things that shine: thirty four, a birthday layout for Paul

This is Paul, on his birthday last year. I don't scrap him a whole lot, because he's really not a fan of having his picture taken, so, I don't take pictures of him too often. Most of the photos I have of him are when he's with the girls... and then I get a once yearly shot of him with whatever birthday dessert he's chosen. :) In our family, our birthday traditions include the birthday person gets to choose their favourite meal and dessert for their birthday-day. We often fondly discuss who had what on which birthday! So this layout is just as much about Paul as it is about his birthday dessert.

The journalling isn't supposed to be very serious -- the flare from the candles in the picture sort of makes it look like he's inhaling the candlelight, and when I was working on this page we both laughed over the thought of him sucking the light right out of those candles. So, even though that didn't actually happen ON his birthday, it is so totally Paul and it makes me smile when I look at this page, thinking of the two of us laughing over something so silly. 

I hand painted the title on plain white cardstock, and then stitched over the letters using neon yellow embroidery floss (which is available here at Things That Shine).  I backed it with some dark grey felt, just to make it feel a little more finished. I cut some star vellum into a starburst and added some puffy stars and sparkle stars. I like the sort of superhero/comic book feel!

To create the background of this page, I cut triangles made up of small circles from a piece of yellow floral patterned paper, using my Silhouette Cameo. I brushed a bit of gesso over it, to soften the floral pattern slightly, because it felt too busy once I started building the page. It took several tries to find the right pattern and colour to go underneath the cut yellow paper -- and a piece of scrap cardstock I'd been using when painting, stamping, and misting for another project turned out to be the perfect thing.

I splashed a bit of dark inky blue on the bottom corner of the page, and added an aqua puffy heart over it (the heart is from my Spring Showers, Cotton Clouds embellishment kit)

I covered a white leaf die cut (included in my Happy Day kit) with chunky gold glitter. Did you notice anything unusual about the little blue clothes pin? It's actually HALF a blue clothes pin! A whole one was just too chunky for this page, so I pulled it apart and used a glue dot to hold it in place. I bet you didn't know I was so sneaky. ;) 

Here's another sneaky secret.. that half blue clothes pin is also covering up the fact that the bottom of the letter f in my title is cut off. This was just supposed to be a practice title and I started it a little too close to the bottom of the cardstock scrap I was working on... and much like the title for my page Girls & Cones, once I did the rough one and knew I wanted to use it, I just could NOT get another new, good copy to work. :( So I just went with the original and covered up the chopped-off letter f. You wouldn't even know it was chopped-off if I didn't tell you... but I'm sneak AND honest. ;) 

I clipped a hand painted yellow tag along with the gold glitter leaf.. and sprinkled some white sparkle stars, grey sparkle stars and yellow puffy stars.

Things That Shine used in this project:

Pop of Neon Yellow 2 embellishment kit

A Love Story scrapbook embellishment kit

Happy Day scrapbook embellishment kit

Spring Showers, Cotton Clouds embellishment kit

Pastel and Neon Embroidery Floss card

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