Banana Frog Blog Hop

Good morning good morning good morning!  I have no idea why I am feeling so chirpy, but it is an exciting day for me - today is the Banana Frog Blog Hop, and I am also featured this month as I was the guest designer for October. 

Today's theme is autumn and I have added my own twist to the interpretation.  I used the beautiful colours of autumn to make a layout instead about elephants (hmmm - random at all?  Naaaaa.....  :lol:) Earlier this year, I was involved in the ardent hunt  to capture the most number of elephants I could which were displayed around London as part of the Elephant Parade.  Most of them were sold off afterwards by auction which raised double the target - £4 million! to save the endangered Asian elephants. 

I found the beautiful decoration and design of the elephants very inspiring and will have great fun making arty scrapbook pages around these beautiful creatures, so with the theme of autumn colour in my mind I chose this particular elephant, Cha-Chang! to be the first model. 

Supplies:    Banana Frog Perfect Paisley  

                 (available now for a staggering £3.30!)

                 Banana Frog teen lower (also on special!)

                 Banana Frog Christmas elegance

                 American Crafts Tropical cardstock 8 1/2 x 11"

                 Tim Holtz Ideology - Paperie Journaling Ticket

                 Tim Holtz Sizzix Sizzlets Decorative Strip die - Ticket Strip

                 Twinkling H20's

                 Paisley ribbon

                 Versamark

                 Gold embossing powder

                 Ocean Sunlight Cosmic Shimmer mist

                 Turquoise Stickles

                 Jo Sonja Lagoon acrylic paint

                 A date stamp and smaller alphabet stamps

                 Scraps of cardstock

                 Lots of chalk inks!

I started off using this particular stamp from the Perfect Paisley set and embossed it onto the cardstock with gold embossing powder, which is perfect for Asian themes.  Paisley was also a very dominant theme in the Arts and Crafts movement, and to me it represents home comforts. 

                 

I stamped this all over the top right hand side of the page, and just used the leaf top as a stamping margin on the bottom of the page. 

Did you know you could turn part of a stamp into something akin to a border punch?  I took the journalling stamp from the Christmas Elegance set and used the bottom half to embellish underneath the photo.  This stamp also made a lovely background number embellishment as a plaque. 

This Chatterbox sticker alphabet is something that has been kicking around in my stash - probably for almost five years - and I kept looking at it, wondering how on earth I would use it.  I think it looks great here - sometimes it is worth banging stuff onto a page without too much unnecessary worry about how it will turn out!  Same with choosing the scraps, too.  Whilst I am not a huge fan of too many clashing patterns and colours, sometimes a bit of extra interest really adds some dynamism. 

I really like how this layout turned out - a mix of painty, a bit grungy, a bit blingy - not too clean!  But it still feels a bit folksy and "handmade" to me.  I think Autumn is a bit like that too - so an autumnal representation on a page, using a different subject. 

Thanks for stopping by on this first leg of the Banana Frog blog hop.  Make a comment here to be in with a chance of winning some lovely Banana Frog goodies!

Why don't you hop on over to Julie's blog, to see how she has interpreted Autumn?  Happy leaf gathering! :)