Les Voyageurs - My April Counterfeit Kit

Je m'appelle Natalie. That and a very few other phrases are all I took out of my 1 semester of French before I decided becoming a Spanish major would be more useful (it wasn't). However, my lack of knowledge of the language never diminished my love for the country or desire to travel it!

So this month's prompt over at The Counterfeit Kit Club blog was a kit called C'est Magnifique. At first, I thought, "Hmmm, this isn't my style." Then as I was writing my list of things I thought I had to include in the kit, I thought, "Hmmm, I could use photos of our trip to Paris!" and the deal was sealed. This kit took on a mind of its own & grew & I'm so excited to use it!

Here is the original kit inspiration:

I tried to pull out light papers with florals & vintage patterns. Obviously a little lace & the contrasting black embellishments. I had some perfect washi tape, and some clear stamps with just the right frills. I had these sweet little clear embellies that were architectural and perfect, and I got new crate paper ephemera that fit great with pinks and blacks. Obviously some flowers were in order, and I just received a great package from Rochelle Spears from the February Challenge and the prima flowers in it were spot on. I had some fun chipboard alphas with gold that fit and a whole page from a DCWV stack that included stamps and even an Eiffel Tower tag. Doilies and pearl stickers and Gold alphas, oh my!

Some details.

Ya'll, I even added in a chipboard banner to create! I've been meaning to make a banner to hang from a shelf in my half-bath, which is decorated with Paris items - hopefully this kit will get me into finally doing it!

I'm excited to step away from my family album a couple times this month and scrap a trip that will always be so special to me and my husband. Stay tuned for how I use my kit!

Thanks for looking & go play along!

Stop & Smell the Roses - a Process Tutorial

So I'm not sure if this is really a tutorial, but I'm going to show, in photos, the process I took while creating this page recently:

So I got my February Studio Calico Kit & I LOVED the paper with roses and polka dots. I loved the combination so much, so I didn't want to just cut off the roses and lose the polka dots.

But when I placed my photo backing paper where I wanted it, I was not impressed with the way it covered my roses!

So, I had an idea! Why not cut around the blooms to overlap my photo/backing paper?

And I did it! I tucked my little gold hearts (another very very favorite paper in that kit) behind my xactoed (that's a word, right?) roses & boom - perfection!

Here's a shot of what the back of the page looks like, in case we're lost in translation here:

And a photo of my lifted roses:

I was very happy with the finished project.

Thanks for looking, and I hope this inspires you to use some big, bold prints in your background paper choices!