tuesday...Birds of a Feather challenge

I hope that everyone had a safe and happy 4th of July! My hubby and I spent it with his old high school friend and his family and friends and we had a blast!

The other day I was surfing the web and came across this kit club called Birds of a Feather and although I have not joined their kit club, I did join their forum and their challenges with are so much fun! The challenge was to make your own background paper and you couldn't use pattern paper in the layout at all! Well, you know how my mind works and when challenged (really challenged!) I go into make-a-layout-for-this-challenge-right-now mode and that's exactly what I did. Here is my layout:

Everything I used on my layout is handmade by me. I made the background with homemade masks, lots of glimmer mists, a script stamp (Prima, I think) and black stitching. I used a piece of a cardboard USPS priority mail box (gotta recycle!), painted it with white acrylic paint and misted it with a brown glimmer mist in some spots to add dimension and depth. The gears I cut out with my Pazzles and layered some of them for dimension.

Who said you can't use lace, flowers and bling on a boy's layout? For the masculine flower, I hand-cut another piece of cardboard, inked the edges and shaped it like a flower. I finished it off with a small fabric bloom for the center. The bling is a green leaf flourish by Zva that I got on sale I cut a few of the leaves because they went over my title but re used them on other parts of my layout. I stitched the lace (originally white) and glimmer misted it with blue and green glimmer mist. I think it looks elegant but masculine enough.

I had a lot of fun working on this layout and best of all, I got a guy layout done! These are so hard for me!!!! lol

Here are a few close ups of the layout:

Thanks for stopping by!