We {heart] gardens

Whenever we are planning to go somewhere new, I always look up gardens we can visit.  In this case, I only had to look up the address.  I had heard about the Sarah P. Duke Gardens in Durham, NC for years.  Actually it was the main reason we included Durham on our short spring getaway.  The garden is lovely.  In late April, the azaleas were finishing off, the peonies hadn't quite put out yet, and the tulips were in full bloom.  My favorite part was the terrace garden, particularly as most of it was done in lavendar and purple.  I've heard of 'white' gardens but never a purple one!

Of course we had to have our little 'adventure.'  On the far right side of the photo collage is a picture that just looks like a shot up into the trees.  If you look very closely you will see an owl.  My husband had me believing I was seeing my first owl in the wild.  I forgot that owls are nocturnal!  It was a fake owl.  I guess they have some sort of pest they use the owl to scare off - or maybe it is just there to fool the tourist!

The layout is based on the sketch from May's Stretch Your Sketch class at Two Peas. May Class If you want to play along, you have until the 20th to do a layout based on Jen Gallacher's sketch.  I stretched the sketch by changing the large photo to a photo collage.

My biggest challenge was actually printing.  I wanted to take just a few minutes to get started on this project and print out the 4x6 photos one day.  I spent an hour getting two photos printed!  Ironically, Wal-mart called in the middle of my wrestling with my printer to tell me my latest photo order was in (those are in the next layout I'm doing.)  Sometimes I print things myself and sometimes I send them out.  Anyway, after several ink cartridge updates and reboots, I got them printed.  It was downhill and fun from there.

This layout could also be a scrap your stash layout as I used some really old My Mind's Eye paper I came across when cleaning out a drawer a few months ago.  It was just perfect in color. Also, I used a SCAL file I'd made up and only used once before for the lattice work.  The chipboard flowers are from some very old K&Company stash. Only one was the right color, so I pulled off the tops and inked and stamped my own finishes.  Finally, I got into my Pretties Kit from Stampin' Up!

The upper right corner needed a little light so I stamped the background using a distressing stamp from Stampin' Up! (Itty Bitty Backgrounds) that looks like a spritzer and some metallic white paint.  

Speaking of SU!, they have some things on sale on the retired Accessories list.  I think the Hodgepodge Hardware is probably the best deal.  A new catalog comes out July 1st so the sale lasts until June 30 or until supplies last.

Thanks for visiting today!

Ingredients:  DSP:  Wild Asparagus from My Mind's Eye
Ribbon:  Webster's Pages
Stickers:  kraft mini from Jillibean Soup
Perfect Pearls from Ranger
Pretties Kit from Stampin' Up!
Paint:  Anita's