Earth Love

I think I got off a little easy on my first design challenge with this line from Cosmo Cricket. The color palette was all of those deep fall colors I adore, like brown and gold and green. But they threw in some pink and orange and a little blue too, so it was great for this layout of my daughter.


When I'm trying to combine a lot of patterned papers, I often mat them together in some sort of grid. I feel like in that way they are part of a common "neighborhood". Here I used a 5x7 photo as a general guide for the size of the mat, then calculated, cut and glued my squares, and then matted the whole shebang again. I also used my Fiskars Threading Water punch to make a decorative border to the right side of my journaling. I really love this punch. Of course I had to edge everything in gold paint, because I started using paint dabbers and now I can't stop. I popped on some embellishments from the Earth Love chipboard pack and added some Felt Thickers from American Crafts and ADORNit alphabet stickers by Carolees, and I think it all came together very well.



We took these pictures in Germany and I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with them until I saw this line. I do lean toward the "green" side of life, so the "green" theme of Earth Love made it easy for me to tie the pictures in with a bit of my own personal earth philosophy. Then I dirtied up all my edges with walnut distress ink by Ranger Industries, which is another product of which I am quite fond. More cute embellishments were added and I was very pleased that they actually adhered super well to the paper (go Cosmo Cricket!!).



Then I still had tons of Earth Love chipboard and border strips left, so I made these cards. The chipboard pack in this line is a really good value, and I could see using them to make short work of a lot of cards.

By the way, I am delighted to also be a new member of the Paper Pals Design Team. I'm looking forward to sharing my art and I hope you'll link us up in the comments section so we can see what you've been creating.