Crop In The Country – Our Mini Retreat.

I was so happy to be asked to design for Crop In The Country again this year. I created 3 layouts in the end for their 12x12x12 weekend in September (which ended up with a total of 28 layouts!!) and last week one of their lovely guests got in touch to say how much she had enjoyed all of the projects I had created – this really is the best feeling when someone tells you they have loved working with your designs.

This is the main class that I created first. I wanted to create a layout for the ladies who were at the weekend to remember the occasion so I based it around the title “retreat”. However I also had to bear in mind that some of the ladies have the “crop in a box” and work remotely on the classes so wouldn’t have a group photo and may have never actually been to a retreat so I had to make it generic enough that it would work with other kinds of retreat, even if it was having a glass of wine in the bath! Although you perhaps wouldn’t have a photo of that…

Anyway…

For my own layout I used a photo of my little girl Miss B and I having our own mini retreat and getting messy with mixed media together. I made sure to leave enough space above the word ‘retreat’ for people to add some personalisation if they wanted.

One of the things I enjoy about designing for CITC is that I can often get things I wouldn’t normally be able to source in the UK and I think this makes it interesting for the crop ladies too. This collection is by Photoplay who are just breaking into the UK market and the colours and theme were general enough that they could appeal to most subjects and styles.

I’m really into tearing paper again and distressing and scuffing up the edges for lots of texture and interest and the two floral papers were so pretty that I wanted lots of them on show.

I really wanted to use some tassels so tying them onto some twine wrapped around the bottom of the layout adds lots of dimension and also helps draw the eye down the page.

Last year I managed to create another layout with the leftovers of my primary class by designing a special cut file to use them on. I did the same again this year, which I’ll share with you shortly, but after getting into a bit of a pickle with the papers I still ended up with enough left over to create my most favourite layout of them all! Do pop back again soon to check that one out too!

Bye for now!