On Such a Winters day - lets do a ghost tour with Aussie Scrapper Silvia

Hello Crafty Friends!
Today Silvia 'Aussie Scrapper' shares a fabulous scrapbook layout using this month's themed products to scrap an eerie midnight ghost tour. Perfect!!
I hope you feel inspired!

Hello, my dear crafty companions, I have been so much fun with these core products.  My last two layouts were sketch challenges given by fellow crafty companions on that wonderful facebook page know as "crafty vera and friends", a wonderful community of very talented people.  Today's scrapbook layout was more typical of me.  I picked my photos and let the creative process begin.  I must admit following a sketch is much easier and quicker but I find I love the creative process of having no idea, and just sitting down and creating it does take a lot longer but I find it more relaxing as I lose myself in my project.

My first step was to decide on which photos to choose.  I chose three photos of our Jenolan Caves trip to scrap and these photos were taken on a ghost tour we did at midnight.

Photos picked and the hard task of picking my papers begins.  In the end, I chose these two papers.

The first paper with all beautiful trees will be used as a matt for the plaid paper.  I will be trimming 1" off two sides of this paper.  I will then distress all four side with a distressing tool and then ink the sides with "black soot" distress oxide.  

The plaid paper has strips of red and I wanted to pull some of this colour out so I decided to matt my photos in red cardstock.  The layout was looking too flat and I wanted more texture so I took out my cuttlebug and I surprised myself by finding this beautiful embossing folder with snowflakes on it,  I had no idea I even owned such a thing.  Below is the embossed red cardstock.

It's at this stage that I start thinking "a sketch would be so much easier"  I had no idea what I was doing....when I matted the photos with these gorgeous embossed red cardstock, something was just not right.  I had a cup of tea and inspiration hit.  I matted my photos first with some black cardstock.  (first photos below).  In the second photos, I have taken my distress oxides and using a soft brush I lightly went over the embossed area.  This helped to tone down the red.  

I matted all three photos as above but at the last minute I decided I wanted a third matt and I went with the black cardstock once again.  I just love how this helped to draw the eye to the photos when the papers were so busy.

Things were still looking a bit dull and on my desk, I had my chosen products.  The stencil was screaming pick me, pick me and the nuvo glitter paste was my saying "come on, I know you can't resist me" and little old me fell into temptation.

I love the plaid paper but it was looking a bit too bright for my liking and I wanted a mistier eerie feel to my layout, so I watered down some gesso and applied it with a brush to the areas that would surround my photos.  Next, I did some stencilling and this stencil together with the silver Nuvo glitter paste just made it all look like a cold, snowy night. 

Loving how this layout is coming together.  I took out the sheet of perforated die cuts from Authentique - also part of the core products - and I chose some embellishments for my layout.

My final step was to take a piece of cheesecloth and die it using the shabby shutters distress spray stain. I then did some journaling on a piece of paper that was floating on my desk.

My final step was to adhere everything down on to the page and I used some thickers in my stash to write the title.  I must admit this is my favourite layout so far with this kit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBbXYUNoR-E is the link to my youtube video - would love to have you as a subscriber.