A kiss of nature

There are traditions and then there are traditions!   One of ours is to share at least one kiss on our walks. We were just posing for the perfect picture when it turned into of those kisses.  My husband immediately said, "I bet this is going in the scrapbook."  Of course!

It took me forever to do this page.  Partially I was just very busy last week and and also those little hearts turned out to be very time consuming.  I lost track of the number of papers I actually used but you can get some idea from this sampler which is my tip for the day.

When you want to mix a lot of papers together, punch a small image from the papers to see what matches and what stands out as a misfit.  I think there were only two (a light one and the stripe) from this selection I dropped.  I was surprised to see so many work out.  This technique expanded my design and also saved time as I was cutting most of the larger hearts on the Cricut.  (I only have a very small and a very large heart punch.)

After cutting, I inked the edges and then sewed the little X's on them with embroidery thread which is where most of the time went.

After it was all done, I realized I'd gotten the photos in the wrong order!  oh well...

How I did the tree (if you have a Cricut and SCAL):

• In Powerpoint, I found a clipart image of a tree.  There were some other elements in the image.
• I ungrouped the image - you have to do Ungroup twice to get an image into enough pieces.
• Then I deleted everything but the tree.
• Next I took the image to Photoshop Elements and removed the white background.
• Saved as a JPG.
• In SCAL, I did a Trace Image and imported the JPG.

Anyway, it was a fun layout to do.  Thanks for visiting today!  And have you kissed our special someone today?





Ingredients:  Way too many pattern papers to name! The background is Little Yellow Bicycle and the solid rust is Basic Grey Marrakesh.  Some die cuts from Making Memories J'Adore collection.