Layout: Nice Pair!

Hello.

Here's my latest layout, completed on my knee whilst we watched TV on Saturday night, which I've tastefully entitled: 'A Great Pair':

The most striking features of the layout [yes, those], and the girl they're attached to, came from a page of vintage Playboy magazine which was included in my Acme Kit from Gauche Alchemy. I was quite taken with how, like me, she obviously feels she's never fully dressed without some decent footwear ... and tassles ... of course!

I've been thinking about how some of you really seemed interested in the breakdown of how I put together my 'Think Like a Queen' layout, in this post, so I thought that this page might be an approprate place to give it another go.

So here, in all it's glory, is the 'anatomy' of 'A Great Pair':

• The starting point was most certainly the image of the Burlesque performer with a penchant for fancy cowboy boots - but then I had to choose a theme in which she could represent something related to me.
• As I'm not a blonde, don't wear tassles or a holster as a general rule and am hardly ever warm enough to go out so lightly attired .... all I could really relate to were the boot. I have boots. I love boots. Especially my £49.99 bargain Ugg 'Aussie Cowboy' boots.
• I somehow got it into my head that I wanted to use lemon to brighten the grey [perhaps I'm unwittingly channelling colour schemes of the 1980s].
• On the hunt for 'lemon' I found the two woodgrain effect buttons which came from a shop in York called Duttons for Buttons and they sort of have a story of their own...

Quite obviously Duttons for Buttons sells ... buttons, and whenever we're in York James tells me to go in for a look around. I always refuse to go in because I get overwhelmed by the sheer, floor to ceiling, amount ... Duttons sure do have a LOT of buttons! It always reminds me of the time we took our then very young, Star Wars-loving, nephew to a shop selling sci-fi collectables. James told him he could choose something for his birthday ... and the poor little thing promptly burst into tears from the terrible prospect of having to choose!!! So, in order to avoid becoming lachrymose in public, I steer clear of Duttons and it's millions of evilly wonderful embellishments.

Then last December, on the first day of his Christmas holidays, James announced he had to go somewhere and tried to convince me it was work-related. I knew it wasn't - and he knew I knew it wasn't - but we settled on a don't ask / don't tell / don't spoil the surprise kind of non-verbal agreement. Skip to Christmas day when he watched [with barely concealed self-satisfaction] as I opened a tin full of buttons from Duttons which he'd made a 100 mile round trip for and personally selected based on the styles and colours I like to use in my crafting!!

But I digress...

• With the colour of the buttons in mind I chose the backing paper [Papermania] and the pastel striped accent paper [barely visible, from Melissa Frances].
• I had some grey felt which I thought could mimic the charcoal suede of the boots and freehand cut a rik rak style trim from it.
• Looking through my stash for shoe-related items to add to the theme I found: an advert from a page of 1950s magazine [bottom right], some vintage laced-up boots rub-ons [centre] which I've had since I begun seriously papercrafting several years ago and ... [left, tucked beneath main photo] a photocopy of an article on forensic footprint identification which I'd found on the worktop in the library toilets at work about 2 years ago ... [that one's a touch weird ... even I can see that!].
• The bottle cap is also from my Gauche Alchemy kit with a printed transparency embellishment sent to me by Anna last week, glued inside it.
• Anna also sent the lemon hairgrip [top] which is holding a piece of lace sent to me in a Secret Santa swap [remind me to write something about how great swapping stash with friends is one day].
• The striped 7Gypsies Gaffer Tape was chosen for it's colour matching properties and it's sense of slightly imperfect / rugged-ish-ness.
• Finally I used lots of ornate Prima rub-ons to echo the decorative stiching down the front and back of my beloved boots and used Adornits and Making Memories tiny alphas to spell out my [slightly cheeky] journaling.

And there you have it, my layout construction process laid bare ...