Lifting a Page

I was asked to lift a page for the blog, and to write about why I chose it and how I carried out the lift.
Easy I thought.
I lift pages quite alot, but they are always already chosen for me, and often a sketch has been made up already to make it even easier to lift.

So I started searching through the blog to choose a page.
This one by Stephanie caught my eye...

I love the colours used, they are so me at the moment; and I also loved the layers- I'm very into layering myself, so that definately appealed.

I then looked through my photos to see what I could use. I found a photo of my daughter that I love, but it was a portrait shot rather than landscape as used on Stephanies page.
The first thing I did was to print out her page, so I had it to hand.
With my portrait photo ready, I then turned the print out 90 degrees to the left.
I sketched out the layout in rough at the new orientation to check it would look ok.
At this stage I realised I would also have to flip the page horizontally to make the photo work.
Then to help myself some more, I created a sketch using the drawing part of Open Office.

I left out all the little embellishment details as adding your own are to me what makes your page your own and not just an identical copy of the lifted page.

Now I had the bare bones, I could set to work.

Papermaze had sent me the lovely new Prima Flirty Secret papers to work with. I then realised that the colours are quite similar to those in Stephanies layout, and I wondered if that had helped attract me to it.

I started off with 2 sheets of Bazzill cardstock to co-ordinate with the papers.
I trimmed 1cm off two edges of the blue sheet, and stuck it to the green one to leave a 5mm border all around the edge.
(I actually removed a large area from the middle of the green sheet to reduce wastage and make my supplies go as far as possible- something I do with as many layers as I can)

Using my sketch to help me I then started cutting the papers to the various sizes and shapes. I decided to keep the basics of the layout as similar as I could to the original, and then to build my take on it on top of all the layers. The papers used are Meander and Memoirs, and another sheet of Bazzill cardstock in a very pale pink.
As before I removed the middle of the first patterned paper layer to use it as another layer higher up.

This paper Flamboyant (flocked) has the pattern flocked- it is gorgeous! So I used it as one of the top layers so it could be seen- and felt!
I added the circle from the original page too.

The photo with its dark edges seemed a little harsh, so I sanded them to soften the look.

On Stephanies original layout, she has some lovely swirls going across the middle of the page, underneath the photo. On my layout this would have translated to swirls up the left side, I felt this seemed a little unbalanced, so decided to have a swirl up the left side, and across under the photo.
To make them, I simply freehand cut some slightly curvy pieces from green cardstock.

Taking the flower idea, I then expanded it to have more flowers, spread along the curvy cardstock strips. I used a mixture of
Prima Essentials Flowers

To finish the flowers I took some clear buttons, and threaded embroidery thread through to tie knots.

The best way I think to stick down clear embellishments such as these buttons is to use small clear glue dots- the bulk box of Stix 2 Glue Dots is fab.
(photo shows before I removed the backing to stick down!)

For the title I again followed the idea of it flwing around the curve of the circle- and made it using American Crafts Fabric Thickers Patchwork Aqua; American Crafts Glitter Thickers Lax Crimson, and Making Memories Tiny Alpha Stickers Pink Ledger.

And that was pretty much that!
As you can see, some of the design I stuck to quite closely- like the layers; others I changed to fit my page- the swirls and the orientation; and others I just took the idea and expanded and changed it- like the flowers.

A lifted page can be as similar or as different as you like from the original.
Sometimes the end result will seem nothing like the one you used to lift from- but the ideas will be there.
Most of all- have fun with it!

And here is my finished page.
A Big Thankyou to Stephanie for such a fab layout that inspired me to lift it.