This layout was inspired by a punch. You see, one of my friends gave me some of her old scrapbook supplies. There were eyelets, ribbons, and this really odd punch. The punch caught my attention, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it. So, it sat with my other punches for a couple of years. What do you do with this weird concave square-ish thing with no lines of symmetry? Every time I saw that punch, it would just get under my skin.
Finally, after a night of insomnia, I grabbed that punch and started in on some of my small scrap pieces like a wild woman. I chose mostly pastel papers and punched each scrap as many times as I could. Some of my scrap papers are much too small to justify keeping. This was a good way to clean out my paper bin. I knew that if I wound up hating the design, the only thing lost was time.
I found some photos of our yard when we had it redone. They seemed like a good match for the spring-like color palette. Then I matted them with that pink floral and added a yellow punched border. Normally I would have gone through my larger scraps to find the photo mat. However, I have SO MUCH PAPER right now, that I find myself being a little less frugal. I actually want to cut into and get some full sheets used.
Now it was time for the real work… laying out all of those punched pieces. At first I utilized a ruler. I was going to use the straight edge and make sure everything was lined up perfectly. Yeah, my patience for that didn’t even last through the top row. Instead, I eyeballed the whole thing. (It’s a weird shape! Does it really matter if it isn’t perfect?) I didn’t do any gluing until I had every punched piece where I wanted it. Then I used some Tombow liquid glue to get them all down.
After everything was dry, I started digging through all of my small embellishments. I can’t believe that I found exactly what I was looking for to finish off the page. What you see is a mix of resin flowers, chipboard pieces from American Crafts and Basic Grey, puffy stickers, and enamel hearts. I wanted the embellishments to be the same color as the punched paper.
I love how this page looks. I was actually excited as I put it together. That little punch took me out of my comfort zone, making me try something new. Now I need to go thank my friend for giving me the gift of creativity… even though she won’t have any memory of giving me that superbly weird punch.
