- Come On Get Crafty

Good Morning, everyone! This is Melissa here for the first time on the Come On, Get Crafty Blog! I'm super excited to be here and to share some ideas and inspiration with you all!

This is going to be a simple tutorial using some paper weaving as your layout background.

1.) Choose some pattern papers that work well together.
TIP: To make this easy on yourself, choose papers that are all from the same collection. For my layout, I chose pattern papers that all belonged to the Lily Bee Sweet Shoppe collection.

2.) Cut out some strips from several of the pattern papers. They do not all need to be the same length or width.
TIP: This is a great technique to use when you want to get rid of some of those extra scraps laying around!

3.) Take a piece of Kraft card stock (12x12) and layer a slightly smaller piece of white card stock on top.

4.) Choose some corresponding colors of mist that will match well with your pattern papers. I chose to use pink, orange, and yellow mists that I then splattered in the upper part of my layout and the lower part.

5.) After the mist has dried, take some of the pattern paper strips you cut out earlier and lay them horizontally across the white card stock. Do not adhere them down.

6.) Then, you will take some more strips of pattern paper and you will start weaving them in between the horizontal strips.

7.) Add as many vertical strips as you need until the entire piece is covered. You can weave these papers tightly (leaving no white cardstock exposed underneath or you can weave them loosely).

8.) Once all of your strips have been woven together, you are going to stitch a few of these pattern paper strips down using your sewing machine.
TIP: I usually start with the very middle strip of paper. This helps to anchor all the other strips down for the most part and will prevent them from sliding around while you run the rest of them through the sewing machine.

9.) Once the background was all sewn down, I chose the picture(s) I wanted to use. I decided to go with a black and white photo as my layout background was already fairly busy with all the strips of pattern paper. I used two of the same photo and trimmed them down slightly from a 4x6 size to more of a 3x5 size. I layered these on top of each other slightly and adhered down.

10.) After my pictures were glued down, I decided where I wanted my three groups of embellishments to go. I had made a big mist blot in the upper right hand part of my layout that I needed to cover up so I knew one of my embellishment groups would go right there. I placed one off to the right hand side of my photos and one to the upper left hand side of my photos.

11.) Lastly, I placed my title right underneath my photos. I used a mixture of a word cut from my Silhouette Cameo and some black Pebbles alphabet stickers.