Scraplifting challenge

A single 5x7 photo without journaling is a challenge for me.  I'm always seeing these beautiful pages with a single photo, title and little or no journaling. They are so creative and I often crave the space on my page to use some of those ideas.  Yet, when I get a chance to do a title page like this, I'm a little intimidated by all that space.

So I chose this photo for the CHA scraplifting challenge at Two Peas.  We were to choose two sources of inspiration. These are the two layouts I picked - by Gutspiel  and by Lintsi.

I liked the simplicity of the first and the elements in the upper left and lower right corners . The second one had this little birdcage and I remembered having a birdcage, too.  It came it a kit and hadn't been used. I didn't have the tiny white flowers so I made some with ribbon and pearls.  This led to the other pearl accents.  I got to use some pretty ribbons, too.  I think it has been 5 or 6 layouts since I've used ribbon so I was practically on a fabric withdrawal.  Love ribbon on layouts.

The photo is of my husband and me with our friends Karen and Jimmy when we visited them last spring. It will lead off other pages made about the trip.

Now I can't put an embellishment on a page without it meaning something so what does that birdcage have to do with the trip?  This may be a stretch but the trip was a chance to get away from home for a few days.  I'd been frustrated with sciatica pain and particularly my inability to drive myself very far at all.  So my husband offered to chauffeur me on this planned 'girls' weekend.  It was Easter so it was a chance for us both to get out and go somewhere and have some fun.  I felt very free and it certainly lifted my spirits.

Tomorrow, I have a tip on misting - To Mist or Not to Mist and another challenge layout.

Later in the week, I'll have a very versatile Project Life sketch using one week of photos on one page.  As always these sketches are good if you have a lot of photos from any event you want to scrap.

Thanks for stopping by!