Scrapbook Layout: Cherish

Do you have pictures of your kids or other loved ones you love so much they make your catch your breath every time you see them?  I love, love, love this closeup of Sammy.  His eyes are just so pretty.  He does have pretty eyes and this really captures them.  I had to do a layout that captured the feeling I have about his eyes in this photo.  It might seem too flowery for a boy... but it is designed to show how I feel more than anything else.

Some of the items are pre-made - the large paper frame was from a die cut stack and I hand cut the narrower frame from the over-print to echo it.  The bracket-edged paper on the left side was from the same stack and I added the narrow echo of the shape, again by hand-cutting the over-print.  The word cherish was a K&Company adhesive chipboard that came just like that, except that it had a dot for the i.  I lost the dot somewhere between designing the page and gluing everything down, but I thought the butterfly made a good substitute.  The butterflies were made with a Stampin' Up Embosslit die on the Big Shot, which is an awesome little die that cuts and creates a raised texture at the same time.  The shiniest ones are made out of metal tape from the hardware store (ours was $3 and leftover from a minor house repair!) and the others are made of regular silver paper.  The little dark blue flower at the bottom of the word cherish is a spiral flower (brief instructions here).

But my big news on this layout is about that large blue flower in the upper left: I made it!!  I'm so excited.  I bought the Stampin' Up Blossom Petals Punch which punches out several petal shapes, but then I sat around trying to make my petals into a three dimensional shape with no luck whatsoever.  They don't look so awesome stuck together into a flower without any dimension. As luck would have it, though, Cheryl and I headed up to Archiver's (great store but a little far away from us!) this weekend for a little coupon-shopping and their weekend Make-and-Takes.  We made a card, a 12x12 scrapbook page and a tag.  All three were cute (and it was mighty cool to leave with a full 12x12 page!) but the tag had this three-dimensional flower made with the very techniques I was having trouble inventing for myself the night before!  It was soooo much fun to do, and I was so proud of the flower I created, that I came right home and made another flower from my punched petals and added it to my pretty pretty layout!