Hooray for Saturday! It's been a long, hot week and my family has spent hours and hours in the car, so I'm really glad it's the weekend and I can devote some time to working on my challenge pages. Are you playing along? Leave a comment and track your progress over the month of August 2013 as we try to get 31 pages done! You can do it! I believe in you!
Preserving your family's memories and tradition is important enough to take time out of our busy lives to document the wonderfuly unique and treasured relationships in our lives. Join the "bounce back" of women all over the world who know that an actual album on the coffee table is still worth a thousand pictures on the memory stick!
I've got a vintage-inspired layout for you today! So many times we only have one picture of an ancestor, maybe from their wedding day, and it can be hard to make a whole scrapbook page around one small grainy photo. Often, the quality of the image doesn't allow us to blow it up to a larger size, as well. Plus, the smallness of truly old photos is kind of a neat, special thing that future generations should see and appreciate in this digital world. So I generally like to leave heritage photos at actual size.
I used Natural Composition pre-embossed Specialty Designer Series Papers for this page, both the musical notes background and the fleur-de-lis photo mat. It's a great Crumb Cake or Kraft natural color, and when you sponge, stamp or splatter it, the ink doesn't stick to the raised embossing. This technique is called emboss resist. These papers are awesome because you can have this cool technique in your book in half the time it normally takes! However, the embossing does make it really hard to photograph the finished page--I took eight shots of this before I got one with an acceptable level of glare!
Let's talk about acid-free for a bit. Very, very few things in life are actually acid-free--no matter what the company says about it. I am not one to worry over things like that, but I recognize that many of you are, so if you are hyper-vigilant about it, make sure you put any synthetic fabrics (I used tulle and the new In Color Stretch Ruffle Trim--look at how cute it is poking out around the photo mat!) where it won't touch the actual photo. 100% cotton fabrics are fine. You would also want to put a plain cardstock layer between the Naturals Composition papers and the photo.
I used the large Swallowtail Butterfly background stamp, and the Heartfelt image from Layered Labels with Early Espresso ink... and of course, no vintage page is complete without a little help from Gorgeous Grunge! Everything else is done in Crumb Cake or Baked Brown Sugar, including the great new Boutique Details embellishments and the Boho Blossoms punch.
I had a lot of fun with this page, and I hope you enjoyed the inspiration! Have a great weekend, and don't forget to pop back in every day this month for more instant mojo-making! OOOH and don't forget to leave a comment--the blog candy contest for this week ends at midnight tonight!
This page is stunning! Girl, you really do VINTAGE better than anyone I know!
Posted by: Lori B | 08/10/2013 at 11:06 AM
I am in your downline so you can leave me out of the blog candy but I HAD to tell you how GORGEOUS this page is!!!!! I would love to scraplift this! This page is just stunning, Lyssa!
Posted by: Nicole Steele | 08/10/2013 at 11:14 AM
Lyssa, this is beautiful! I hope we get to make this in class! (Hint, hint)
Posted by: Cheryl Tumbarello | 08/10/2013 at 11:18 AM
Hi Lyssa ~ This is SO BEAUTIFUL and I'm everything Vintage when it comes to paper crafting and stamping! I L O V E this layout. Love it. I see you embossed the "heartfelt" sentiment or it looks like you did and that makes it look even more authentic and vintage! Thanks so much for this beautiful inspiration!
Posted by: Debbie D. | 08/10/2013 at 12:33 PM
I also hope we get to make this in class! I have the papers and stamps, but I don't have the ribbon, material or in-color embellishments.
Posted by: Jana Turbyfill | 08/10/2013 at 02:49 PM
Thanks, everyone! It was not one of the class projects, Jana and Cheryl, but you are giving me food for thought! Debbie, it is not embossed actually--after I stamped it, I went over it with my Stardust Gelly Roll pen to make the words pop out a little better since I wasn't planning on adding any other headline.
Posted by: Lyssa | 08/10/2013 at 03:06 PM
This is beautiful, stunning in fact. What have you sponged the natural composition paper with to give them the ghostly effect the photo seems to depict?
Posted by: Lisa Barton | 08/11/2013 at 02:42 AM
Great page Lyssa! I was just looking at a pile of those vintage photo at 4AM this morning and thinking they needed a page like this:)
Posted by: Carol | 08/11/2013 at 05:49 AM
SOOOO pretty! May just have to scraplift this one....
Posted by: Cristy Butzen | 08/11/2013 at 08:59 AM
Lisa, the background paper is liberally sponged with Early Espresso ink. I really wish it had photographed better. It's super cool, in real life!
Posted by: Lyssa | 08/11/2013 at 03:25 PM
I love this page!!! It's so true about having limited photos of some family members. It is hard to scrap one photo only. Hopefully you can journal something about the person to make the page truly special.
Posted by: Kathy Neverman | 08/12/2013 at 09:33 AM
This page is gorgeous - I would never have thought my composition paper could be transformed like this. Cannot wait to try!
Posted by: Stacy | 08/16/2013 at 04:51 PM