Scrap, Paper, Scissors: Autumn Leaves CuteWorld

I'm not normally an Autumn Leaves fan, mainly due to their papers being lightweight- (I prefer heavyweight), nor am I a fan of overly cutesy baby papers.
But when I saw this range up on the Papermaze store I decided I had to give them a try.
My brother and his fiancee recently had an adorable baby girl, and these papers are just oh so cute- I had to scrap a page featuring her with this range.
When the package arrived the colours immediately told me exactly which photo to use, so I set to work.

Here are the basics I had to use to make my page, some Bazzill cardstock and a selection of girls papers from the Autumn Leaves Cuteworld range.

The papers seemed to remind me of a soft baby patchwork blanket, their lovely pastel colours, so to show this idea on my page I decided to get my sewing machine out and use lots of stitching- something I haven't used on my pages for quite some time!

I started my page with the Die Cut Flower Blossom paper. It is a beautiful big shape, and at first I really wasn't sure quite how I was going to include it on my page.
I'm a big fan of layering, but I needed to keep as much of this paper on show as I could, yet without it totally dominating the page.
I inked the edges using a cats eye chalk inkpad- these are my favourite inks to edge with as the shape means you can get into all the little nooks and crannies of all sorts of shaped items.
Then I sewed all around the edge.

To carry on the blanket idea, I decided to cut lots of squares from the other two papers- Adorable and Precious. On the computer you can't see the beautiful pearly sheen of the "Adorable" paper- trust me, it is lovely.

Next I spaced out all the squares on my base cardstock, lying the die cut flower over the top. There is no point covering the base with squares when half of them wouldn't be seen!

I then inked all the squares edges.
Using a small piece of double sided tape in the middle of each square fix them down.

To carry on the patchwork blanket idea I wanted to sew around the edges of each square using my sewing machine. This adds interest and texture.
Whilst quite a tricky and time consuming technique, it was worth all the effort.

After sewing tidy up by pulling all the threads through to the back, trim, and secure with tape.

As I already said, I do like my layers, so I added a two pieces on top of the die cut flower as a mat for the photo.

I also cut a small white mat of cardstock for the photo, and again I sewed around the edges.

The photo I then stuck onto the layers.

For the title, I chose Scenic Route Capitol Hill chipboard letters To carry on the stitching theme, I doodled stitches around the edges with a brown zig pen.

I felt the page didn't need to be overly embellished as there is alot of pattern in the papers, so I simply stamped a heart onto transparancy, and cut out; then punched a small retro flower from one of the papers.

Strips for the journalling, date and first word of the title I cut from the white cardstock, inked the edges, wrote on, then mounted onto the page using foam pads.