Nature...

I did a layout yesterday with Mark and Emily on it. The picture is from a trip we took to Looking Glass Falls in Brevard, NC back in May of 2007. It's about 40 minutes from where we live and it is absolutely BEAUTIFUL there! Here's what the layout looks like...

This one was so much fun to do! The patterned paper is actually not patterned paper at all. I took the back of the packaging that my Basic Grey chipboard albums came in and cut them into 4 matching squares (isn't that a great way to reuse something you might have just thrown away?). I took some brown ink and my Tim Holtz Walnut Stain Distress Ink (which is a little darker than my brown) and inked the sides of all of them. Next I took a matching brown piece of cardstock, inked some of it with the brown ink to give it a little texture, and then took the squares of my homemade patterned paper (lol!) and placed them in the corners...

I decided that I wanted to put something in the middle to draw the pieces together. I used a piece from one of the chipboard albums as a template, drew it onto some white cardstock and cut it out. Then I took the same 2 ink colors and inked the edges and all over the surface to make it the color I wanted. It came out just right!

For the picture, I sanded the edges of it and inked them, again with both colors of ink. I wanted the edges to blend with the background color. Then I chose a vellum quote (love this one!) and matted it onto another piece of white cardstock that I had inked with only the darker color ink. It came out the perfect color behind the vellum and matches the edge of the picture really well.

I'm really happy with my results here and I truly wish I had more of this packaging to make some more layouts with...it's so beautiful!