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Hi everyone! 

It's great to be back with a new project for Wild Whisper this month AND a new paper collection "City Lights"!  This week's creation was inspired by all the flowers and beautiful gardens that I am seeing everywhere.

I chose to use a photo of my front yard for the layout.  About 4 years ago I removed all the grass in the front and planted shrubs and flowers instead.  I have never regretted it!  I love all the colour and variety and the birds and squirrels seem to too!

I sat and did a lot of fussy cutting of succulents last month, with scraps that I had left over from the Wild Whisper Floral collection, so when I saw this terrarium die from The Greetery, I knew I had to have it for my fussy cuts! 

It is topped by another flair button from the Wild Whisper Floral collection.

To start off, I tore strips off the sides of that beautiul brick wall, inked the edges with Gathered Twigs distress ink, and glued it to the piece of wood grain paper in the Wild Whisper Classic Woodgrains collection. 

I cut the garden gate using a Silhouette file called Trellis Arbor which I converted to an SVG file to use in my cricut.  I turned it into a piece of chipboard by adding 3 more layers of the arbor and gluing them all together.  Then I distressed the edges and inked the fence with more Gathered Twigs distress ink.  Finally I embossed here and there on the gate with Wild Whisper's Rugged Red embossing powder.

To get the texture in the background, I applied Dreamweaver Translucent embossing paste through a Tim Holtz  Scribbles Rose stencil.  

I sprinkled the paste with Seth Apter's Vintage Beeswax embossing powder (luscious stuff) and heated it to get the result you see on the brick wall.  I thought it gave the wall a really beautiful effect.

At this stage I added Mini and  Large Art Stones by Art Ingredients, gluing them on with Transparent Heavy Body Gel by Art Basics.  I love this gel when you need to glue on large, heavy pieces (I used it to glue down the garden gate and flowers as well).  It is extremely strong and after it dries it is flexible as well, so all your stones and embellishments don't crack and fall off!

The last mixed media layer on this piece was splattering everything with watered down Walnut Stain distress paint, Lake Mist Adirondack acrylic paint, and Tsukineko's Walnut Ink.  

Lots of depth and layers.

I made this little flower cluster from some of my fussy cut pieces and one of the flair buttons from the Wild Whisper Floral collection.

I love using the art stones on mixed media projects... they look so pretty and give lots of texture.  I glue on the big ones first and then fill in the spaces with the small ones.

More fussy cut flowers, and in this image you can see that I matted the photo with two pieces from the Wild Whisper Small Patterns collection, and then some kraft packing paper that had its edges dipped in walnut ink.

I hope I have inspired you to pull out some paints, stencils and embossing powder and have a little fun!  Don't be afraid to combine different collections.  I find all the Wild Whisper collections coordinate perfectly with each other.  Most of all... don't throw out those scraps... they can be turned into pretty embellishments!

See you next week!