Gorgeous Gardener

What's with all the cloudy weather in Yorkshire at the moment? The rest of the country is basking in glorious sunshine and we are under a near-constant cover of clouds, the Cullen family from Twilight could move here without much fear of sparkling!!! It's making taking decent photos of my layouts a problem but that's life I suppose.

I created this layout today. The papers are from the Sweet Threads range from Basic Grey and the kit is the June monthly kit from Bellaboo. (www.bellaboo.co.uk). When I got the kit I had no idea what I was going to do with it. I used to love all things Basic Grey cos their papers were grungy and lovely to work with but the patterns on these papers are so "in your face" I was tempted to shove the kit to the back of my kit box and ignore it but, having started buying kits for the challenge of getting creative with something I haven't chosen, I decided to have a go at least. I cut the big flowers out of a strip of one of the patterned papers and added the flowers to a lattice strip I cut from kraft paper using one of my Martha Stewart punches, I wanted it to look like a lattice fence panel so after punching one side I turned the paper around and matched up the holes so both edges had the scolloped edge. I chose the photo of Louise in the garden cos the colours of the grass blended with the greens in the patterned papers and the pink background paper cos it's girlie. I added a couple of strips of the other patterened papers for contrast and a strip of blue ribbon and then added a strip of one of the sweet threads over the top. I cut and added some extra leaves on foam pads and curled the leaves that were attached to the flowers. I punched some large butterflies with another Martha Stewart punch, inked the edges with some distressing ink, doubled them up, added some bling and attached them to the layout along with a few buttons I had left over from another kit. Some letter stickers and a flower label finished the layout off nicely. The papers have grown on me now and I'm about to start a second layout using them.