You Are Crazy Beautiful / The Ink Road

Happy Tuesday, friends!  I'm excited to share a guest layout I created for The Ink Road. The owner, Lara, contacted me and asked if I'd be interested in creating a few projects with her awesome stamps.  Of course, I said yes!  She sent me several of her beautiful stamp sets, and I'm sharing the first layout I created today.

I used a beautiful tropical leaf stamp from the Frond of You set on this.  All those wide green leaves are stamped images.  I used a few different green ink pads and stamped a bunch of them on some white cardstock.  I fussy cut them out and then dug through my stash of die cuts.  I had several other flower die cuts already cut and colored that I'd created for a previous project but didn't use.  I added them in around the stamped leaves to create a fun tropical effect.  The photo is of my daughter on our patio.  We have a lot of palm trees and green leafy bushes, so it matched all the leaves and flowers perfectly, I think.  And she is wearing a purple shirt which challenged me to use purple on my background.

I love how these leaves turned out.  I think the texture of the cardstock showing through looks so neat!  I don't think I ever use smooth cardstock because I love texture.  I glued the center of the leaves down so the edges would pop off the page.  Here you can see all the dimension and texture created from the leaves, the cut files and all the thread I added in there.  You can also see how I tucked my title piece in there as well.

I used a stamp from the Compliments Vol. 1 set here for my title.  I decided to stamp it on vellum using a grey ink.  I wanted it to be subtle and not too busy.  I felt that if I added a really long title anywhere else, it would compete with all the leaves and flowers.  I machine stitched through the top of it for a pop of light pink and some extra texture.  I embellished in a few places with some Amy Tangerine Rise & Shine epoxy stickers, some sequins from my stash and a Tim Holtz phrase sticker here.

I love all these shadows!  Definitely feels tropical to me :)

For my background, I started with some Shimmerz Paste-eez in Don't Be A Pansy (purple).  I scraped some on with a palette knife and then added in some light blue and pink sprays.  I wanted to echo the purple in her shirt.  I like how it's separated from the photo with all the leaves and flowers.  I was originally not going to add this many color in, but it just happened as I went :)

Using fussy cut pieces and die cuts give you automatic dimension.  I really didn't do anything special here...just layered them and tucked them in under the photo.  I used a few pieces of paper from the Crate Paper Oasis collection as layers as well.

I love these beautiful tropical colors together!  These cut files are a mix of Cocoa Vanilla Studio and The Cut Shoppe.  I just used gelatos and spray inks to color them.

Here's my process video if you'd like to check it out.  I hope you gain some inspiration!

Check out The Ink Road store and see all the awesome stamps and goodies she has!  Thanks so much for stopping by today!