Flowers and AB Studio!

Good morning,

This weekend I am having fun playing with some AB Studio papers, I love all of their collections and recently purchased papers and sets from a few new ones. Two which I purchased are the ‘Breeze of the Forest’ and ‘Secret Wood’ set, both are very Winter snow and Christmas themed with beautiful illustrations of forest animals and snowy landscapes. Hmmm, those who know me may be asking why I would purchase these, given that I live where it never snows? Well, they are beautiful and many of the snowscapes have pine trees, which do surround our town. I hoped to be able to use them creatively for events and themes other than snowy weather and Christmas.

I also purchased some of the ‘Diary’ collection papers and the shabby  ‘Love Symphony’ papers, also beautiful papers with floral and heritage costume elements. So, a few weeks ago when I was up and about at 5am, I went around our garden taking photos of all the spring flowers blooming, these became my inspiration for creating with some of the AB Studio papers.

Layout #1,

I selected the ‘Memories’ paper from the Diary collection and the ‘First Rose’ cut apart element sheet. Plus, a few other bits and bobs from other companies to embellish the page, including some very old TLC chipboards buckles.

Then I decided to pull out an old Tim Holtz product, some grunge board, a giant @ symbol and used some oxide inks, water and colour sprays to add the right colour to match the background paper. I also added colour spray to the background, trying to not to form halo effects.

Then, it was simply a matter of adhering my photos, fussy cut roses and embellishments onto the dried background. Because my photos were of a climbing rose, I tried to make the rose embellishments climb around the photos. I also used some of the tags from the Diary collection cut apart sheet ‘Red is Bad’, some Kaisercraft paper roses (which I squashed to reduce the thickness) and some silver Thickers for the title.

The finished layout ended up over-embellished, taking up lots of space much like the rambling rose in our garden.

Layout #2

For this layout, I selected another Diary collection paper for the background, ‘Your Own’, and the ‘4 Different Ways’ paper to fussy cut for embellishments, I only used one-quarter of the page. I had some old Kaisercraft door and quote diecuts and some more of those TLC buckles (which I didn’t end up using).

My photos of orchids had yellow and pink tones in the flowers and so I added some pink distress ink to the background, before adhering the photos into place.

Then, I adhered the fussy cut flowers and diecuts into place, with some of them I inked and distressed the edges first.  I love how this layout turned out, the subtle sepia brown flower diecuts enhance the photos.

 

Layout #3

For this layout, I used the reverse of the ‘4 Different Ways’ paper (I purchased a few of this sheet)  which has a lovely black and white floral design and some stitching/costume elements. I also decided to use the leftover piece of the cut apart ‘First Rose’ sheet and fussy cut out the flowers for embellishments. There was also some leftover tags and quotes from the ‘Red is Bad’cut apart sheet.

This time my photos had a lot of green foliage in them and I decided to add green and pink to the background sheet. I lightly spritzed two shades of pink in the main area where my photos would be placed. I used a Kaisercraft stencil and after sampling different green inks went with Tim Holtz Oxide inks, they blend so beautifully and are thick and creamy. I wanted to create a halo of foliage around where my photos would sit and have the greenery travel across the page.

After mounting and adhering my photos into place, I added my fussy cut flowers, tucking the on and under the photos. When I ordered the AB Studio collections, etc., the lovely Bri from Anna’s Craftcupboard included a little freebie, 3 little silver glitter acrylic embellishments, so I added them to this layout. They are very cute and of good quality. Then I popped on some silver sparkle enamel dots and some little dots of Antique Silver Kindy Glitz. Here I am the anti glitter girl…adding sparkle!

Layout #4

This time I used papers from the ‘Secret Wood’ and the ‘Breeze of the Forest’ Christmas/Snowy collections. Yep, snowy papers with rose hips, snow and winter foliage, with a few scraps from other companies, for a spring layout. The papers used are the bonus cut apart sheet, sheet #4, sheet #8 from the ‘Secret Wood’ and sheet #5 from the ‘Breeze of the Forest’.  I had six photos to include on this layout and decided to make a double page layout using a sketch map from a Scrapbook Generations travel ebook.

It was a pretty easy sketch to follow with good directions for selecting and cutting the papers. I grunged up the background by dragging some oxide ink across each page in a lovely soft yellow called Scattered Straw, before mounting and adhering my photos in place.

Then, I added some fussy cut flowers, some butterfly and quote die cuts, and some Nuvo Crystal Drops and rose gold Kindy Glitz. Plus, one of the TLC buckles with some organza ribbon. Overall, I am pretty happy with this layout, I doubt anyone would pick the papers as being Christmas themed.

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Happy scrapping everyone  🙂