Sunny Days | Sam Ball | Masculine Layout

With three step-daughters and a husband who is a photographer and rarely appears in photos as he’s the one that’s always behind the camera, my layouts always tend to be more feminine, so this months’ theme of making a masculine layout did throw me somewhat!

I wasn’t entirely sure where to start, but having made a mixed media background a few weeks ago, I found a photo of Harvey that I took when we visited Thailand. It seemed to co-ordinate perfectly, and so I settled upon using the background as the basis for my layout.

Often I’m sure that I overthink my layouts, staring at a blank sheet of white cardstock, afraid to commit to making the first mark! No matter how many times I try and convince myself that it’s ‘only a piece of paper’, nothing changes!

However, having a pre-prepared background this time has made the creating process so much more enjoyable and speedier, so I shall definitely be employing this tactic again!

The layout itself uses the fabulous ‘Indigo & Ivy’ collection from Pink Paislee. I loved it from the moment I saw a preview of it, but had yet to ‘cut’ into it.

After backing a heart cut file, I layered it with embellishments, ephemera and phrases. Often I find that the sentiments in the word packs are a bit ‘soppy’ and repetitive, but I really like the mix in ‘Indigo & Ivy’.

Having been away on a crafty weekend, a friend let me play with her Nuvo mousses. Similar to a texture paste in consistency, they can be mixed with water and applied using the packaging technique, but also dragged through a stencil to create a texture relief. They even have a few mousses that are classed as ‘expanding’ which are supposed to do just that when heated.

The expanding results were subtle, but nevertheless, I have succumbed and no doubt these mousses will appear on many more of my layouts!

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