A Prickly Present

My daughter loves cactus plants. She received several as a gift one Christmas and has added to her collection since then. For her birthday last year her oldest brother gave her another cactus and I decided to create a layout of this.

I started with a red 12x12 Bazzill cardstock base and on this I matted a sheet of newsprint patterned paper from the Simple Stories: I Heart Summer collection, which I trimmed to approx 11.5" square. 

I layered various smaller pieces of patterned paper from Simple Stories and Echo Park beneath my photograph and also a piece of Cactus Print paper which I downloaded free form Stephanie Fizer Coleman's blog. It was perfect for my layout. All the layers were outlined in black pen.

I used foam Thickers for my title and scattered Studio Calico wood veneer stars.

In my stash I found a very old die cut from MME which said 'Too cute for words' which I added as a sub-title with a heart punched from the same green spot paper that I had layered my photo on.

*** Ignore that little bit of blue fluff by the star - no idea what it is 😊

My journalling strips were printed on the computer and the date was added with tiny alpha stickers. A round sticker with the word 'smile' (again very old and from my stash) finished the layout.