Is that an actual layout?!

It's been ages since I shared anything other than Project Life so when an actual layout was done I felt I needed to share it.

Just the other day I sat down with my list of layouts that have not been done and decided just to torture myself I updated my list to see just how truly behind I am. Well, it wasn't pretty, like 70 layouts in the family book and that was just up to the end of 2012 and 54 for Simone's book also thru the end of 2012.  Needless to say I went thru that list with a red pen and scratched off all the "I'm pretty sure you covered that well enough in Project Life" as best I could. It's still not pretty and I know I still need to edit out more.  Staring down my super daunting list I realized I have a few options, 1) throw the list away and pretend I never made it and these events never happened or 2) do them quick and dirty style, digitally or 3) continue to edit down the unnecessary and get busy making some pages.  I have a feeling I will end up doing a combination of 2 and 3, I just don't have the heart to do number 1.

The good thing is actually making this one has helped motivate me to get some of this work done.

The layout was started at the watercolor class I took at the end of June in Berkeley. I showed some bits of this in my week 26 Project Life spread but not the finished piece.  I used my Peerless Watercolor papers and only used Myrtle Green and Olive Green for the background. Its really amazing the color variations you can get from watercolors, especially these watercolors.  The red painted parts are Scarlet Lake.  There is also a tiny bit of this gold on top of the red strip at the top. These paints are amazing and I also bought this color and wow, the pigmentation is fantastic.

Initially I loved the watercolor background up to the point of me adding the red parts.  I did another background at home and while I liked it, I liked the first more so I ended up using it and just embracing the parts I didn't like and made it work.

For the title I printed out the text on a piece of vellum and then did an offset cut and had my Cameo cut it out. It worked pretty well once I figured out my blade settings to really get a clean cut all the way through (my blade was set on 3). I added a few splatters of Heidi Swapp's Color Shine, I used Gold Lamé and Sweet Cherry and called it done.

I'll let you know how I do on the list whittling and getting somewhat caught up.  I am headed to a crop in a few weeks so my plan is to actually get some paper layouts done.

Have a great week!