What A Beautiful Mess: 49 and Market Curators Botanical and a heartfelt hope for our Ukranian Designers and the people of the Ukraine.

Hello lovelies. I hope to bring a little sunshine and inspiration in the world today. I have created a layout to honor our Ukranian paper Designers and the people of Ukraine. Their national flower is the beautiful Sunflower and the colors representing the Ukraine flag, are yellow and blue. My layout is one of HOPE...It reminds us to make every day matter.

Curators Botanical is simply an awesome collection. Gardens of flowers everywhere. Each and every collection to coordinate with Curators Botanical, has something for everyone. Whether you do layouts, cards, off the page projects, junk journals or decoupage, it has something for everyone. I started by machine sewing around a 12x12 paper from the 12x12 paper collection. I mounted it on a piece of 12x12 corrugated cardboard. And let the layering begin.

I didn't have any 49 and Market sunflowers in my vast collection, so I decided to create my own using the Solids 1 paper as it was the perfect yellow. I die cut the flowers, did a little shading with ink, shaped them, and layered them. I used brown pipe cleaners to create the middles, and painted the outer layer with some green acrylic paint. So easy to do. I created 3 different sizes. The title was created by cutting apart one of the sentiments in the Ephemera Bits, and backed each word with thick chipboard before adhering to the layout.

To create the frame for the photo of my granddaughter, I machine sewed the single ply jute onto the frame using a zig zag stitch, leaving a long tail in the beginning and the end. This allowed me to tie a bow from the tails, in the corner from the tails in the corner. I also machine sewed the backing file frame before I put the 2 together. I mounted the photo in the middle.

The 12x12 Rub-Ons are simply fabulous. Just using them alone, can embellish a whole background. I chose to use it in the middle to anchor all of the other embellishments used. Like a walk in a beautiful garden picking flowers along the way.

I layered a couple of the tags, and colored the strings with a bit of colored spray to offset the white. On the background I layered the lace laser cut, using pieces taken from the Ephemera Bits. The blue leaves you see are laser cuts included in the 12x12 Seaside Collection Pack. Using pieces from past collections is something to expand on current kits. There is always something to match current collections.

Thank you for joining me today. I hope you are inspired to use the Curators Botanical Collection. And check back on the 49 and Market Blog each day for more beautiful inspiration from each of the designers. xo