Chanteuse Love

Tonight's project is a sneaky peek at one of Kaisercraft's April release papers, from the Chanteuse Collection.

I have been trying to document some family history, and this paper screamed out to me to be used for this gorgeous shot of my late Grandmother on her wedding day. (wasn't she beautiful?) 
Firstly, I blew up the photo to full page size (hoping like mad that the photo wouldn't pixelate - it was a fairly small photo to begin with).  It didn't - SCORE!!!

I then carefully trimmed the centre section out of the paper (it's called "Rondo" and is a specialty die cut paper), making sure I kept the flowers intact. The deep brown of the "Con Brio" paper was ideal to anchor the whole design, so I used this as the base of the layout.
I then positioned the photo, and the frame over the top, and stuck it all down.

As the photo was A4 size, there was a small gap on one side of the frame.  I used a piece of the timeless collection paper "newsprint" to both hide that, and to add a feature block to place the title on. I distressed 3 edges of this, to give it a slightly aged and worn feel.
I also inked a wooden flourish in a brown that matched the Con Brio paper, to use as my title. 

 

 Once everything was all stuck in place, I added a few extra flowers cut from another sheet just to add a bit of interest below the title.  I also edged the frame, and covered the word "Love" in glossy accents - I really wanted to give it the feel of an old fashioned, carved picture frame. 

For this layout, I have a small amount of journalling on the back of the layout, which is always a good option if you either don't like your handwriting, or adding a journal block just doesn't look right.  Better off putting a brief note on the back of the layout than not putting anything there at all!
I love the softness, and the romantic feel of these papers with vintage photos - vintage scrapbooking is about as far from my scrapping comfort zone as you can get, but I think this looks pretty good!
Now... back to making owls!
x Rita