Cheers to Us Layout with Process Video

 Hi!

Hope you are having a great day! I'm happy to share with you a very colorful layout I made using a cut file and mixed media. The best part is I recorded the process of making this layout, and you can see it at the end of this post. As a scrapbooker for many years, I love to photograph everything; not only my family, but also things that can bring me some memories of a special day, meal, or moment. The sad part is that usually I scrapbook the photos of my family and leave behind all those other photos. Thankfully, this is not the case in this layout, for which I used a photo of a mojito to remember my husband and I's anniversary lunch at the beach.

The inspiration for this layout came from this beautiful cut file from Cut To You by Gwen, who invited me to be the guest designer for today. The name of this cut file is "Tropical Punch". As soon as I saw it, I remembered this photo, and this is the result.

To create this layout, the first thing I did was back the cut file using papers from Sunkissed collection by Cocoa Vanilla Studio. The colors of this collection are bright and happy, which is the perfect combination for this page. I used the papers in the 6" x 8" pad because the patterns are small, which is great for backing cut files. 

Then, I continued working with the background. For that, I prepared a white cardstock with clear gesso and let it dry. When it was ready, I added spray paint in the middle area, like a circle, trying to leave the borders white. The paint I used was "Well Blue Me Down" by Shimmerz. When the paint was dry, I used a bubble stencil and Distress Oxide inks in "Salvaged Patina" and "Peacock Feathers" to create the pattern on top of the blue paint using the tone on tone technique. This will give the page a visual texture, but since I love to feel different textures in my layouts, I decided to use a clear paste in some areas of the background.

When the background was dry, I cut the white cardstock to 11" x 11" and matted it on a red cardstock that measures 11 1/4" x 11 1/4". Then, I added the cardstock to a frame made out of the floral paper. I did this to stretch the paper, since the interior part can be used in another project. To secure all the papers and achieve a nice finish and more texture, I machine stitched a white border around the layout.

 

Now, it is time to add the cut file and photo to the layout. For the top part of the cut file I used foam tape, but in the inferior area I used liquid adhesive. To give the photo area more color, I matted it using three different papers from the collection. I started with the woodgrain, then the red one, and finally the yellow floral. I distressed the edges of the papers and tore some notches in the yellow paper.

The title used is from the collection, but I wanted to add something else. This is why I stamped the words "to us" in one of the die cut cards using a stamp set from Elle's Studio's. The inks used are from Pink Fresh Studio "Fiesta Blue" and StazOn "Jet Black".

When all the basic elements of the layout were ready, I started with the fun part: embellishing the page. For that, I used die cuts, puffy stickers, stickers, wood buttons, fussy cut flowers, sequins, and micro beads. To have a layout with dimension, I always use foam tape in some of the embellishments. In this layout, you can see the flowers don't look flat, and it is because I added foam tape in some of them. You can have a better look at this in the video.

In the next photos you can appreciate the micro beads used in the center of the cut file flowers. Also, you can see the sequins in the fussy cut flowers, the puffy flowers, and clear stickers (pink flower and tiny hearts) used to create the cluster around the cut file.

This is a layout full of texture. In the next photo you can appreciate the texture of the clear paste, the wood button, the puffy heart between "to us", the tiny fussy cut flowers, the glitter of the foam title, and everything I added to the cluster in the title area.

At the end, I added two words stickers to the right side of the photo. 

If you want to see the process video for this layout, click here. 

I love how this layout turned out because is very colorful, happy and has lots of flowers and textures. I hope you like it as much as I do and it inspires you to craft!