One of my Front Porch Kit Layouts and a Tutorial

I think this was my favorite project to create with the "Say Cheese" kit - probably because I used some "lotions and potions" which I love to do. It's a layout with three photos of my youngest grandson, Drew, a few weeks ago when he cut his first two teeth. My daughter sent me these photos to document the occasion, but we couldn't even see his teeth!

the full one-page layout

and some closeups

I wanted to share how I made the background for this layout. I love the texture, soft color that coordinates nicely with the photos and the papers, and the amount of white space which places the focus on the photos.

I started with a piece of plain white cardstock and used a small chevron stencil (from Studio Calico) over which I spread white gesso with a palette knife. I immediately removed the stencil and then let it dry completely. (You can see that the stencil did not cover the width of the page so I had to do it twice and it doesn't exactly line up. No problem, because the photos will cover that space!) Look at that fantastic texture!

Once that was dry, I tinted more white gesso with a bit of Dylusions Turquoise Spray Ink to make a soft aqua color. I used a brayer to roll this over the stenciled pattern, covering about 2/3rds of the page. It doesn't completely cover, especially over the stenciled area, but I like the randomness of this.

This created a softly colored background and even more texture as you can see in this closeup.

When this was dry I started laying strips of patterned papers and the black and white dotted fabric in place on the layout. The edges of the papers were distressed and the fabric strips were torn. None were inked as I liked the clean contrast of the white core.  The strips were machine-stitched to the cardstock page. The title strip and "snap on" word strip were sewn just down the center so they would have some dimension.

Another fun element on the page is the addition of the white plastic rings that were in the kit. I painted some of them with acrylic paint and then added Glossy Accents to make them glossy again. I heated these with my heat gun to dry them and a serendipitous thing happened - they bubbled! I quite liked this additional texture so I didn't try to "fix" the problem.

I left the little wooden camera embellishments natural as I liked the contrast with the soft colors. I also added pieces of the tiny white acetate filmstrip under one photo and as photo corners on the other two photos.

The green-blue color of the edges of the authentic filmstrip coordinated nicely and the black contrasted well and made the photos pop. I wanted to add some dimension with this so I ruffled and stapled the filmstrip before glueing down under the largest photo.

So there you have my layout with my precious little Drew. Maybe at some point we will see his teeth and I can add a tiny photo!

I still have a few more projects to share so stop by again tomorrow!