But there's no stamping!

Scrapbooking was where I first entered the papercraft world as we know it, but I struggled, really struggled as I didn't seem to have any stories to tell or at least not the type of stories most scrapbookers were telling.  I don't have or will have children, it's just me, the husband and two cats and well there is only so many layouts of me, the husband and two cats a woman can do!

So the story telling bit didn't happen (and then I found stamping, but that's a whole new story!) but I still kept taking photographs and really enjoyed (and still enjoy) taking photos of flowers and other interesting things like old wood, buildings, rusty iron work, shells, stone, lichen etc.

So this weekend I decided I wanted to create a bigger piece of art work using one of said photos'.  I recently went to Hidcote Manor in the Cotswolds which has the most marvellous gardens; I've been so many times but love it all and never fail to be amazed by the colour and shapes of the flowers.

I'd taken some nice close shots of some poppies so  knew I wanted to use those and I still love the collage look of scrapbooking using a range of papers layered on top of each other. 

So this is what I created from stash: lots of 12x12 paper and fabric and ribbon and stitching.  

I cut the paper and laid it out on the background to work out how I wanted to arrange all the different shapes - took a photo on my phone so I could refer back as I worked on each piece  distressing the edges and inking them in Aged Photo.  The large yellow piece had Rusty Hinge and Mustard Seed added using the direct to paper method, plus a baby wipe to move it around a bit and some white dabber to tone it down (- thank goodness for white paint, I panicked it was too bright and clashing!). 

The photo was colour (the poppy was a deep purple almost black colour with a lime green centre) but I fancied it in black and white so that's what I did!  I also distressed the edges and sanded off some of the printing ink to give a more distressed look.

It was really nice going big and I think at some point I'll make a matching one with a similar photo using the same papers keeping the frame portrait but making the collage landscape.  And yes - NO STAMPING!

hugs

jo

xx