Nature's Neutrals

I love the reds and oranges in Lily Bee's French Couture line. Really, I almost always love reds and oranges! :) But when I pulled out this butterfly picture and started laying out the patterned paper, I was surprised to be drawn to work with the blues and greens. It shouldn't have been a surprise. After all, blue and green are great, almost-neutral colors found in most nature pictures. The green grass and blue sky in the background are sometimes our focal points... but they are often the background to some other feature that we are capturing.

Here the green and cream are my neutrals and the bright turquoise blue serves as my accent color. To keep it balanced just use the gallon, quart, pint method.... a gallon of your main color - cream, with a quart of another color - green, accented with a pint of your third color - turquoise.

I wanted to mention a couple of items that I added to this layout. First, I added some of my leftover Bo Bunny cream chipboard pieces from a couple of months ago. I used every last piece of them! They are really versatile and I've enjoyed having them. I may go and get more! :) The two uppermost curls are actually two arrows with the points hidden under the flower. Second, I added some hand stitching with the Bazzil embroidery floss across the bottom of the layout. This floss isn't the same as what you use for cross-stitch or crewel. That floss is made of six strands that you can pull apart. The Bazzil floss is woven together so that it doesn't ravel giving it more durability... which is a must when stitching through paper! Regular embroidery floss will get "fuzzy" as you stitch with it, forcing you to use multiple sections of shorter threads to keep it looking neat. If you haven't tried these items out, you won't be disappointed!

thanks for stopping by!

erin