The One with the American Crafts FLOWERS Layout

It's FLOWERS Week on the American Crafts blog and here's what I made for this lovely topic:

FINE & DANDY by Paige Evans

Description: I love a lot of things. Flowers are definitely one of them - in all their varieties! 

Journaling says: These photos of you on the porch are some of my very favorite ever! You're just so darn cute!

How to: I got a little tricky and technical with this layout - read on! I LOVE (there I go again!) the flower metal dies by Maggie Holmes in the Confetti collection by Crate Paper:

But cranking out each and every single piece by hand with a manual die cut machine and then carefully peeling/poking each and every piece out of the metal dies takes forever and a day. Lesson learned from making my Minc layout a few weeks ago. And I wanted to make a whopping 24 flowers. So guess what I did? I put the metal dies on my scanner, scanned them, imported the scan into Adobe Illustrator, traced the flowers and leaves with the pencil tool, and then turned them into cut files using the trace function in Silhouette Studio! Now I can create these exact flowers in multiples and at different sizes with the click of the button, thanks to a Silhouette Cameo (yup, here it comes, a plug for my SILHOUETTE SAVVY class!). So. Die cut 24 of each flower and leaf piece from the Dear Lizzy Fine & Dandy collection then assemble the flowers. I used hot glue to stick everything together and then bent up the edges for dimension. And then I instagrammed the picture of them all assembled of course :)

Then on a white cardstock background, find the center of the layout and place a photo in the middle. Use watercolors to make eight big painted circles around the photo then adhere the flowers on top. Yes, I made way too many flowers for this layout - that just means I have extras for future projects! Write journaling with a black pen on a black/white striped round tag then tuck it under the bottom right side of the photo. Place a "Fine & Dandy" banner die cut under the top edge of the photo for the title then embellish with a number paper clip and chipboard heart sticker. Done and done!

Supplies: Cardstock, patterned paper, chipboard, paper clip, die cut, round tag, pen, adhesive: American Crafts; Watercolors: Loew Cornell; Flower metal dies: Crate Paper; Die cut machine: Silhouette Cameo

Thanks for stopping by and if you love your Silhouette Cameo as much as I do be sure to check out my class all about this wonderful tool: SILHOUETTE SAVVY!