Simple Stories - Wildflower - Life In Bloom

Hi everyone,

Following lots of lovely new releases from Simple Stories, today I'm bringing you a layout made with the new Wildflower collection, which is a collaboration between Simple Stories and My Minds Eye.

In real life, this collection is absolutely beautiful, way beyond the pictures you see online.

For this page, I'm focusing on the patterned papers and florals, offset against a mixed media background.

I started with a piece of Premium White Cardstock, applying a heavy cost of gesso as I planned to add quite a lot of water to the page.

With watercolour inks, I applied blue, pink and yellow ink in vertical lines with a brayer, letting each colour dry before adding the next.  I love the effect this creates and enjoy the extra level of control the brayer brings so you don't get very messy!

Once the ink was dry, I took a scripty stamp from my stash and stamped randomly in black ink, in a vertical line. Some of this is hidden by the photo, but you can still see a hint of stamping which doesn't overpower the layout. 

To create my layers, I mounted my photo on several pieces of paper, using the b sides of the Complete Bliss and Breath Deep papers, as well as a piece of blue Bazzill cardstock from the Matchmaker Pack, distressing all the edges to give some extra texture.

Once these were in place, I started to embellish.

I decided to create three main clusters, colour-blocking each embellishment cluster with the ink I had added to the page, creating tone-on-tone clusters as much as possible. I used flowers from the Floral Bits & Pieces Ephemera Pack, and Combo Stickers. In this first yellow cluster I also added a pretty yellow tab from the Journal Bits & Pieces pack.

For the cluster on the left, I layered my florals, raising some on foam and some on flat sticky tape to give the cluster some real definition. 

Once they were in place, I added a tag from the Journal Bits & Pieces Pack, adding floss from my stash to tie a bow.

To give my page a title, I used a combination of a sticker from the Combo Sticker Sheet , saying Life' and Alphas from Rosie's Studio Frolic line which complement this collection perfectly and have the added bonus of gold foiling.

My subtitle, sitting to the bottom of my photo, uses a combination of  Wildflower Bits & Pieces and elements from the Journaling Bits & Pieces pack, layered on foam to draw the eye across the page.

I love the smaller design, with multiple layers of mixed media, paper, ephemera and stickers. This collection is so pretty, it was hard to restrain myself from using it allll in one go - so this design helped me focus and choose just a few key pieces to create my page.

I hope it's inspired you to get creating, and please do head over to the shop to check out this gorgeous range as I'm sure it won't hang around for long.

I'll be back later this month with some more pages.

See you soon.

Claire xx

@scrappysoulmate