Step by Step layout

I am posting a step by step on how I made my "That is Love" layout with my Oct. Scrap That! Bella Rosa kit featuring The Prima Romantique papers. 

Some people find the romantic/vintage style intimidating to create. The key is layers. I like structure and distressing. I do admire all those heavily torn, painted and deeply shabby layouts with masking and all sorts of bits and pieces... but that's not my style. So, I keep the lines a little "cleaner". Let's get started!

1. Cut off 1/2 inch off the patterned paper (save the strips for later), heavily distress the edges (I used my Zutter) and adhere to plain cardstock.

2. Cut a large circle (8-9 inches) out of the coordinating floral paper, a 5.5 x 7.5 rectangle out of the soft yellow paper (you want the floral vine print to be at one narrow end of the rectangle). I rounded the corners.

3. Hand distress everything, including your strips and start layering. Glue the circle first, then the strips (leave the last half inch of these without adhesive) and then the photo mat and your picture.

 4. Slightly roll the strip ends and adhere half of a lace/bling band to the bottom of the picture.

5. Use green chalk ink on your Dusty Attic sweet pea chipboard (also available in my Esy shop) and cut it into 3 pieces to form around the inside of the circle. Bling pearl flourishes would be a good substitute too. 

6. Make some lace flowers using another DT member, Robin Shakoor's awesome video tutorial.

 7. Add a butterfly to the corner.

8. Add your title and you're already done (you can also journal on the back).

Since the main paper has such a pretty border, I accented with more floral paper in the middle but then broke it up with the wide yellow photo mat to give focus to the picture. All the shapes flow and the page looks "filled-in" but there isn't anything truly complicated about this layout. The paper does most of the romantic/vintage "look" for you. Thanks for joining me today and I hope you give my style a go! This layout would look good with so many other papers right now too.