Love This / Paige Evans Design Team

It's Friday...woo hoo!!  Today I'm sharing my newest layout for the Paige Evans Design Team.  Our challenge this week was to use an extra large photo.  I don't even remember the last time I used anything larger than a 4x6, so this was definitely an intimidating challenge.  I have to say that I LOVE how it turned out, and it wound up being a really fun page to put together!

I don't even know the exact size of my photo here, but I printed it on an 8x10 sheet of photo paper.  It's not quite that large, but it did take up quite a bit of my layout.  I decided to use one of the pre-made die cut pages from the Oh My Heart 12x12 Paper Pad.  I wanted to back these flowers with patterned papers and then cut them apart.  I used papers from the Oh My Heart, Take Me Away and Fancy Free 6x6 Paper Pads.  I decided to go with a flower of each color.  I love all the patterns and different shades in each flower.  Since they were so large, it was pretty easy to place them over the photo from top to bottom.  I went light on the embellishing since the photo and flowers were enough, but I did add a few little pieces here and there.

To jazz up each flower and add more color & texture, I machine stitched around each one with matching thread.  I added some of the Oh My Heart Chipboard Stickers to the centers of these flowers, and I love how that just finished them off.  I decided to add in some rose gold stickers from the Oh My Heart Sticker Book to bring out the tiny hearts in the background.

I did add in some matching tangled thread in a few places as well.  I went simple with my title and not make one too long.  I used some of the Take Me Away Thickers for the word "LOVE" and paired that with some of the tiny alpha stickers from the Oh My Heart Sticker Book.

I love when my photos have some blank space on one side.  It allows for overlapping just like this, and I don't have to worry about covering up anything important.  I try and think about these things when I'm taking pictures.  It doesn't always work out like that, but when my kids are still I can try and get creative with my shots! :D

I did add some journaling at the bottom talking about how I love this moment between my husband and daughter.  I did add some white gesso over some of the background, so my pen wasn't wanting to cooperate very well there.  On two of the flowers, I added some Take Me Away Buttons.

I did a tiny bit of stitching on the photo here.  I wanted a pop of the orange/coral color right there, so stitching was an easy thing to do.

My background paper is from the Oh My Heart 12x12 Paper Pad, and it has tiny metallic rose gold hearts on it.  The gesso helped to fade some of the out so the photo would really stand out.  I used several gelatos to add color here and smudged & blended them with a tiny drop of water and my fingers.

Here's one more close-up of the background area.  You can see the texture from the gesso here under the gelatos.  Yay for texture! :D

I hope you enjoyed this...it was fun for me to work with a big photo and try something different.  I appreciate you stopping by, and I hope you'll check out my process video:

Have a fantastic weekend!