Bond In Motion & Citrus Twist February 2015

Hey everyone, how are you? I hope you're all fine, healthy and happy!

We had a quite hard time here at our house with the flu and a little boy that felt really bad - our son.
But he is much better now, so that's a good thing! :)

I forgot to show you a layout that I already made one or two weeks ago. When we've been in London at the beginning of the year we came across an exhibition calles 'Bond In Motion'. As my two guys do love James Bond (me too, but I only love Sean Connery as James Bond), we of course had to go in. It was really interesting, seeing all the original vehicles from all the Bond movies!

As I wanted to keep the colors of the layout in a more classic, elegant way, I decided to go with black, grey and yellow and added some interest in stitching and using some gel medium with a mask. It nearly dries clear, so you hardly can see it on the photo. But in real life it looks great!

A few days ago my February PL kits by Citrus Twist Kits arrived. I have to say, wow, there's again tons of stuff in it! I made three layouts so far and I'd love to show two of them today ...

It sounds and looks weird for me to use hearts on a layout about myself, and not to mention that many! But when I saw that PL card from Citrus Twist Kits for the first time, I immediatley thought of me and my life. There were times when I didn't allow my inner voice to talk and prefered to listen to everyone else, society, people I hardly knew.

I had to learn to trust myself and it is still a process. That's what I wanted to document, for myself and for my son. It is a process, one step at a time ... so just for today, for this moment, I am not gonna shush my inner voice. :)

I went for a 6x8 inch layout. I am falling more and more in love with this format!
I also decided to go for a wooden background and golden embellishments. And a lot of hearts. To not forget to love myself more.

In the ephemera pack, that comes with the PL embellie kit, were two tags with a golden heart on it. On one of those I cut out the golden heart and used it as an embellishment. Then I adhered my photo on the tag who still had the golden heart and adhered the tag with the missing heart on top by using foam tape.

The rest came together quite quickly. Before I adhered everything, I added some structure to the background by using matte gel and a stencil from my stash. Then I adhered the golden heart that I cut out from the tag as well as some transparency hearts from the PL embellie kit. Some stamping on kraft cardstock and stitching, that's it.

For the second layout I used a photo that was laying on my harddrive for some time now. I love this photo. It was made in summer 2013 when the women of my family were together at one place eventually. It's my two sisters, my mom and me.

As there were some pinkish tones in the PL main and embellie kit, and I hardly use pinks on layouts about my son, I decided to finally document this picture and the story behind it.

When I started, I originally wanted to mat white cardstock from my stash on the back of the floral paper that came with the patterned paper kit. But as I didn't want to use all of the paper on a place where you can't even see it, I cut out the inside of it before I adhered it. When I wanted to start laying everything down on the white cardstock, I saw that I had forgotten to turn the white cardstock around to use the side I originally wanted. But I thought that floral paper looked quite nice as a frame. So I layed everything on this side and finally decided to stick with it. I really do like the way it looks!

But to give the white background a bit more structure I added some splatters by using modeling paste and a stencil from my stash as well as I put some wood veneer pieces under the floral paper.

To give the title a more interesting look, I first decided to paint the watercolor word that came with the main kit with some coral paint from my stash. But I didn't like the result that much, because it made everything quite dark. So I embossed it with white embossing powder from my stash and rubbed of some edges to let the coral peek through.

Then I went to to adhere everything, stamped on the ticket from the PL embellie kit and added some final stitching here and there. I love that this layout is girly and playful, I should do that more often!

That's it for today. Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by and have a wonderful weekend! :)