Me & My Hundred Acre Woods Friends

Happy Sunday evening my scrappy friends.  I'm excited to share a layout today that I created using a some of my stash.  Now, let me tell you about my stash.  I have a problem.  I have a **VERY BIG** paper hoarding problem...ahem.  And I know I'm not the only one, but when the copyright year on the barcode strip of your paper is from 4 years ago, you know it's bad.  I have paper even older than that, but I digress!

Today I'm using a sketch from Let's Get Sketchy February Week 1.  In addition, I'm doing the Scrap Our Stash February stash challenge for WASHI -> my layout has: wooden embellishment, alpha stickers, splatter stamp, Hello Fall paper, and ink.  

This was such a FUN layout for me - I got to meet my very favorite characters in the whole world last Thanksgiving!  But with all the colors in the photo - including my purple shirt - I was having a tough time figuring out what papers to use.  Enter Little Yellow Bicycle's "Hello Fall" from 2011!

I only had about 5 sheets of paper from this collection and none of the embellishments.  So I decided to pull out my Silhouette PixScan mat to cut the flower/doilies from the middle of one of the papers.  If you don't have this mat, I highly recommend you get one!  It lets you cut out patterns, stamped images, and more.  Don't get me wrong, I don't mind fussycutting sometimes, but this can be a real time saver -- and paper saver, too!  (And if you are looking for help calibrating your mat, I have a tutorial that may help.)  

To start, I decided to flip the sketch.  My base paper has a built-in green strip, but I trimmed a strip from the leaf paper to adhere next to it on the right side of my layout.  Then I sewed along the left side of the strip.

I matted my photo with the green side of one of the papers, inked the edge in dark purple, then matted it again with the orange side of one of the papers (also inked).  I included a tab to highlight the date.  Then I included an embellishment cluster below the photo in line with the sketch.

I wanted to stamp the splatters using the Tim Holtz Spills & Splatters stamp (I trimmed the splatter area next to the cup rings to use separately).  So I put the photo area and the flower/doilies where I knew they'd be and stamped near each doily.  Then I adhered everything to my page to create my title.  I chose Simple Stories Sn@p! Studio Typeset alphas for "acre" and "woods" and stamped "hundred and "#friends" using my oldie-but-goodie Close To My Heart Solo Alpha sets.  I cut "me & my" using my cameo, and popped up the ampersand using 3D tape (hence the pesky shadow...one of these days I will learn how to fix this using Photoshop Elements!).  The doily on the left is also popped up.

After adding some gems, I finished the layout with a small journaling spot to show how special Pooh Bear and Tigger are to me.

I hope you enjoyed my layout today, and I hope it inspires you to reach into your stash - you just may not know what serendipitous goodies you will find!

In the famous words of Tigger, "T.T.F.N.....ta ta for now!
Majken