An odd title for a layout, but I spotted this photo in amongst the piles at my mum and dad's house and just knew I had to record it. When we were children, mum and dad were really careful about us brushing a teeth (a fact we can thank them for as we all still have no fillings!), and we used to wander round the house with our toothbrushes until mum and dad checked we had done our teeth properly. So it wasn't unusual for us to be sitting on the living room sofa with toothbrushes in hand!
I had printed this photo out a while ago but because it had become a bit discoloured and green I didn't really know how to go about scrapping it. Then, whilst flicking through my racks of paper I found the Basic Grey Phoebe paper called Angel Island. Whilst most of the layouts I have seen using this paper have been quite girlie, I didn't think this mattered - I could still see it working on my layout.
I picked out the white in the paper with white Bazzill cardstock and a large Heidi Swapp white bloom. I also added some American Crafts ribbon and some little badges I had picked up in the high street shop Accessorize ages ago. The journalling is written on scraps of Basic Grey Blush paper stamped with two Banana Frog journalling tags. I have to say, while I like the design of Banana Frog stamps, I find them a bit more difficult to work with. They are very sticky and don't seem to clean off properly, but maybe I just need more practice with them! The title, as ever, is handcut, in a font called Poornut which I really like for fun layouts like this.
On Sunday I joined up for Shimelle Laine's latest class so really looking forward to getting started on another project - I loved making my children's story last time and of course, being inspired to start my growing up album which most of my recent work is for. It was taking part in the last class which prompted me to set up this blog in the first place. So all good, and I wonder what she will have us doing this time...
We stayed in Montecatini Terme, a gorgeous spa town with beautiful parks and architecture. Whilst there we visited Montecatini Alto, an amazing hilltop town with stunning views, reached by the oldest funicular railway in the world. We managed to get back into Florence too and travelled up into the hills of Fiesole which allowed us to take in the ariel view of Florence with its imposing Duomo (as well as enjoy an iced coffee at a cafe in the square). We went on an excursion into Liguria to see the amazing Cinqueterre by boat. These are pretty pastel-coloured, cliffside towns which look so precarious its hard to believe they don't fall into the sea at the slightest gust of wind! And finally we visited Pisa and its famous leaning tower, a very surreal experience.
The journalling reads:
As I said yesterday, I used Basic Grey Stella Ruby papers (which are absolutely gorgeous by the way) and my trusty Autumn Leaves stamps - Hearts and Stars, Flourishes and For the Record. There is a bit of machine stitching and some hand sewing around the heart frame (this was hand drawn and cut). The title is made using pieces of inkject acetate, one painted with acrylic paint, the other layered over the top and printed with my title in a mixture of Times New Roman and a free font, Will and Grace. This was secured to the layout using pearl brads, which also form part of the decoration. The photo has been given a distressed look at the edges using acrylic paint.
As always there is a fair bit of stamping but also doodling to outline everything and handcut arrows/title etc. Other embellishments are pegs, ribbon and some buttons (some of which I had to colour with a permanent marker!).
But here is a little piccie from the website of what the garden looked like. It was built for a coffee company with steam coming out of the middle and fake coffee beans etc and the swirl is meant to be the top of the coffee. It is based on the Fibonacci sequence and was apparently a nightmare to build - working out the measurements can't have been fun!
I decided to make use of last month's Little Silver Hat Ribbon Kit Gyspy Rose, as I had just received the new one Heatwave and don't want to end up collecting ribbons which I then don't use. They happen to go really well with the papers, both Basic Grey, one Blush and the others Motifica. Other than this there was a fair bit of handcutting for the title and some stamping for the little birds (which I used because one of my Nan's favourite pastimes was sitting in the garden with the birds and this is how I like to remember her). I finished off with a few pearl brads for interest.
I wore a fabby dress from New Look which would surely make a truly delicious scrapbook paper! However, looking back over the pictures I am struck again by the poor quality of a lot of the shots. I'm really going to have to read up on my digital photography techniques.