1 Page Layout Class

Happy Saturday everyone, Carol here.
I've got a fun little layout and technique to share with you today.

Now, if you know me at all you KNOW I love stitching on my pages.  Most of the time it's just a little added fun to my borders and such but sometimes I want it to stand out and be a statement piece of my layout.  Today I'm going to show you how to do that with the adorable February kit featuring October Afternoon's Sasparilla.

 First off we'll gather our supplies. Now I wasn't quite sure what I would end up using in this layout, but I usually go through and choose the things I think/or would like to use.

The most important being the cloud paper, a ruler and some thread.

Here's my thought process behind this design decision.  We lived in Texas for a few years and a friend had taken some pictures of my little boy at the time. I knew the b/w would look beautiful on this cloud paper.  One of our most favorite songs was You are My Sunshine.  I sang it to him every night before bed.  So I decided to combine those two memories by creating a sun burst on those fun clouds.

Here's how I did it:

 First off, I decided to keep my photo/cluster at the bottom right of the page.  This way the sunburst can expand out across the clouds.  I used my ruler and simply traced some lines with pencil.  I started in the middle and tried to just evenly space them connecting and crossing over under the area where my picture would sit.

Then I simply stitched those lines with yellow thread.  I wasn't sure about the bottom until I started and decided I didn't want the rays coming out the bottom so I simply erased those lines.  I staggered my stitches across the top edges because I thought that would look a little funner and more carefree. 

Once I finished that I added a small spritz of yellow mist to emphasize the burst.  ( I checked on some scrap paper first to see how I needed to spray it to get it in the location I wanted ;)

Then I created my little photo cluster with a few strips under the right of my picture and placing the title to the left.  I thought I was done but then decided that yellow star might look cute along with a few small buttons to balance it out and show off the sun a bit.

I ended up not using much of what I started with.  Just the cloud paper, the alpha paper which I used for my title and stacking under my photo along with part of the red tag, half a sticker, small piece of ribbon, green thickers and the red alpha's are from the grab bag.  Along with one star and 2 buttons.

I kept my cluster pretty minimal because I didn't want it to overpower the sun, I really wanted that to shine ;)

I hope you are inspired to include some stitching on your layouts and have fun with it!

Thanks for looking ;)