A Wonderful Place to be **Swirlydoos & TCR #45**

Wow the week is just zooming by. I picked up the mail on my home from work and my package that I won at the Color Room was in. I got some very cool stamps and I can’t wait to try them out. Today’s first layout is for The Color Room #45 palette. I used TCR sketch and my February Swirlydoos kit. I did not have much for the palette colors so I had to do a lot of inking to make the papers work. This layout is called “together is a wonderful place to be” and the photo is my daughter and her hubby. What a couple of cuties.

I had to plan this layout more than I normally do because I wanted to machine stitch on it. I also had to do a lot of inking with distress inks to get the right colors. In this close up you can see the distressed layers, stamping, and the stitching. I made the purple flowers and the leaves. The white flowers and the Prima swirl are from my stash.

I used a Martha Stewart punch around the photo to frame it and did some water distressing and inking on the white papers on each side of the photo. I made the smaller purple flowers and the butterflies I printed them, cut them out, and added stickles to them.

In this close up you can see more of the machine stitching, flowers and butterflies. The title is a velum title and I added some ZVA gems beside it.

This next layout was done for a challenge at Swirlydoos. I had to use a WORK IT theme. Took me a while to come up with something to do for this one, as we all know, I struggle with “dude” layouts. But did that stop me, no. So some background on the photos, this is my DH and he is a logging truck driver. You can see him the photo by his nice new truck. Well a couple weeks ago coming off of the mountain, it was way too steep and too slippery and he almost went over the cliff. Yes that is the front of his truck hanging over a cliff, eeks. And he tells me to come along for a ride NO THANK YOU. Anyways the loader got him out and all was ok. The title is “Cliff Hanger” and I used lots of goodies on this one.

I used G45 papers as base layers and distressed, sanded and inked them. I love that cardstock it is so much fun to alter. I added a strip of ribbon that matched, and tucked in a piece of water distressed paper in the corner. Tip, if you ink the creases on the water distressed edges it just makes them pop off the page.

The next two close ups show the distressed G45 pieces that I added in. I added some liquid pearl dabs on them and inked the edges. If I can not use flowers I am using some liquid pearls J I added a few Tim Holtz fragments on this layout, they are fun to do, you just apply them to a piece of cardstock, cut them out and add to your layout.

In this close up you can really see the distressed and sanded layers. The title I just printed out and inked it. To finish off the layout I added a Dusty Attic piece in the corner. I first painted it with black acrylic and then I added some distress stickles to it with my finger. When it was dry I added some gems to it. In the end I do like the way this layout turned out, even though masculine layouts scare me, I always like them in the end.

So that is it for today, thank you so much for stopping in for a peek. I hope that you all have a fantastic week, be safe and stay warm. Feel free to leave me some scrappy love comments, I love reading them ...take care and happy scrapping J