Home Is | These Days Collection | Michelle Stokes

Hey Everyone, It’s Michelle here today with a little scrappy inspiration featuring the These Days Collection. I made both a layout and a couple of cards that can be shown off in a frame as part of your home decor so I think thats a win for today. Lets take a walk through how it all came together..

First up we will start with the layout. I fell in love with the little village of houses on the Neighbourhood paper the minute I saw it, but could never think of the right way to show them off. That was until recently when I had an idea to fussy cut them all out and line them up with some ‘grass’ and other bits to make one of the cutest layouts I think I’ve ever made.

I chopped my white cardstock into 3 even strips that I could line the houses up on, then sewed strips of the green and white spotted paper ‘Family Ties‘ to create the grass. I used a pair of herb shredder scissors that are pretty much the same as a pair of fringing scissors, I just felt these scissors would be better suited to my craft room than left in the trusty kitchen gadget draw haha.

I added machine stitching to each green strip then fluffed up the grass and added all the tiny houses to the rows.

I even added in a couple of trees, some mini potted plants, happy dogs and rabbits, some of the little people and a bike. Sweet tiny details that really made the layout come together.

Once I had the rows of houses sorted out and adhered with foam, I glued the 3 white cardstock strips onto a second piece of white cardstock, spacing them out evenly down the page, then I moved on to creating a mixed title

I used both the foam title stickers and mini alphabet stickers to combine together in a mixed font title. I sewed through all the pieces to keep them in place as I’d moved them around that many times to find the right place that they had lost their stickiness.

Next up I added my photos to the layout. I chose 2 family photos that worked with the title that I had created and printed them out in black and white so they didn’t clash with all the pretty house colours. I tucked the photos in the gaps I created between a few of the houses in 2 of the rows and popped them up slightly using foam behind them.

It may have taken many tries to get this recent family photo, with plenty of giggles in between.

I used some of the sweet little puffy heart stickers from the puffy stickers pack to create little puffs of smoke from a couple of the chimneys

Then splattered the white space with gold ink to create a star like sky, even though I haven’t used a dark background.

I really enjoyed creating this little village, so much so that I don’t think its going to be added to an album any time soon, I think it deserves to be out on show in a shadowbox frame for all to enjoy.

Speaking of enjoying crafty things, I had a couple of little houses left over that I thought I would make a couple of cards that can be interchanged in a frame and kept out on display in our living room.

I used all the same elements for these that I did in the layout, just in a 4x6inch size. Going to have a hard time switching them around that I might need a second frame to add to a different area of the house and make use of both cards at the same time.

Well friends, Thank you so much for stopping by to check out my creations using the These Days Collection. Be sure to check out the shop for the epic sale on this very collection, then we can all have little villages on layouts! If you do recreate this layout for your own family, please share it with us in the Facebook Community Group so that I can see how yours came together. I love seeing layouts that have been inspired by my own.

Thats all from me today.

Until next time, Happy Scrapping!
Michelle x