Waiting For A Photo Layout

This is a first for me... although I made my daughter a layout (in a box) with inter-changeable photographs, I've never actually designed and made a layout where you can add any photograph you like later on. As another "first", it's also about as close to a layout with whitespace as I could possibly manage. Talk about unfussy - this whole layout consists of just 11 elements. It was inspired by a stamp that I had bought very cheaply for a pound at Pickwells.

Pretty, huh?

I wish the photographs could do this layout justice - it's a beautiful bright yellow cardstock that's been inked with "Old Paper"  and "Antique Linen" Distress Inks... and I know that 'whitespace' is supposed to be a lot of... well... empty space (*lol*)... but I wanted a slightly patterned yellow paper, and didn't have any - so I added a few inked flourishes.

The scallop-edged yellow cardstock was backed with plain cardstock ... but I had no plain black, so I had to ink around the edges of another colour with "Black Soot" Distress Ink. I could have cut an aperture from the yellow cardstock - but it was so much easier to just cut out a black piece of card into an oval and stick it on. The main flourish is made up of two pieces that I printed out and then cut out leaving a white border around (took AGES!), and originally I planned to have just one or two butterflies on the right of the page... but I preferred three in the end (just can't help myself... adding bits and pieces!). Please just ignore how badly I cut things out... me and scissors are not the best of friends :)

I added another butterfly near the flourishes, really just to fill an awkward space. The bumble bee and ladybird weren't really needed - but they were so cute :)
The original idea was to have the flourish on the right - the same as the stamp... but I cut out the wrong flourish (I had printed two of them, mirror images of each other) and really couldn't be hassled to cut the other one out too, so it was all flipped around to accomodate my litle mistake :) Everything except the black oval was attached with little foam pads, and now all I have to do is choose a photograph to put into the layout.

Think I'll make a few layouts based on these design - choosing different pastel colours for the background cardstock. Pale pink and baby-blue next, I think :)