Happy New Year! Some great things happened in amongst the craziness that was 2020. The first I want to mention is this fantastic company, i-crafter opened it's shop and I was lucky enough to be chosen to be a part of a very talented inspiration team. Happy first birthday to i-crafter! It has been a fun crafty year!
Another great 2020 event I wanted to focus on was the inspiration for today's blog creation.
My eldest son proposed to his girlfriend of 4yrs! My husband and I were there to share in the happy moment and take plenty of pics and video!
Being a scrapbooker as well as card maker, I started right away to plan the album I would make for them. When I saw the i-crafter Wisteria Vines die set I knew that it would be perfect to use for their first page. The setting of the proposal was surrounded by trees and while we do not have Wisteria where we live, I thought it would work well with this particular photo.
I started with a 12x12 water colour scrapbook page. I then used Mowed Lawn and Wilted Violet distress oxide inks to create streaks of colour down the page. I want the lines to be vertical but I find it easiest to apply the color horizontally across the page. After I am happy with the amount of colour on the page, I set it aside to dry.
My next step was to create the purple and green papers to die cut the vines out of. For this, I wanted paper that had a range of shades of purples and greens. I thought alcohol inks would achieve the look I wanted. So I used Boysenberry and Evergreen alcohol inks on 8.5x11" yupo paper. I needed to create 2 sheets of each colour in order to die cut enough vines to surround the page.
I then die cut 6 vines from the purple and 6 vines from the green paper I had created. I was also very careful to not lose any of the purple flower parts or green leaf parts when separating the paper from the die.
Once I had vines die cut, I trimmed all around, cutting the green frame off to leave me with only vines.
I then proceeded to place the vines (at this point it was only the green outlines) draping down from the top of the page at varying heights. When I was happy with the placement, I adhered them down using Tombow liquid glue. Then I glued each purple insert and green leaf into it's corresponding space. Kind of like a puzzle.
After that step, I adhered my 4x6 picture to a 5x7 purple card stock panel and placed that towards the bottom center of my page. Next, I trimmed my last wisteria vine into two separate, smaller vines and adhered them on either side of my photo. I used the individual leaf die to cut out two leaves to add to the right hand page so that the vines blended better with the rest.
Now I was ready to add my title. Using the i-crafter Alphabet Haley Outline die set, I cut out the letters to spell "OUR STORY" in purple and in gold cardstock. I used double sided tape on the back of each letter to stick the gold and purple together. Then using a t-ruler, I lined my letters up across the vines above my photo.
I created sentiments to go on each side of the picture using my computer and printed them on matching purple cardstock. I cut them out using a rounded corner stitched die, backed them with gold cardstock then adhered them onto my page.
I have to admit that this was not a quick page but it was totally worth the time I spent. I really want this to be a special keepsake for them both and I know that they are going to love it.
Thank you so much for visiting! Wishing you a happy an healthy 2021!
Here are my affiliate links for the i-crafter products I used:
Wisteria Vines: https://i-crafter.com/product/wisteria-vines/?fbclid=IwAR24jIWBS5qyL5l92Xpm1pXvNeIM6-WYqIaOY0P4T4CrFDQUGOm5eQv_1PY&wpam_id=25
Alphabet, Haley Outline: https://i-crafter.com/product/alphabet-haley-outline/?wpam_id=25
