So Very Grateful

Hello friends! Today I am sharing a selfie layout of being thankful and grateful.  On a more personal note, I am celebrating my birthday today and actually I am not sad but happy and reflective.  I don't intend for this to seem that I am self absorbed, it just makes me reflect on how beautiful life is and after being on this earth for a number of  years it makes me realize that I have come through a lot of tragedies and challenges in my life and I can honestly say that I am happier in my life more now than ever. Sure, I physically feel my age at times, but mentally I feel 25.  I just wish I had the wisdom when I was 25. Ha!

It really is all about attitude and making the most of everyday and counting my blessings.  My life isn't perfect, but it's still wonderful.  I also am grateful for scrapbooking.  It really is an amazing hobby that lets me reflect on the memories, the beauty and the loved ones in my life.  If truth be known, I have always loved anything crafty, but scrapbooking by far brings me the most contentment.  I have met so many beautiful people, whom I call my friends, my support network and the people that get me.  Thank you for letting me share my passion with you and thank you for taking the time to read and visit my blog. I hope, if anything, you can take that we all need to do something we love, whether it's art, music, photography, cooking, sports or anything.  We need to do more of what we love and make the time for it.  Life happens and it's easy to get sucked into the monotony of everyday life so now,  more than ever, we need to slow down and take time for ourselves.

Well enough about that….  So getting back to business, I wanted to share a layout that I created for A Flair For Buttons.

I have been blessed to be on this amazing team and Shelley Haganman is so sweet and positive and she makes amazing flair buttons.  It's no surprise that I can't help but use her flair on almost every layout I create.  It always inspires me.  For this particular layout, I used the Fox And Owl Flair Set for the "thankful" flair button and the striped flair button as well as the Gobble Gobble Flair Set for the green patterned flair button.

 The patterned papers are all from the Simple Stories Sweater Weather Collection as well as the enamel dots, die cuts and chipboard embellishments.  I love anything that Simple Stories comes out with.

For the leaves, I actually handcut them using one of the leaves as a template and arranged them in a layered fashion using pop dots underneath some of the leaves to give some shadow and dimension.

  I had some burlap in my stash so I cut it and matted my photos and cut circles and placed the circles on the leaves and underneath the flair button to give it more texture.

Placing enamel dots around the layout gives it more of a Fall flair to gives the appearance that the leaves are falling down the page.  Most of my layouts have either machine stitching or some hand stitching because I love the homespun look and am an old fashioned girl at heart.  It probably has something to do with my cross-stitching days as well. 

Here are the flair button sets that I created my layout with:

Fox And Owl Flair

 Gobble Gobble Flair

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a good day and are able to take time to do something you love.