Grade One

Good morning, I don't even know where to start with this one.  But first I must brag about myself a little bit.  I think this is the best scrap page I have EVER completed.  All right enough about me, on to the page...
Would you like to venture a guess as to where I got the supplies from?  That's right at Up the Street Scrapbooking, the August Bookworm kit.  Are you starting to believe me that there is great value in purchasing kits?  You get all the pieces that co-ordinate and like in the kits Tara puts together you get embellishments too.  Not every element on this page came from the kit but a good portion of it did.  I'll start off with the base, a 12x12 piece of textured colour core cardstock by Core-dinations.  I'm just discovering the world of colour core cardstock and I'm in love.  If you sand it the core colour comes through, or better yet emboss it and then sand and see what happens.  In this case I just sanded.  Layer 2 is a piece of 11x11 basic black cardstock, Layer 3 is Simple Stories paper for the bottom two strips and SU! Crushed Curry DSP from the Write Stuff on the top.  The next layer is the photos and what you see in photo #2, let's discuss...  Right now things with banners are hot, hot, HOT.  I have seen this technique in a couple of different places, strips of patterned paper (which were all scraps) with a different border treatment at the bottom "stacked" beside each other. The title was layered on top, it was cut from more scraps of DSP and the scallop frame was cut from more colour core cardstock (Whitewash collection, with yellow core) that I actually bought for another project but worked really well with this one.  I sanded the colour core cardstock to bring out a little of the yellow core, then added some of the alpha sticker from the Basic Grey Oxford collection.  The last layers, the "embellishments" all came from the same sheet of Simple Stories paper.  It is like a collage that you can use as is or cut the various elements apart and use as you wish (that's what I did).  The only stamp on this page is "no. 147" from the Nature Walk stamp set.  The button is Basic Grey and is tied with Cherry Cobbler Baker's twine.  Any questions? 
I can't believe how close to Christmas it is, where has the year gone?  Time to reflect... E