She Blooms by Illustrated Faith

Hey Magpies, Niki here, back with the She Blooms Collection by Illustrated Faith, a collection I originally totally overlooked simply becuase it was by Illustrated Faith. I am not religious and I have therefore totally avoided even looking at any of the Illustrated Faith collections, becuase I assumed that those collections simply wouldn’t be for me. I WAS WRONG. I rarely admit that so figured it was worthy of being in capitals, lol.

The She Blooms Collection can easily be used by a non-religious person. I would feel uncomfortable having any reference to ‘Him’ or ‘God’ on my pages but there were a number of papers that didn’t have those references or they were so small that I could easily cover them. These papers are gorgeous, full of colour and vibrancy and I was so inspired by them, I just couldn’t wait to cut into them!

It was the bold flower print that I fell in love with coupled with the black & white papers – such a bold contrast and totally right up my street! I wanted to fussy cut out all of these flowers but they overlapped a bit too much and I thought I would struggle so I instead fussy cut around part of the paper. I attached this to the top of the black & white sheet and then kept the rest of my layout quite small. I didn’t get any of the She Blooms embellishments (I’m not entirely sure why becuase the pink washi tape is fab, the chipboard is awesome and I always use chipboard and who doesn’t have room for enamel hearts? I must have been having an off day when I ordered) and I went for some MAMBI embellishments instead which I thought would coordinate well: a Glitter Sticker Book Geometric Friends and Puffy Stickers Chalk Arrows. I’ve used them a lot throughout all these layouts.

This paper was my second favourite in the She Blooms Collection – that fabulous black and white uneven strips with those bursts of vibrant colour – so lush!  I actually bought two sheets of this paper becuase I loved it so much and I also loved what was on the reverse.  I fussy cut around the right hand cluster of flowers, just enough that I could tuck my photo underneath and I embellished around that area. I’ve also used some Carpe Diem Clips and ‘Let’s Party’ Frames, both by Simple Stories.

‘Smile for the Tooth Fairy’ uses the other part of that fabulous flower print, this time at the bottom of the paper, again adorned with lots of MAMBI stickers.

‘Best Friends’ used the speciality acetate sheet in the collection – I’ve placed it on top of white cardstock but it is a transparency. Again I didn’t want to cover up too much of the background becuase I loved it so much so I’ve kept my layout as one cluster.

This layout ‘Smile’ came together quite by accident. I was pretty much done with these papers but I had a few bits left over and those gorgeous flower clusters were screaming to be used so I popped the lot onto a sheet of white card without much thought really – and I think it may actually be my favourite layout using this collection – I love it when all those leftover bits come together in this way.

And finally I have two more layouts to share with you – I picked up these two sheets of 12×12 paper from the Pinkfresh Studio ‘Life Noted’ collection thinking that I would use them within my Illustrated Faith She Blooms layouts, but it didn’t work out that way and after making the previous five layouts, I still had those two sheets left untouched. So even though I didn’t end up mixing them with She Blooms, I thought I’d share with you anyway what I did with them.

‘The Best’ made use of that large chevron. I actually wanted my photos to be placed on the point of the chevron, but they looked wrong in that position becuase Max was looking off the page, so I changed tact and separated out the two photos and made a feature of the chevron instead to link the two photos. I used up a lot of my MAMBI stickers this way.

And for ‘Awesome’ I used Gelatos to add some colour to the right side of the page and fussy cut around some of the lower letters so I could tuck my photo under – a perfect messy boy layout for those cheeky rascals!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this collection of layouts and will not overlook collections by Illustrated Faith, as I initially did, I certainly won’t be!

Products Used:

Illustrated Faith She Blooms Collection: 12×12 papers (but do also check out the washi tapes, the chipboard and the enamel hearts)

MAMBI Glitter Sticker Book Geometric Friends

MAMBI Puffy Stickers Chalk Arrows

Simple Stories Carpe Diem Paper Clips and Lets Party Chipboard Frames