Scrapbooking in Wonderland

At the end of last year, a colleague and I went for afternoon tea at the Sanderson Hotel: an afternoon tea which has achieved no small amount of notoriety as it is entirely Alice in Wonderland themed. Basically, it was a photographer's paradise mixed with foodie heaven and we had a brilliant time and I blogged about it here.

But now, it's time to share the scrapbook page! This one took a long time to come together as I kept changing my mind about little details, and there was a lot of hand cutting.  But I'm happy with the finished results and I'm pretty pleased I can finally share the page in my album.

Even though this visit took place months ago, I squirelled away a few little bits and pieces for the day when I would be scrapbooking this event. It was so photogenic, I knew it would have to end up in my albums at some point. I loved the little 'Drink Me' tags, firstly as table decor, but also for their embellishment potential and I had to include one on the page.

Despite having a ton of pictures, I decided to include one that actually has me in it for the page; it's important to me that I make an appearance in my layout. Plus I'd spent no small amount of time posing and couldn't possibly let that go to waste. Obviously.

This layout came together in layers.  I wanted it to be fun and whimsical, but also a little bit mysterious and magical.  I doodled some swirls and stars and then cut them out by hand. I used these as templates to make the swirls in white cardstock, and eventually, my craft knife and I had produced some delicate white figures.  However, I ended up not using them as originally intended, and lots of the design is hidden behind the layers and title. Not a problem, just an observation. I was very keen to use the papercuts in the way I had imagined and not cover them up that it took me a long time to accept that they were better being subtle and tucked behind things.

I used white cardstock as my base, positioned my photograph and added layers in the form of little scraps and flowers cut from patterned paper. I also used a transparency square with a golden polka dot design.

Next came the title.  I sketched it out a few times until I was happy with the size and shape and then but out my writing to check the positioning.  I was initially intending to do the title in white, but it got so lost, amid everything else. So I used a promarker to draw my title onto white cardstock, and then cut it out by hand. I used scissors for this, and left the middles in the letters, rather than cutting them out, making the title a little less flimsy.

I added the title to my page using little foam squares to create dimension, and positioned the words around the existing floral layers, framing the photo. Then I got stuck into my journalling (already written thanks to my blog post) and added the story in a column, fitting it to the shape of embellishments and the title. I have more story to add, but I stopped when I got to the bottom of the layout. I took so many photos that I will certainly be making a matching pocket page to go with it. and I can include more story in that. I like that I don't need to try and cram everything into one layout.

A couple of ink splatters and a few wood veneer stars and the page was complete! While this definitely took longer than usual to put together, I'm glad I took the time to get this page the way I want it.  Perhaps a slightly unusual page style for me, but it's good to mix things up sometimes too!

Kisses xxx

P.S.Time to burrow into the stash and choose things for the next page!