National Scrapbooking Month Blog Hop

Close To My Heart has several amazingly beautiful offerings this month in honor of National Scrapbooking Month: the Live Beautifully stamp set, paper pack, and Cut Above layout package.  We are featuring these gorgeous, must-have products on this blog hop.  (If you're already hopping, then you've probably arrived from Jennifer Dykstra's blog.  From here, you'll visit Gina Brandstetter next.)

 My daughter's dance recital pictures from last year seemed like the perfect match for the gorgeous Live Beautifully paper collection.  (I did add White Daisy card stock page bases.)  Each of the photos was trimmed down to 3.75" x 5.75" to have the borders you see.

 All of the stamping was done with the Live Beautifully stamp set.  My layout is embellished with black shimmer trim and black dots.  I cut my title with the CTMH/Cricut Artbooking cartridge.

 Next are close ups of our I stamped and cut out the pretty accent flower.  I began by inking up the flower in Pixie, then rolling the stamp edges in Pomegranate, and then rolling the edges again in Eggplant.  After I stamped this image, I highlighted the center of the flower with my gold metallic marker.

 I stamped the same image again by inking up first in Pixie and rolling the edges again in Pomegranate.  I then fussy-cut what I thought would be the next layer of flower petals to give it more dimension.

 My third and fourth layers of petals were stamped with Pixie and cut out.

 The final/fourth layer was just one petal, and I bent it slightly with my finger to give it even more dimension.

Thank you for hopping along the Live Beautifully blog hop.  I'd love a comment before you go see what Gina Brandstetter has created to share and inspire!

{Click HERE for all the hop participants and their blogs.}

Finally, I'm linking my layout up to these challenges:

• Color My Heart Color Dare: Live Beautifully
• Heart 2 Heart Challenges: Coming Up Roses
• Always Fun Challenges: For a Female or Mom