A short trip into the realms of scrapbooking

Servus, dear crafty friends and followers!

Today sees a real "first timer" being presented to you by me due to the challenge we were given by lovely Kerstin from Scrapbook Dreams over at Our Creative Corner. 

She is hosting this month's challenge and has chosen a scrapbook oriented theme - which was a real challenge for me. There are other options than doing the usual scrapbook LO, but I always try to rise up to any challenges given...and I know two to three scrapbookers out there whom I really admire for what they are able to create with designer papers, colours, layers, arrangements, textures and pictures. So I visited their blogs and took some really close looks at their work (to find out how they do what they do...Boy! I can tell you: they definitely know what they're doing and there's so much more to it than meets the eye at first sight!)

So I ask you to be kind with me (and my try on doing a scrapbook lay out)...please???!!!! ;)

Kerstin's challenge description can be found over HERE (as can be found the inlinkz collection to enter this month's challenge by).

"Magical Nature Moments"

are what Kerstin wants to see. "For this challenge use a favourite photograph and add some special colours, moods and effects" she says. (hop over to OCC for all the exact details, as this is just a kind of "subtitle"...but I think it describes the nature of the process pretty well, so I borrowed this line from her ;)

The challenge is up until November 28th and this month's prize sponsor is Nicecrane Designs. So don't miss the chance to win some of their beautiful digital image bundles. 

But now on to my scrapbooking experiment:

I chose a close up image of a common wild flower as my focal image as I love taking close ups of almost anything there is in nature. The close ups always reveal a smaller universe within the large one. 

 You can see traces of white Gesso which I applied randomly to the background paper with a palette knife.

 I added some stamped stitching as well as some metal embellishments and loads of die cut elements to build up as many layers as I could to embed the image in. The gorgeous metal bumble bee is from Retro Kraft Shop and most of the dies used are Sizzix and X-cut. Designer papers are from 7Dots Studio and Tim Holtz stash. 

I finished my LO off with some chit chat stickers which I blended in around the edges using Distress markers. 

As I am definitely not the person to tell you about how to do a lay out, I just leave you with some more images and invite you to hop over to Our Creative Corner and find out how my wonderful teamies did. 
If you haven't seen my latest spotlight tutorial over at the OCC yet, you'll find it HERE. 

Hope to see you play along with us soon!

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia xxx