Heart of Mine - Aussie Scrappers 12x12 Layout "Family Values"

Oh holy moly, how fast has February gone???  My last layout for February and what a month.  February has thrown a lot of challenges at me but I survived thanks to this wonderful hobby of mine that keeps me from going insane.  It's my relaxation time and my therapy.

Vera threw me a great challenge with the beautiful papers from Graphic 45 "Love Notes collection".  When I first saw these I panicked as I thought they were too romantic for my taste but in the end, I love the layouts I created and it proves that you can do a lot with papers to make them your own.

For my fourth layout, I decided I wanted to document the couple who gave me life and who guided me my whole life to become the woman that I am today.  Today, I will be scrapping a photo of my parents.

I chose this paper for my background called "love notes"

To help my photo stand out, I got some gesso out and I added some water to the gesso and I painted some gesso to the centre of the paper.  This helped to tone down and soften the look of his beautiful paper.  I took a stencil from my stash and I used my chosen product "Inka Gold"  the colour is called "Rosequartz"

My next step was to work on the top right corner and I had the idea to do some paper weaving.  The inspiration for the paper weaving came from the paper "Romantic Rhapsody" which has all these lovely red and creme strips.  I cut six different strips and did some paper weaving.  

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Time to matt my photo and I chose the paper "floral symphony" 

This layout came together very quickly and for my final steps, I used what was left of my scraps from this collection.  I cut some papers from the following papers: Melodic Missives, Musical Masterpiece and Romantic Rhapsodoy.   I also used another of my chosen products a die from Kaisercraft named "Love You Most."

I worked on my top right corner by glueing down my paper weaving strips and I also used one of the chipboard from the chipboard collection of "Love Notes"

A last-minute decision was to trim my layout, distress the edges and then adhere the whole layout to the paper "Poetic Postage".  Hope you like the finished layout.