Texas Bluebonnets **Paper House & Just Imagine & Off the Rails**

Every year I love to take my kids out to the bluebonnets to take pictures.  It is almost a mandatory thing to do when you live in Texas, stick your kids in the flowers and take a picture.  This year with all the freezing the flower were everywhere and so pretty, best year in a long time.  Since we moved to central Texas I can find patches 5 minutes from my house, so there was no excuse to get pictures this year.  I got tons of pictures and this is one of those beauties.

I used tons of papers from Paper House to create this layout, the base of the layout is the Texas Territories 12x12 paper with layers from the 100% Country 12x12 paper stack.  I then added in texture with mediums, pens, Gelatos, and Gelato mists from Faber-Castell.

The first step is to create the foundation of the layout.  I start with my background page from Paper House and added in the mediums of Gesso and Whipped Spackle from from Faber-Castell with stencils and let it dry.   I did many layers (with drying time in between) with a couple of different stencils to get the look I wanted - rustic!

I then took the Gelatos and rubbed them directly onto the dried mediums in various colors of browns, yellows, greys, and oranges. 

Then I took the water brush and blended them all in and let it dry.  I took the brown and Blue Gelatos and made them into mists and added paint splatters and sprays all over the base of my layout with the Mist Maker set.

I then took the Big Brush Pen in Blue and the Blueberry Gelato and added in more colors of blue around the page to draw out the colors of the Bluebonnets from the picture.  Here and there I added in some more brown with the Brown Big Brush Pen.  I used the same pen and gelato to color the chipboard swirl behind the picture.  Using the tools from the Gelato tool set I blended the colors on the mediums on the background and the chipboard with the dauber, chisel, and my finger.

 

At this point I added in my other layers of papers, glued down my flowers, added in stickers, and then sprayed and dripped on some more of the gelato mist so the new items did not look so clean next to my grungy background.

I used the wonderful chalkboard stickers from Paper House as my journaling spot.  I used a silver gel pen to write on it and it worked wonderfully!!  I even added in a little Puffy Sticker Butterfly in green from Paper House as it match just perfectly!!

I used some of the stickers from the Family Heritage Cardstock sticker pack as a small title and also as background strip for more dimension and layering on top of he wonderful papers.  I also added in another little Puffy Sticker Butterfly in blue as it too matched the Family Heritage Cardstock stickers perfectly!!

You can see here how I used the wonderful circle cutter from Just Image.  I cut them at 6 inches and 5 inches and used them as texture layers behind the picture.  I also used Kreaxions punch 923 with the corner punch insert B on the burlap texture paper for even more dimension.

 

I added some more grey and silver gelato mist and to the flowers to help them blend into the layout, without the mists and ink they stood out more than the picture.

If you love using chipboard come take a look at Off the Rails Challenge and enter to win a prize!!

Supplies used
Cardstock - DCWV
Patterned Paper - Paper House
Stickers - Paper House
Flowers - Prima and Petaloo
Mist/Paint - Faber-Castell
Ink - Prima
Punch/Circle cutter - Kreaxions - Just Imagine
Stencils - Ranger & TCW
Chipboard - Memory Maze
Trim - Other
Big Brush Pen - Faber-Castell
Mist maker set - Faber-Castell
Pen - Gelly Roll
Molding Paste - Liquitex

Enjoy!!