My Nearly Perfect Life

I had so much fun making this layout for a class! These are my all time favorite colors, and it makes me happy to look at them. :) The idea for the theme evolved a lot as I was designing it. But in the end, I think I achieved what I was after.

Still photos from Flickr.

Sometimes I get very overwhelmed with all the responsibilities that come from being a wife and mother. It seems so hard sometimes to juggle all the day-to-day tasks between a job, housework, and all the activities in between. I look in magazines and see beautiful homes with sparkling kitchens and think, "That's what I want." However, I don't think those things are real. Not in my world anyway. What IS real to me is my family and the peace I feel in my tiny haven I call home.

Hopefully, my layout conveys a little of all this. I wanted clean lines mixed with shabbiness to symbolize the difference between my idea of perfection and reality. It was fun getting a little messy with the Tim Holtz mask and my favorite color of Glimmer Mist...Olive Vine.

Here are some close ups:

The flowers are super simple to make. Just punch a few different sizes of circles from various patterned papers, spray them with a little water, then crumple. You can speed up the drying process with a heat gun. Add a button or other embellishment in the center and sew all the layers together with a little floss tied into a knot. Voila! Wonderfully shabby flowers!

I crumpled the tags too and then sewed them on with my machine.

These Heidi Swapp stamps are some of my favorites. I embossed the title with American Crafts Zing embossing powder.

I printed my journaling onto vellum, then crumpled it all up. Vellum kind of tears when crumpled, but it just added to the shabbiness. I cut my journaling into strips and machine stitched them directly to the background. That eliminates the never-ending problem of how to attach vellum without seeing the adhesive.

Well, that's my version of my nearly perfect life. What's yours?