I thought of this layout a week ago and finally had time to put the finishing touches to it on Saturday as I was preparing for a workshop. I really love it - maybe because it's just all chocolate! Claire Daly set the challenge over at Stamp-a-memory to create a layout based on one single word - LOVE.
These photos are from our engagement party back in October 2007, which just happened to also be the week in which my Stampin' Up! Demonstrator Kit arrived in the mail - how tempted was I to cancel the party and just start stamping!!
But I am glad I didn't cancel it, as I wouldn't now be preparing for our wedding, nor would I be enjoying pulling out these photos for another look!
I have used chipboard letters for the word LOVE, coloured them with Chocolate Chip ink, then literally drowned them with Stampin' Up! Crystal Effects, to recreate the gooey chocolate icing effect.
To keep the layout simple and uncluttered I have stuck with Chocolate Chip and Close to Cocoa card stock and ribbon with a couple of native flowers from "Bloom Away" as embellishments.
The cake was a giant mud-cake I made a couple of days before our party - it took 3kgs of chocolate and 20 eggs!I hand wrote our names with an icing nozzle full of melted chocolate, but the gorgeous native flowers were all purchased at a lovely local cake decorating shop. The journalling on the layout reads, "LOVE . . . is a giant chocolate mud cake with our names on it!"
The "Bloom Away" embellishments really tie the native flower theme in, and I tried to do them a bit fancy by stamping them several times in different coloured card, cutting them out and layering them to get a papertole effect. The final touch was the scrap of natural linen thread which I thought really finished the layout nicely.
Hmmmmmmm I can almost taste all that yummy chocolate all over again! If you'd like to see a couple more pics of this, I have put a couple of larger ones in my album. And tomorrow I will be back to show you how I did the flowers! See you then, Kathryn.



