Cheers From Paradise / The Cut Shoppe

Hey friends!  It's Monday again...that weekend sure went by fast!  I have a very bright and summery layout for The Cut Shoppe to share using the Happy Clouds and Kitschy Cursive cut files.  One of the great things about cut files is they never go out of style!  These have been in the store for a while now, and they are a few of my favorites.

I have really been inspired lately by my fellow Design Team member Irit Landgraf.  She's a mixed media whiz, and watching her create her beautiful backgrounds made me want to do it, too.  I used a few different shades of blue acrylic paints for this.  I used some white gesso first, and then I used a wide flat brush to just brush the paint right onto the paper.  I used a baby wipe to do a little smudging although acrylic paint dries pretty quickly and really doesn't blend.  I wanted to create somewhat of a sky, and I layered some of the clouds on top of it.  I even used the centers that were cut out of the outlines.  I love how they turned out over the background!

I left my clouds white since they contrasted so nicely against the blue.  I used the You Are Here collection from Simple Stories for this since my picture is a tropical image.  This collection was perfect for it!  I added lots of fun stickers, die cuts, chipboard pieces and wood veneer.

I machine stitched through a few of the clouds and added a few clear MAMBI stickers.  I think I could used these clouds on almost every beach layout I make.  They are so cute!

I created the word "cheers" using the Kitschy Cursive alpha.  It's so fun to create words and welding them together.  You can make any word you want!  I combined some Studio Calico wood veneer alphas with some VERY OLD Thickers here.  I don't even know how old they are, but I love the pretty pink color and fun font :)

Here's one more close up of some of the background papers and embellishments.  I also added some tangled pink thread.

Here's my process video if you'd like to see how this layout came together.  I hope you enjoy and find some cool ideas to try!

Thanks so much for stopping by, and have a wonderful weekend!