Embellish with Leaf Motifs

One of the reasons for doing challenges is to push yourself to do something different and, when I saw this week's challenge on Shimelle's blog, which is to embellish with leaf motifs, I really thought I'd fail! If you're a regular reader of this blog, you're probably a little puzzled by now as last week's layout had leaves - as have several more layouts this year. However, leaves just don't inspire me, so I don't really buy scrapbooking supplies with leaves - so the extent of my leafy supplies have more or less been used up!

I had a thumb through the photos I had printed and none of them really said 'leaves' to me so, once again, I decided to sleep on it and see what came to mind. In the end, the layout by Leigh Ann Odynsky, which Shimelle included in her post, really stuck with me. As mentioned in a previous post, sewing on my layouts isn't something I'm especially good at so, instead of the sewing, I created messy circles with the spray sticks from the Heidi Swapp Colour Shine mists in gold and seafoam.

The photo is another one from our wedding so, again, I wanted to keep the colours soft. I've layered the photo using some of the A Charmed Life 6x6 paper pad from Simple Stories, and then muted those colours with a scrap of glittered vellum. The flowers, leaves and butterflies are punched from coloured vellum and then rubbed with an embossing tool to give them some dimension. They were sprinkled around the circle, along with pearls, heart-shaped gems, and heart enamel shapes. These and the vellum are all from my stash, as are the row of gems along the bottom of the photo.