The inspiration came from Scrapbooking in Greece. The idea was to use acrylics in a layout.

I wanted to use a very dark blurred picture of my husky and could find no designer paper to intrigue me-my hubby says that I have so many that is practically impossible to search the whole stacks to find the right one (and the problem is that he is right). I decided to create a 30x30 backround with an anchor point to the left lower corner. But as I never clean my stencils, the mat medium which I used for the flourish, came out a bit greenish instead of pure white. So, I changed my plans midway and used a picture of my hubby I like a lot (Ha, ha got you!)

For the background I used Claudine Hellmuth's and Windsor acrylics, distress and chalk inks, glimmer mists and mica pigments for the shine (sorry you cannot see it in the picture but mica give a very lustrous shine). The stamps (handwriting and music) are both from Artemio.

The rest is made digitally from various elements that I always hunt around the net. Only the buttons are real staff.

For my second layout (which actually was the first I made), I was inspired by the vintage picture of a woman I found in a fashion magazine.

She is standing beside a lake, surrounded by very haunted trees and looks like she is leaving for a journey of no return.

As you can see, I overdid it with the gesso and I couldn't balance with the left part of the layout, so I covered all the embellies and journaling with tissue paper. I don't know about the result, but from a sad photo, it seems that came out a happy and optimistic layout, so as it is the first of the year - I am still finishing the holiday journal, but it counts in the last year's projects- I named it "hello 2011". By coincidence it is the topic that Irini has chosen for this month's challenge, so I will submit it in Crafty Croppers

I will also play to the following challenges:

- Sir Stampalot

- Die Cut dreams

- Simon Says Stamp - button, flower, glimmer

- The Stamp man