Creativity Inspired by God's Creation - Cricut Circle Monthly Challenge

I don't scrapbook as often as I should--case in point...my hubby and I went on a cruise to Alaska in May with some close friends of ours and this is the first page I've completed.  The entire trip was so amazing, that I knew I'd want to spend some quality time on my layouts to give the pictures their due.  For me, photos are limited in capturing the euphoric feeling you get when you see humpback whales surfacing one after another in the same body of water we happen to be occupying together at that exact moment.  The glaciers, the snow glazed mountains, and bright blue sea...God's perfect backdrop for a mesmorizing event in our lives which inspired this particular scrapbook page in which I focused on the whales--up close and personal.

With my Gpysy, I used the Font shadow feature from the Winter Woodland cart to cut a 12x12 page of phrases I wrote.  I removed all the letters, plus two shapes cut from Life's A Beach cart (anchor & ship), which left me with a quickie stencil. 

I used removeable painter's tape to attach it to a metallic blue-green patterned paper distributed by Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines (RCCL), and inked the letter spaces with Broken China Distress Ink.  With the stencil still in place, I lightly sprinkled Zing White embossing powder sporatically over the entire project and zapped it with a heat gun before using a fine point black marker to lightly edge the title.

I then used Straight From the Nest cart to cut 8 Flourishes (4 with the shadow feature) out of S.E.I Christmas Mint, Meringue paper.  This paper was great--it was designed w/embossed flourishes on the paper, so I used a foam applicator to add the same ink to the flourishes cut with the shadow feature, leaving the other four the shiny off white.  I used off white photo corners, and finished framing out the pictures with the flourishes.  Then added a bit of blue rhinestones to some of the waves framing the photo, and half pearls to some of the waves below.  I love how the flourishes resemble the white wash of the water as the whales capered by. 

For my charm--I wanted to highlight the backdrop as all encompassing, so I printed out a photo on brochure paper (48 lb) and used Diamond Glaze to attach it to a TH Ideology Facet.  I attached a jump ring, and blue velvet ribbon.  I used a die cut frame I had in my scraps bin that didn't match my colors, so I inked it with VersaMark and heat embossed it with Zing White Embossing powder.  I used the cellophane packaging from my pearls package and attached it behind frame, under the charm, added some bling and "Inspired by God's Creation".  If you look at the reflection of the cellophane packaging in various lighting it looks like the sun reflecting off the water, and the blue velvet ribbon is fashioned to look like the tail of the whale.  I just thought that was a bit of fun to add to the page--things you don't always see on first glance.  I finished off my page with journaling on metallic vellum, a "Journey..." sticker embellishment, and photo corners on the 12x12.  

Not only was this was a fun way to be creative, but it has inspired me to work on the rest of our cruise photos--so stay tuned for more pages in future posts (although, notice I didn't give an exact "future" date for those--ha ha).  Thank you for stopping by and having a look...and since you're already here, grab a cuppa and hang out a while--I won't mind a'tol!  =)