MEMORIES.....

Hello!!! How is everybody today? Good I hope!! Also, I noticed I have a couple of new followers.... Welcome! How quickly did February go by? I can't believe its March already. It seems like just yesterday I was wishing everybody a Happy New Year. I never realized how quickly time went by until I became a mother. People always said to me, 'Enjoy them while they are young. They will be all grown up before you know it', and I would think to myself.... I have years and years before that will happen. Not so. Already my Son is almost 3 and I know now, that the next time I blink and open my eyes again he will be a teenager..... Before I know it he'll be a young man with a family of his own. I want to remember the little things. The way he smiles, the little games he plays, how he is starting to get a little cheeky and how adorable it is, I want to remember the things people take for granted, and in the end forget as time goes by. Hence the title of this layout I have to share with you today.....

'Memories'

As you can see I have gone for a very different color scheme to what I normally work with. I'm not sure what made me decide to team up the green with grey, though I am very glad I did. The majority of the embellishments on here are from Prima, although there is a little bit of Tim Holtz and some Dusty Attic chipboard. The papers are quite a mix..... Teresa Collins, Kaisercraft, MME, Fancy Pants Designs, AC, and the beautiful background paper is by Maja Designs. I love these papers. I have been dying to get my hands on them for sometime now, but no where local sold them, so as you can imagine I was super excited when I went to my local store the other day and they had about 60 new papers from Maja Designs. I wanted to buy them all..... but they were very expensive, almost 3 Aussie dollars per sheet, so I settled with 6. I'm working on my next project using them all, which I will hopefully be able to share with you soon.

Here is what the background looked like after I had painted it:

I began my background by randomly scraping gesso with a palette knife. When that was dry, I added my stamping. I used a Kaisercraft texture stamp, and also a broken piece of foam for some interesting texture. Next I added some texture paste using my Crafter's Workshop 12x12 punchinella stencil. When it was dry the watercolor paints came out. I started with just Emerald green, but soon decided it needed another shade, so I grabbed a medium yellow, and using the tiniest amount, lightly blended into the green in some areas. Giving me a great combination of different shades of green. I really love how the green pops off that grey background, with some areas looking quite fluorescent. I let the green drip in some areas, before adding some black too. I finished off by flicking green, black, and a touch of blue, watercolor paints randomly around the page and outlining some of the circles with led pencil. 

Some close-ups:

As always I have used lots of yummy Prima flowers on here, I love how the black, grey and white flowers really stand out from the background, whilst the green flowers keep them from being overpowering, helping to tie it all together.

I really love this feather arrow. This is my second time making one of these and yes, it is just a coincidence that the first time I made one of these it happened to end up on a page that also had green as the main color. To make it I painted the tips of the feathers very lightly with glue so they didn't stick together, and then dipped them in glitter before attaching to a skewer with baker's twine. The arrow at the bottom was cut from a scrap piece of patterned Prima paper. I used glue to attach it to the opposite end of the skewer, and to draw lightly around the edges before once again dipping in the silver glitter.

The title is from Dusty Attic, just this cute little chipboard word that I have had forever, probable 2 or 3 years. I painted the entire piece black, to tie in with some of the other elements on the page.

The little light bulb and the mini paper clip are from Tim Holtz, while the black arrow, and the white flourish are also from Dusty Attic.

The hanging industrial light, the faucet wheel, the white heart gear, and the jeans buttons, are all from Ingvild Bolme's Junkyard Findings Collection. I brought almost everything Prima that came into my local store a few months ago and its almost gone already. It will be a sad day for me when I run out. 

I have used a few of Prima's wood Icon leaves on here, cut apart to fit better, and also extend the life of them. The little pebble at the top of the page is really old. About 4 years! It fell of an old layout a couple of weeks ago, so I decided to use it on here.

That's it from me tonight..... I had planned on sharing a second layout with you, but it's getting late, and I am super tired as I have been awake since 3am!! I'll try and get my next post up within a day or two. I hope you like!!! Thanks for stopping by.... Have a great weekend everyone!!! xoxo