Hello, Jenn here! Happy Release Day!!! I always get so excited for the first of the month when the new collection comes out. Check out this gorgeous tropical-themed collection for the month of November. Palm Paradise is such a fun, bright, and beautiful collection. I will admit, this one did make me think a little bit, though. I don't really have any tropical pictures to scrap, I haven't been on a hot tropical vacation, or live on a tropical island... BUT November in Alberta is usually cold, dark, and drab, so this is the perfect time of year to play with this collection, and be reminded of warmer, sunny days!!!
The first thing that stands out to me from this collection are the gorgeous colours, and I instantly think of flowers, so that's what I decided to work with for my first layout. I found a picture of my Mum and I at the ballet, which is dark and has a bit of a yellowish glow to it from the dimmed lights in the theatre. I thought the bright, bold colours from Palm Paradise would be a great way to brighten up the photos a little bit, and I find flowers are very symbolic of the ballet, for me.
I found a few stamp sets with nice big, tropical flowers, and stamped them onto some white cardstock using embossing ink. I used my Wild Whisper exclusive Emerald Creek embossing powders that match Palm Paradise to heat emboss the flowers, then added a little watercolour to them so that they matched the feel of the collection. I have Pineapple Paradise, Blue Island Slush, and Wispy Wool. The embossing powders are so gorgeous, and I love that each one has a unique texture to it so they all look different. I decided to also stamp some leaves, using the Christmas Comfort stamp set, as well as a Heidi Swapp stamp set, and used different shades of green inks for those.
Once all the flowers and leaves were dry, I put on a favourite tv show and fussy cut them all out. I try not to worry too much about being perfect with my fussy cutting, especially around the really small lines of the leaves. When you put a cluster of flowers and leaves together, there is so much colour, and detail in each cluster that you don't notice the slight imperfections of each individual piece. And there is always a way to tuck and hide certain areas of each leaf and flowers so that the best side of each one is showing :)
To bring the layout together, I matted my photo with three different papers from the 12x12 paper pack, pink, blue, and green. I made sure that I left enough of a border around the pink that you could see the beautiful colour, but couldn't really tell what the words say, and did the same with the green cactus paper. This is a great way to use your themed papers in a layout that has nothing to do with the theme! I put my photo right in the center of the layout, and made a cluster of flowers in each corner. I always start with the biggest flowers and then work my way to the smallest, making sure that I've spread out the colours, shapes and sizes evenly amongst all the clusters! I like to add my leaves last and tuck them into any spaces that might have an awkward gap, and the frame the flower clusters. Because I didn't have any of the yellow in the layers behind my photo, I saved my two biggest yellow flowers to tuck into the layers with the photo. They really help to brighten up the photo and make it stand out. I scattered some sequins around as the finishing touch.
If you would like to see how this layout came together, be sure to visit my process video. I love how the flowers turned out, they were a ton of fun to make :) Remember to use DTJENN at checkout to get 10% off your Wild Whisper purchase. Thank you so much for stopping by, and until next time, Happy Scrapping :)
Jenn
