Heart Them / Simple Stories

Hello again, friends!  I hope you are having a nice & relaxing weekend so far.  Today I'm sharing one of my layouts for the Simple Stories blog.  I wanted to spice things up a bit, so I decided to combine two collections here.  I haven't done that yet since becoming a CT member, and I'm so glad I did.  I used papers & embellishments from the Carpe Diem and Heart collections.  The Heart collection is a really small line with several papers and a few sticker sheets whereas Carpe Diem is huge and has every product under the sun.  It was neat to come up with a new look using both of them.

I started with this beautiful aqua/teal ombre paper as my background (from Heart).  I wanted to combine some papers from both lines, and I know a great way to do that is to use small shapes cut from different papers.  I used a fun cut file (Retro Rounded Corners) from The Cut Shoppe and cut out this fun shape in colors & patterns I thought worked well together.  I love the mix of bright and lighter pink, grey, golden yellow, salmon/coral & black.  I just scattered them onto the background and placed my photo right where I wanted it.  I used my sewing machine to stitch through them all.  I did use some Shimmerz Paints on my background.  You can see how I did this in my video below.

This "heart" piece is from one of the patterned cut apart papers.  I fussy cut it, added pop dots under it and used it as part of my title. I love the font, and the black really pops against the other colors.  I pulled some light pink alphas from the Snap Lights Alpha Stickers and placed them on that gold heart, which I also fussy cut.  And like I usually do, I added some tangled thread under the photo and the title.

Aren't these shapes the coolest?  I've been calling them flower stars...haha.  Whatever they are, I love them!  I added a cute balloon sticker by my photo, and this cute grey circle heart sticker is from Carpe Diem.  To jazz it up, I raised it up with a pop dot and added some aqua thread to it.  I also used several Carpe Diem Clear Stickers.

Here I combined stickers from both collections.  I also stitched with gold through "them" for some added interest and texture.  Here you can also see all the ink colors I used...aqua/teal, pink, gold and black.

Here's a process video for this page...you can see how I made it from start to finish.  I hope it gives you some fun ideas to try!

Thanks so much for stopping by!  Have a wonderful weekend!