Scrapbook cover page

I never made one of these before. DH went on a trip and it was very important to him. He traveled Route 66 and took a million photos. I asked him to chose one of them for his cover page. I blew it up to what looked like a decent size and then I ordered a paper collection from Twopeasinabucket.com. It is called Wild and Free and I ordered it mainly because it looked western themed and it has a wonderful page full of horses. DH saw a herd of horses cross the road in front of him so I figured it was perfect. However, it has a lot of pink in it. It is gorgeous but mostly unusable for this. So I was stuck. I knew I wanted to use that horse paper but nothing seemed to go with it. Then I remembered an old travel collection that has a black and white paper that reminds me of a lot of roads.

I put the photo here so you can follow along. That background is black. Then I found some red card stock and stamped it with red memento ink "route 66" It is an old Tim Holtz stamp.  I dug out any stickers I had with black, red or aqua (the horses, remember?). That "wheel" at the bottom left had an orange center which I covered with a red enamel dot.  The H card was an embellishment that I didn't like the rest of, so I pushed it under the photo.  That is true also of the word one on the top right. I love that font that the route 66 stickers came in. There were little dot things that were in the center of all the o's that kept sticking to my fingers, so I  finally just stuck them here and there on the page. I kind of followed them along with black enamel dots. That "road trip" is also from the same Tim Holtz set. I double framed the photo - it is gray and then aqua. It was a matter of trial and error and using what I already had. I can't imagine how hard it would be to go to the store and buy stuff just for one project . It would take forever to go through all that. I edged my papers with Vintage Photo as usual and also decided that the white behind the horses was too much so I added a little ink to that also. That strip goes all across the page. I didn't know where the photo would end up and its better to have too much than not enough. 

So let me tell you how I add to my stash - I go to places like Two peas and only check out their clearance stuff. That site does a wonderful thing - they arrange products in their clearance by % off. How can you pass us wonderful papers for pennies? They ship in a larger than 12 x 12 box and everything is in perfect condition. I order stuff that is new while I am at it that I just have to have but the shipping isn't too bad and it comes pretty quick. I do the same with several companies that I have come to rely on. Like Oozak - I get all my ink and refills from there as well as their clearance stuff. And Stampingscrapping.com - they have great products by them as well as a real clearance section arranged by price. I also use Simonsaysstamp.com and a few others. I am taking a Gltter Girl class at Two peas right now and will start the new Tim Holtz one on Onlinecardclasses.com on Monday. So excited about that one. My vision is still a lot blurry and I still haven't tried to color as I am still having a bit of trouble with my depth perception. Hope you enjoyed this post. Hugs to you all, Barb F