Laura Vegas

do you remember THESE senior photos i took of my niece, jovaughnna? well, she graduated from high school last week. in fact, the first project on THIS post, was actually her graduation gift. i thought it was a good time to share this layout i created for the tips & tricks: fabulous flowers issue that recently came out.

 
as seen in an online article for the Tips & Tricks: Fabulous Flowers issue, from Creating Keepsakes magazine. copyright creative crafts group. posted with prior permission from the publisher.

i created this layout for an article on how to alter your premade flowers. the article ended up getting moved to an online article for members only, on the CK Club site. so it didn't quite make it into the actual magazine. luckily, you can still see my layout here 😉

i almost always start my layouts, by choosing papers. i used the colors in jovaughnna's shirt to determine what papers i would use. i really love the penmanship paper, by studio calico, and figured it sort of fit with the senior/school theme i was going for. from there, i choose the ruled paper from studio calico, and the red wood paper by october afternoon, to use as well. 

the chipboard title piece, and the chipboard border piece (2nd page), are both from the mix it up kit, an older CK kit of the month club. i can't believe they still have some of those kits left. so many amazingly fun pieces in that kit. both of these pieces were raw chipboard. i heat embossed the title piece, using silver metallic embossing powder. and i really love those black letter stickers from jenni bowlin, and was glad i could work them into my title.

since my assignment was to alter flowers, i choose these older white flowers from making memories. i know white is kind of basic, but they really went with my layout. i used an embossing folder, and ran them through my cuttlebug, to add the embossed circles. then i used a glue pen to draw around the outside edges of the flower, and then sprinkled silver glitter over the edges. i layered some additional flowers, and secured them all with a denim fabric brad, and tucked two maya road pins under the flower. and that green piece, is a leather like trim, from bo bunny.

these flowers actually went through quite a few changes, before my layout finally got sent in. i guess i shouldn't have picked white flowers. turns out, they don't photograph very well. lol! i don't have a picture of the final version, for some reason. but i ended up adding some stickles to the embossed dots, and then added some silver chalk to them as well.

hmmm. got some glare going on this photo of the second page. i really wanted to use a good selection of jovaughnna's photos on this layout, and i wanted them to really show. which is why i used five 4×6's, and one 5×7 photo.

i love this chipboard border strip. i sat and punched out the small chipboard circles, so you could see through the strip. i decided to adhere some white cardstock behind the chipboard piece, so that it showed through the dots. i heat embossed the border piece with a distressed red embossing powder. it gave it a a rough and gritty texture to it, as opposed to the shiny and smooth texture on the heat embossed title piece.

another circle and flower cluster on the second page, just like the first page. i love using my circle cutter and circle punches, to make different sized circles to fill in the empty spaces on layouts. and for my journaling, i wanted to print with white text, on black paper. there's different ways of doin this. i just created a text box, and changed the background color to black. then i typed my journaling, and changed the text to white.