Bella Italia

So here is the page I made last night, its called Bella Italia and is about the restaurant we went to in Banstead for my Dad's birthday in December last year. Whilst we totally love Italy, we are never that impressed with the food out there, but this restaurant was just great - the food was absolutely delicious and we had a really good time. As usual, I had a little bit too much red wine, but then thats just me!

I wanted to create a bit of a distressed look for this layout, and so I dry-brushed the edges of the cardstock using white paint, and I sanded the edges of the photos and the paper with my BG file kit (I got this as part of my prize and thought I wouldn't use it but its actually been really helpful). I handcut the word Italia out of white cardstock and then used the white vinyl Thickers that came with my kit for the rest of the title. I stamped a journalling block in white paint, and added a few white rubons for interest. Finally, I added the button borders, again most of these came with my kit.

As I said yesterday, its not a complicated layout but I really like it - the colours are just perfect as they remind me so much of the decor of the restaurant, as well as the colours of Tuscany too. It was just so simple to put together too - no messing about with different papers or fussing with embellishments. And it makes a change for me to have no black stamping on my page, although I've got to admit I did have to hold myself back - it just doesn't seem the same without a stamped embellishment or three. But I'm liking the understated look. The only thing I might do to change it is stitch some thread through the buttons.

Anyway, I hope you like it!