The One with the Garden Girl!

To quote the kid in one of my all-time favorite YouTube videos (David After the Dentist): "Is this real life?"

It has literally been a dream of mine ever since they started a design team many moons ago to be a Garden Girl. I've been bursting at the seams to share the news :)
 

Here is the layout I made to kick off my Garden Girl debut:

SERENDIPITY

Description: The Soho Garden line is full of bright colors - my favorite! I purposefully chose bright colors for our Christmas card photoshoot so I could make a layout using Soho Garden papers. Tell me I'm not the only one who chooses clothes based on paper lines! I love how there are pinks and florals to use for more girly layouts but there's also lots of black, green, and blue so I've used this line for layouts for my son. I love when lines, like Soho Garden, can go both ways! Clustering embellishments is one of my favorite trends so I turned to layered stickers, jewels, pearls, and sequins to draw the eye across and around the page.

  Journaling says: I remember the exact moment when I knew you wanted to be born. I was at the Princess Fantasy Faire at Disneyland and I got the strongest impression that there was a little girl of my own waiting impatiently for me to take her back there! Now here you are! I can't wait to take you back there someday and dress you in a pretty princess dress and tell you this story. I love you so much Jane!

How to: Die cut a large doily from scrap cardstock, place it over a dark blue cardstock background, spray over it with dark blue mist, then remove the doily mask. Take the outter negative pieces of the die cut doily, draw over them with a white colored pencil, then glue them into place on the layout. Go around the outside of the misted doily with silver glitter glue then once it's dry write journaling around the doily with a silver pen. Print a girl silhouette from the internet, cut it into pieces, trace and cut out the same pieces from patterned paper and photos, then piece them back together onto the layout. Make a "necklace" from pearls and a sequin and add fabric stickers over a couple of the paper blocks with foam dots. Place a title sticker with pop dots on the center, type up a bit of journaling on a vintage typewriter, add it below the title, then place a piece of scalloped printed paper trimmed from a tag below. Create two clusters of embellishments - one on the top left and one on the bottom right - using flower stickers, drops of white spray mist, dots of gold pen, sequins, stickers, pearls, jewels, and a date stamp.

Supplies: Cardstock, patterned paper, tag, stickers (butterfly, feather, flowers, pennant, sentiment, ticket), date stamp, ink, adhesive: American Crafts; Jewels, pearls: Pebbles; Glitter glue: Ranger; Spray mist: Studio Calico; Pens (gold, silver): EK Success; Colored pencil: Prismacolor; Die cut machine (Cameo), doily die (Silhouette): QuicKutz; Typewriter: Smith Corona

One Thursday of every month I'll have a video tutorial as part of the "SCRAP YOUR STASH" segment - this series equips you with ideas for making a dent in the papers and stickers and goodies you've collected and it'll be taught by Nancy Damiano, Jill Sprott, Amy Heller, and myself. I've never made a movie before so we'll see how this goes!

I can already tell that 2013 is going to be a great year!