Mix and Match for Autumn…

Hello everyone – how are you all? Are you all set for Christmas?  I am getting there slowly but thought that I would take a break from all things festive to bring you some more autumnal layouts.  If you are anything like me you will still have plenty of these pictures hanging around waiting to be scrapped so hopefully I can give you all lots of inspiration.
I love mixing papers and embellishments from different collections to get a really original feel to my layouts. I started off by looking for papers that had that autumnal feel to them.  First up is the new Maggie Holmes collection Open Book, which has a lovely autumnal pallette of colours.  This is my very favourite Maggie Holmes collection to date and I was talking to Nancy the other day and I said I think that this is my very favourite collection ever. To go with that I picked some Bella Boulavard Hello Autumn, Chickaniddy Crafts Scrumptious,Fancy Pants Burlaps and Bouquets and finally some Gossemer Blue On My Desk. Right then, lets get started.
jFirst up is a layout using the Time To Rake and the Gatherings papers from Bella Bvd. I also used the Memento and the Memoir papers from Maggie Holmes.  I used these papers to make layers to go behind my picture, inking the egdes and using my border punch along one edge of the paper. I used foam tape to get some height to my layers and matted my picture with a thin border using the other side of the Memento paper.  After this I added some of the MH’s chipbaord pieces into the layers, along with some of the ephemera. I also tucked in a Studio Calico gold doily and some tags from the Notes and Things collection. I finished that cluster off with one of the large bows from Fancy Pants Burlaps and Bouquets line. I love these bows and they would also be really great for decorating things for Christmas too.  One last touch was to attach some dangly bits of gold thread.  I just attached them with my tiny attacher and let them add some movement to the layout.  I used a piece of white cardstock for the background. I love using a plain white background – it gives such a big impact and is so simple.  I stamped over the background with a script stamp using my Hero Arts ink in Cup o Joe.  This is also the ink that I used to ink my edges with.  I made sploshes with my Heidi Swapp Gold Lame colour shine spray as usual – I adore this spray and it goes on all my layouts –  I dont know what I will do when Gold goes out of fashion! Finally I finished the layout off with a small cluster in the bottom right hand corner of the page.  This cluster was created using off cuts of the same papers I used for the layers behind the picture, some of the chipboard pieces, stickers from the MH sticker sheet and a bit more of the gold doily.  I also added some butterflies – punched with my trusty Martha Stewart butterfly punch and using the Gatherings paper. The button and sequins are from my stash.  I used the Maggie Holmes gold words for my title

 
For my second layout I used the Gatherings paper again and some Chickaniddy Check Please paper and some of the Gossamer Blue Screensaver paper.
Again I used white cardstock as my background.  I used a gorgeous picture of Scamper for this Layout.  To start off I stencilled the brown polkadots onto the background using the Cup o Joe ink again.  I also added the little clouds from the Studio L2E Todays Weather stamp set around the picture and up to the top right hand corner where my other cluster is. For this layout I also used the Gramercy Road stamp set.  There are some super cute sequin stamps that I used with co-ordinating inks, a leaf stamp which can be used to make into flower embellishments – you just stamp multiple leaves, fussy cut them and then stack them into a flower shape.  I finished these off with a large sequin from my stash.   After layering the papers behind the picture using foam tape I also tucked Die Cuts from Amy Tan Stitched collection inbetween the layers. A little tip for you, if when you are using the die cuts you decide you dont like them or as in my case that they arent facing the righ way round, just colour them in ink that goes with the layout and then stamp over them. I used a woodgrain stamp to go with the autumnal feel of the layout. For the top right hand cluster I used scraps of the same papers with some more die cuts.  I embellished the layout with brown lace from my stash and little cork stars too.

 
For my third layout I used the B side of the Frolic in the Leaves paper, which has four 6×6 squares, each with a different pattern on.  I cropped 3 pictures to 3×3 and backed them with the different squares.  This time I used a heart stencil to stipple different shades of yellow, orange and brown onto the white cardstock. This was to give the impression of leaves falling.

I stamped the Todays Weather stamps into some of the hearts using the same Cup o Joe ink.  I also sprayed some Gold Lame over the stencil before removing it and the hearts have a lovely shimmer that you cant see in the pictures.  Between the layers I have added some of the Amy Tan Stitched collection die cuts and also the ephemera from the Burlaps and Bouquets collection by Fancy Pants. I fussy cut the girl from the Frolic in the Leaves paper twice to add to my clusters and finished them off with leaves stamped using the Gossamer Blue stamps and autumnal flowers from my stash.  I used some large alphabet stickers from my stash as the title and coloured them to match my layout.

For my fourth layout I mixed things up a bit and used the Party Paper from the Burlaps and Bouquets collection by Fancy Pants. Using the Cup o Joe ink and a doily stencil I inked a doily shape on the paper.  Then I got to play with something really special….

Have any of you bought the new floral die from Dear Lizzy Serendipity line?  When I saw this in the shop I knew that it was for me! I was so excited. The die set comes with a variety of shaped dies including some flowers and two dies that you can use to create 3D flowers with too. I used the round die to make the poppies by cutting the shape and inking the edges. I then cut each individual petal off, then snipping a line down the centre of each petal. I glued these so that each petal was like a little cup shape. Once I had 10 of them I stuck them together, placing them so that they made round layers with a gap in the middle. once I had two layers, one on top of the other, all glued down I added an inch of burlap twine in a spiral shap and a gem on the top. This made my poppy. I also used the flower shape dies,  I inked these around the edges and also outlined them and added petal detailing. I stuck the poppies to some of them to mimic the centres.  I used the Maggie Holmes chipboard pieces again to embellish and the Maggie Holmes gold glitter letters and the black and gold alphabet tiles from the Maggie Holmes sticker sheet for the title.

For my fifth and final layout I wanted to play with the stamps from Dear Lizzy Serendipity. First off I used the Cup o Joe ink and stamped the rose stamp diagonally down the white background, stamping repeatedly, so that I get the faded impressions too.  After that I also stamped the same stamp using Versamark and embossed them with gold embossing powder.  This gave a really lovely effect. I also embossed the hearts stamp from that same set in pink Frantage embossing powder and added some black embossing paste stars to the background too.

With that all done and while it was drying I took the Years paper from Maggie Holmes and fussy cut all the flowers from it. I backed the pictures with the Gold foil paper from Maggie Holmes and also the Portrait paper. Once I had done the this I arranged the flowers that I had fussy cut around the picture and in top right hand corner for my other cluster.  After all that stamping and embossing I wanted to keep the embellishments quite minimal so I just added the black tile letters and the chipbaord ‘story’ word as my title and punched some butterflies from the scraps of the Years paper.

So thats all from me for this month, see you in 2015!! Much love xox