How I made my April Challenge Page

Here are a few tips for making the April page, if you want to create something similar to my page.

This is the sketch I drew from the original layout by Sarah Youde.

I purchased the papers and stamps from Paper Maze.

The stamps are Technique Tuesday and called 'message in a banner'.

The papers are by Girl's Paperie.

The background is diecut newsprint and is single sided, the other two are vintage patchwork and shabby flower and they are both double sided, giving me five patterns to play with. In fact many more than five as the patchwork sheet has many designs on it, which was great for the purpose of different patterned flags.

I cut the horizontal bad from the blue side of the patchwork piece making sure I was keeping the patterned bit from the other side that I wanted for the flags. It's worth taking a little time with this to get the most from your sheet of paper. I trimmed the edge of this strip with a Martha Stewart border punch.

I cut the tickets using the Tim Holtz Alterations Ticket Strip Sizzlits Decorative Strip Die and decorated each ticket with 'Just the Ticket' stamps produced by Imagine That.

The flags were made by stamping directly onto my layout. I drew a light pencil line first as a guide as to where to place the stamps. Then I stamped the flags again onto the patterned papers on the patchwork paper. They fit beautifully inside the squares. These were cut out minus the frilly edge and attached over the flags on the layout with 3D foam pads to raise them off the surface of the layout. I then added in stitches by hand using DMC embroidery thread.to link the flags together.

There is a brilliant tutorial for making the cabbage roses from paper swirls created by Gabrielle Pollacco and it can be found HERE.