Scrapbook Layouts: From Drab to Fab!

Quick CHA report:

• Make & Takes in the booth were tons of fun!  Met some great people and loved seeing what people were doing with my stencils! Good to see what they liked and what they didn't.  Very surprised by some of the choices.

iphone photos of the make & take table littered with supplies!

• I want to thank all the generous supporters of our make & takes: Tim Holtz & Ranger, Jacquard, PanPastel, and Golden.  Thank you so much!
• Mom and I walked about one-third of the show floor today.  Stopped in a number of booths to leave a Flock Shop card and discuss the opportunities.
• Went to a two-hour Copic class taught by Colleen Schaan (who was my tablemate at Ranger U. back in 2008)!  Learned a lot of great technical information!
• Had a wonderful and inspiring dinner with Cocoa Daisy girls Christine, Ronda, and Lisa!  If you're thinking about joining a kit club or looking for a club with an artistic look, I highly recommend Cocoa Daisy.  (I'm a subscriber.)  And they are the nicest people around.  Christine packs all the kits by herself!  By.  Her.  Self.  It's pretty impressive.  This September Christine will have owned the kit club for one year.  The club itself has been around for almost five years.  A little birdie told me that a big re-design is coming.  Watch for it!  And both Lisa and Ronda have new books coming out soon!  Woot!
• Lindsay Ostrom has a very nice post here about CHA and lots of lovely pictures of my mixed media dress.  Thanks, Lindsay!
• May Flaum of Scrapbook Update wrote up a list of top picks from day one and my dress made the cut.  Check it out here.

Now back to our regularly scheduled post:

Right after my TCW stencils arrived, I started pumping out samples.  But not all of the samples turned out really well. 

I used the Triangle (TCW222) stencil and the Chevron (RCW227) stencil and made this layout:

I like a lot of things about the layout - the colors, the tiny pennants, the cool canvas frame...but it feels really boring and kind of unfinished. 

So I left it alone for a while. 

Today I came back and transformed it into this:

Much better!  It just needed some more energy and movement.  It was too still before.

I added paint drips, paint splats, and some hand drawn lines (drawn with a china marker).

I added this beautiful butterfly embellishment and the little blue alphabet stickers (which I outlined with a thin black pen).

I added this molded flower and two others for a bit more dimension and femininity!  I ended up changing the photo too.  I got some paint on the previous photo and when I headed to the computer to print out a new one, I decided to change the photo.

I made this layout with the Flower Frame (TCW225) stencil:

I love the Flower Frame stencil done up in multi-colored spray ink!  But the layout just didn't feel complete.  So I left it alone and then came back and played with it!

Here's what I came up with:

By coloring the background I think you see the photo a lot more.

You can see that I added watercolor and spray ink and just lightly brushed it around the painted frame to create a softer, colored exterior for the layout.

I punched the bottom edge of the original layout (watercolor paper, which turns out to punch quite easily) and  I love the formality it brings to the layout -- perfect for a wedding!  And you can see that I stitched around the perimeter of the layout.

I added a cluster of flowers and pearls.  After years of creating with Prima flowers I guess I just can't say goodbye to flowers!  And you can see that I added some journaling strips as well.

Sometimes it just takes a bit of time and distance to make it work, you know?

What do you think?  Do you ever go back later and spark up your layouts?

Thanks for stopping by!