In an Octopus' Garden

I've been working on getting back into a regular scrapping routine since having returned to work recently.  It's not been easy - especially the work; but we won't get into that.  But I do have another new LO to share with you today; this time returning to my Barcelona holiday photos.

In an Octopus' Garden

I am totally in love with these CP retro slide frames.  Not only do they look great and are a great eye-catching feature on a page but I love just how quick and easy they can make a page come together.  I also especially like that these chipboards have a smooth texture, unlike many of the matte/pixelated chipboards used by many companies.

I started by blotting some blue and green spray mists onto my cardstock base, then sprinkled on more blue, green and some white mist and stamped some 'bubble' shapes around the page.  There was a dicey moment when my acrylic block somehow flew out of my hand and landed stamp-side down in the upper right-hand corner but I just rolled with it.

For the title, I reached into my basket of current supplies and just grabbed the first thing that called out to me - Amy Tan's vellum sticker alphas from Yes, Please.  I decided to mix things up and use the orange letters, since there were pops of orange in several of the photos and I liked the idea of using a complimentary colour palette.  I knew I also wanted to use this cute wave border strip so layered it up in the title along with the circular letter stickers and I really like the effect.

I took my time fussing cutting this little octopus from FP's Down by the Shore.  Got to use a new SC cork embellishment and added another pop of orange and some enamel dots.

I've had these adorable fish buttons for a while now, just waiting for the perfect project and when I saw the little fish paper in Down by the Shore, it inspired me to use them here (even though I didn't use that paper on the LO in the end).  A few white enamel dots add some textured air bubbles to each fish.

And I was so thrilled when I discovered that yes, I did have bright orange enamel dots and sprinkled a few in the topmost cluster, along with a piece of flair from a package I hadn't yet broken into.

To finish everything off, I decided to back the page up with some distressed orange watercolour paper, do a little machine sewing around two of the corners and really distress the inner border for some depth and interest.  I also think the distressed edge gives a little impression of an old 'message in a bottle' feeling.