Paper Inspiration

Where do you get your inspiration?  This double-page spread was inspired by the paper itself - from an older book by Hot Off the Press called, BJ's Gold and Handpainted Papers.  I looked at the lovely flowers and thought, "I have a stamp that would work with that!"  It's a little hard to see in the pictures as the camera doesn't pick up the glimmer very well.  I used black Staz-on ink to ink the outlines of the flowers onto the picture frames. Then I colored them in with Marvy markers. The final step was to take a yellow-gold gel pen with glittery ink and go over the flower petals.  They really sparkle on the page!

If you look closely, you'll see that I did something that I often do with background papers that have pretty images on them.  I cut around the image itself so it could overlap my picture frames. I love that look!

I discovered another neat trick when I did these pages. The challenge was attaching them to both the frame and the page without getting adhesive on the pictures themselves (since they are vintage photos, I'm trying to ensure they're easy to remove if needed for some reason). I discovered I could easily manage with TWO of the clear photo corners for each corner of the pictures (except where they overlapped another picture). I put one on the corner with the adhesive side facing down, then the other on the same corner, over the top of the last one with with the adhesive facing up. Since the front and back of the clear photo corners are different sizes, and since they are slightly offset, this gives me a sticky part on both the front and the back of the corners of the photo. The front attaches to the frame, the back attaches to the page. Works great!