start cutting the pages and put them together...It's so exciting! For this album I made a single heart from a gorgeous The Cut Shoppe background cut file. I loved the fact that the heart has two sides, one for each of the twins I figured! Eventually I only did a couple with this separation, the rest are full hearts. I took photos of both sides of the pages so you see how I decorated them. Normally I would have used more embellies but unfortunately everything from the C'est La Vie collection is sold out here. So I made do with what I had! I even made a vellum pocket which is everywhere right now and filled it with confetti I cut from scraps! I stitched around the edges of all hearts to give them more interest and also, so nothing falls apart anytime soon!
I hope you enjoyed my projects and I could inspire you in some way! If you were not sure before if you should buy this collection, believe me when I say, you will not be disappointed if you do! Every single piece is gorgeous and as you can see, I even managed to do boys' layouts with it!
Thank you again Paige and Pink Paislee for this fantastic opportunity, I enjoyed every single minute of working on these projects! Thank you all for stopping by and checking my post XXX
