Muddy Boots and Happy Hearts

Every month Debbi over at CSI : Color, Stories, Inspiration has been putting together a "Cold Case". These cases are designed to help you resurrect some of the older product that you have floating around in your stash of goodies. This case is an optional one, but this month I decided to try to tackle it.

Here's the Case File and a closer look at the inspiration photo from this Cold Case. The scene from our whimsical April Cold Case is by Marie Desbons.

Here's a few Product Clues to help get you started :

Find older papers that match the colors
I don’t know about you, but I have a ton of bicycle embellishments and I’d love the opportunity to use them.
Use some of your old butterfly accents.
Remember when swirls were all the rage? Use them.
Surely you have a ton of flowers. Use them. Or use an old floral print.
Here’s an old brand to use: K&Co.
Use corrugated paper.
Use older stamps you haven’t ever used or haven’t used in a while.
Magic number is 27—grab the 27th paper or embellishment pack (or something else) in your stash and start there.
Use a die you haven’t ever used or haven’t used in a while.
Use layered embellishments, e.g., Jolee’s stickers.


And some design ideas to help you create :

Fussy cut an old floral paper and use them in a new way.
Stamp in the background.
Put something upside down for a touch of whimsy.
Create a frame for your page using embellishments.
Create a little basket or envelope or pocket and tuck some of your embellishments in there.
Embellish fussy cut flowers with brads or beads or gems, etc.
Embellish a cut file with flowers or fussy-cut flowers or other shapes.

And here's what I created :

So this page is 12x24, and I made it for a fellow scrapbooker turned professional photographer. She is also Mom to these three littles, and doesn't have a lot of time for crafty goodness right now. I loved these photos when I saw them on Facebook, so I asked her if I could use them for this layout since the colours reminded me of the colours in the inspiration photo. She said YES!! and I was so happy to be able to create this for her.

Here's how I solved this case :

I didn't use any of the product clues, because none of the product on this layout is old. In fact all of the product here is from the last 2 Vicki Boutin releases. She is definitely one of my favorite designers and her last 2 releases have been so much fun! I did use the "Stamp in the background" design clue prompt though.

The following things about the photo also inspired this layout :

the 3 birds in the photo inspired the birds on the layout
the spokes on the wheel inspired the stamping
the circles inspired the dot paper

Here's some closeups of this page :

This is the left hand bottom corner. Here you can see the stenciled texture paste I made the background with. This is also the oops on this layout. Others have said that the colour within the newest VB stencils had come off onto their projects, but I wasn't quite sure that I believed them. Well, they were right and the green of the stencil came off. However, the colour actually matched my paper choices quite well and I decided to not redo the stenciling. To make this cluster, I cut the chipboard piece and arrow in half. I added a piece from another chipboard on top, and placed the arrow on either side of this. A little heart sticker and final chipboard circle completed the look here.

Here's the top left corner. I'd seen others using the banner sticker and ephemera pieces, but I don't really use them much myself. However, I really like how they turned out here. I'll probably do this again! I also really loved the bird stickers that came with the VB Kaleidoscope collection - they are so cute and colourful! Some heart stickers and a chipboard camera gave just the right finishing touch.

A closer look at my title work. In order to make it look like I wanted it too, I had to pop up the letter "t". I really love the way this turned out!

A closer look at the journaling. Here also you can see the stamping in the background from the design clues. I love how the enamel dots finish off the stamped circles perfectly.

And finally, a closer look at my favorite bird of the collection! At first I didn't think that he would work because of all the purple, but then I noticed that one of the girls has purple boots, so then he fit just right!

Thanks for popping by and checking out my page today, I can't wait to see what you create with this case!