CSI #125 - Grace

Was hoping to get this posted last night, but man..I was wiped out from the week and ended up curling up and watching Wolf of Wall Street instead. (Holy crazy movie, Batman!)  So..Happy Saturday!   I hope you all have a fabulous weekend planned.  I have a full day today starting with horseback riding lessons for the mini, a nature walk and a picnic, then an outdoor movie night tonight.  Going to be a beautiful day!

CSI has just revealed its latest case file and I am sharing my layout for it.  I love the way these colors work together against a white background and I was happy to finally scrap a photo from my garden last summer! :)

Here's my layout.  CLICK HERE to see what the rest of the amazing design team came up with.

For my evidence, I have flowers, something sheer (vellum), quatrefoil pattern (I had to google that by the way - I had no idea what it was, but was happy to find that I had a mask in a quatrefoil pattern), something puffy (quilted flair button) and decorative frame.

I was inspired by the word "time" and chose the quote at the bottom of my page as part of my journaling, expanding on it behind the photo.

The quote at the bottom is a bit hard to read, but it is by Mary Sarton and says "Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace."

I found it to be the perfect quote to sum up how I feel about my garden.  In the spring of 2013, I planted my first garden; all organic, and mostly from seed.  Every morning and evening I went out to check and see how it was coming along...although every day each little plant grew just a little bit more, it was well over a month before I had any harvest to show for all of the effort, and this perfect little snow pea was one of the first things to grow.  No matter what I did to encourage the plants to grow faster, time was in charge and I had to learn some serious patience while I waited.  By August, the garden was so big it was spilling over in all directions with various vegetables ready for harvest.  So totally worth the wait!

I wanted to share my process for how I made the little coke bottle flower embellishment.  I found this great stamp on clearance at Jo-Ann Fabrics and paired it up with some watercolors for a homemade embellie encompassing all of the colors in the case file.

I started with watercolor paper, and stamped the image with archival inks.  Then I mixed some watercolors to get the shades I wanted for the bottle.

Lots of water and lots of color and here's the final product.  I fussy cut one of the images out and popped it up on my layout.

Here's a closeup of the stamped image (the ones above were still wet when I photographed them).

In the background, I used the quatrefoil mask and then lightly rubbed a small powder blue inker over it once dry.  Love the effect it gave.

A closeup of the quilted button from Basic Grey's "Hey Kid" collection.  I am absolutely loving this collection and have mixed it in to quite a few layouts lately.

The top corner was completed with some vellum and paper layers, a clear circle, and a K&Co. garden design flair button.

I used the title word "grace" pulled from the quote.  Love the little clear "oh happy day" sticker I found at Michael's.

And that's it.  I wanted to  be sure I kept lots of white in this layout because I just love how it makes the greens and teals pop.  I love this one and think I am going to make a book of my garden trials, tribulations and adventures. :)

Enjoy the day everyone...see you soon!

xoxo,

Shawna