A Touch of Frost

I love how this layout turned out! I made it for the Southern Girls Challenge. This time it was a photo inspiration challenge with this photo of a tree on a frosty morning. Well, at the end of July we were having lots of frosty mornings, and one morning I ventured out to take a photo of the camellias which were covered in frost. So, I figured this was a good subject for the layout. The colours are nothing like the inspiration photo, but the idea was still there!
As anyone who has been reading my blog regularly will know, I love sketches. Well, I recently discovered a new site and it’s great! It’s called Sketch Support. Not only do they have sketches but you can download them for printing and they also include measurement and placement information as well as ideas for variations on the sketch. Go check it out! So, I was absolutely smitten by their last sketch and used this as the base for this layout.

I used a lot of things from my stash – leftover scraps of papers, Heidi Swapp ‘bordeaux’ ghost alphabet, Zva Creative bling (cutting off the flowers at the ends of the swirls), white Porta Craft pearls, white brads, an (originally black) CM snowflake die cut, and white sparkly string/thread.

After cutting the background papers, I covered one piece of pink cardstock with the white mulberry paper, and the other piece I embossed with the Cuttlebug ‘distressed snow’ folder. I then inked the raised areas with white Versamark ink and heat embossed it with some CM clear embossing powder mixed with dazzling diamonds.

After sticking the papers and photos down I remembered that I had some ‘pink taffy’ Glimmer Mist from a kit I’d bought and not yet made up and decided to mist the white (Bazzill) cardstock with that. I put down the ghost letters first as well as some punched snowflakes (using CM snowflake punch and Sullivan’s starburst punch) in the top corner and cut out some scrap paper to just cover the photos. I like how it turned out, even though I really should have misted before I attached the photos and paper!

I painted the black die cut with gesso and put some of the embossing powder/glitter mixture on before it dried to add some sparkle. I attached the ghost letters with the sparkly string/thread and cut the rest of the title out of the same paper as the middle rectangle with Cuttlebug ‘Baby Face’ dies (now discontinued), only I painted them with ‘moonlight’ Smooch. As I don’t like to waste anything, I embossed the centre of the acetate O with the distressed snow folder and cut out the resulting snowflake. It's right there under the R and the O - see?! (Aside: I have lots of those chipboard centre pieces from A’s, D’s, O’s, P’s, etc hanging around in my stash waiting to use on something one day, so I was pleased I came up with this idea for the acetate!)

After putting it all together I realised that I had nowhere left to journal so used more of the same papers to cut out the three pieces on the bottom left using my Papertrey Ink dies (fillable frames #10 and Limitless Layers: 1 3/4" Circle Collection). I covered one with the same white mulberry paper, dry and heat embossed the other, and wrote the journaling on the third piece.

Altogether I really like how this turned out, and I hope you do too.

Till next time, happy days!

Francine