Irish Blessing by Anita Enright

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Welcome back to the Couture Creations blog.

Where has this first half of the year gone. Before we know it it'll nearly be Christmas.

I am so excited to have the chance to use the new Sea Breeze collection. It is a collection of wonderful papers, dies and embellishments that you can use for so many of your photos.

For my post this month I decided to use a photo, but one of a quote that I love rather than a family photo. I will be getting hold of a Couture Creations 30x30" frame so that I can put this on one of my walls at home.

I selected several patterned papers from the collection to use along with a piece of craft and white cardstock and a lighter matching sand colour.

To start, cut down your selected patterned piece that you have chosen for your background. I chose the Windy Beach paper and cut if down approximately 1 inch then distressed the edges prior to attaching to my sand coloured cardstock.

Next I selected a range of both plain and patterned papers that showed the transition from deep ocean through to the colours as it comes on to the beach. The patterned papers I used were Secrets of the Ocean and Setting Sail (both sides) along with some white and craft cardstock.

Tear strips of paper approximately 3" wide each and distress the edges again.

Mount the paper strips one on top of the other starting with the darkest (the deep ocean) then the lighter shade of blue as the ocean appears closer to the shores, the cream shade for the close to shore colour, then the white of the foam and craft for the sand.

Once you get the distribution right attach the papers to the background mat.

From there I mounted the quote that I had on some white cardstock to make it pop even more and added 3D mounting tape to the reverse before adhering it to the completed background mat. I then cut a piece from the netting for the bottom right corner, die cut a couple of the coral in matching shades of cardstock using the Seahorse and Coral die set and added a couple of the shells from the ephemera set.

And there you go, layout complete. I kept my embellishing simple as I wanted the quote to be focus of the layout and wanted nothing to take away from that. I love the way it turned out. Simple but effective.