Anatomy of a page {xoxo}

Lately I really felt like doing some paper scrapping, but I guess it doesn’t exist for me anymore, because everything I do is hybrid. I always get a little help from my handy computer. Also, I had this cool assignment for a challenge at Little Dreamer Designs; to use red and white in a page. So I decided to indulge into a crafty page and do my assignment in one go. I started taking pictures for a tutorial, but I couldn’t come up with one. Instead I will just tell you what I did.

I’ve chosen my red digital paper (from genuine spirit kit by Michelle Coleman) Then i wanted a doodled white background. I couldn’t find any so I made my own with Jackie Eckle’s Doodly font.
I also wanted to emphasize the red and black in the LO, so I converted all my photos to black and white using Lightroom.

I printed out all the photos in photographic paper. I printed the papers in matter paper as well as a red version of XOXO to use as an element. In a transparency I printed my journaling and a swirl (from Le Jardin kit by Michelle Coleman).

I tore the red paper, curled the edge a little bit, cut all the photos, I printed them on different sizes as I had lots, but since I couldn’t choose I included all of the photos and laid it all out:

My favourite photo of the series I printed out bigger and cut out the boys from the background. Then I added mounting tape to make it “pop” off the page.

I am so proud because I decided from nowhere to doodle some wings on the letfover white paper. You have no idea how big this is for me, I can’t draw, I always want to, but I really can't LOL. Proof is when i tried to do the wings again I couldn’t. But these ones turned out very cute so I decided to add some mounting tape to it and include it behind the red xoxo.

Now to the bit that frightens me the most, because if I crew this up I have to start from scratch: the stitching.

It went all right, thankfully... it was not easy though, my little machine doesný handle big jobs too well. But I love the look of real stitching, so I had to add it :)

Here is the finished project:

What do you think? (if you click on the images you can see bigger versions on flickr)

Don't forget to stop by the Little Dreamer Designs Blog and have a look at the Focus on Color challenge.