Les Boys.....

Hi everyone - I'm back with the layout I promised. I had hoped to post this morning, but we took a day trip out to Sleeping Giant Provincial Park and spent a great afternoon on the beach, so here I am. We have had better weather this past week (since school went back) than we had all summer long, so since my hubby managed to take the day off, we thought we'd take advantage of the beautiful weather.

The layout: ever since I got my hands on these new Heartfelt diecut embellishments from CTMH, I couldn't wait to try them out. Now, I am always buying new and exciting stuff, but I rarely find the time to play so quickly. It helped, of course, that I have the Stamping Pyjama Party coming up and want to have fun samples to show.

Anyhow, starting with my photo and the felt scalloped circle, I thought maybe Kraft paper would work. Lucky for my my LSS had just got some 12x12 Kraft in since all I had was 81/2 x 11. I decided to play; sponging around the edges in chocolate ink. I started random stamping with the circles from "Circle Around" (CTMH) and the dotted "splotch" from "Extreme Elements" (SU) using brown bag, chocolate and garden green ink. The quote in the top corner is from CTMH's new "Card Chatter - Christmas" - I thought it would be fun to show it isn't just for Christmas cards.

Inside the circle, I used a couple of strips from some MME paper I've been hoarding for about three years! Pat, pat on my back for cutting into it! (Why is that so difficult sometimes?!?) I struggled a bit with those paper strips as they sat there looking plain even though I knew the tree was probably going to show up there, so out came the sewing machine and voila, I think it was just what it needed. K, so the tree was my favorite part! Have you noticed that I LOVE buttons, well this was my chance to play! And, I also got to play with another CTMH set (Whoo loves you) that I borrowed from Donna a few weeks back because I don't yet own it. The owl and the mushrooms are from that set and I've pop-dotted them to give dimension. I must admit, I wasn't sure of the best method to adhere the felt to the page, but I tried both my 3M tape runner and glue dots and both seemed to work just fine.

Whew, are you still with me? If so, please give me your opinion - to bling or not to bling? The reason for two very similar photos at the top is to compare - on the first I have added some Bella Bling around the bottom left corner of the circle - it didn't look right all the way around. On the second, there is no bling. So what do you think? Bling or no bling? I would love to hear your input as I've yet to glue down the bling.

Here's hoping you all had a fabulous long weekend.

Cheers,

Shanna :)