Cherish - Chris Sexton

I loved the ARTastic inspiration artwork for May, AMARYS by Robert Hagan. It made me wish I had a photo along those lines but not having had children of my own made that difficult. The mother and child photos of my sister and my nieces I'd already done layouts for and unfortunately I have no photos of myself with my mother when I was a child. This situation resulted in me frantically searching through numerous boxes and lo and behold, I came across a photo of my husband and his mum taken on the day of his christening. I'm sure he's wearing an outfit made by his mother as she was a prolific knitter. She looks so proud of him and he looks quite pleased with himself.

I wanted to emulate the scalloped edge of the baby bonnet so I added several rows of paper lace down the side of the photo. Some of these were punched and some were fussy cut from pattern paper.  Inked edges and a few pearls finished them off.

The paper I used for the background had gorgeous roses round the border so I used  rosebuds and sweet little daisies in the top  corner of the layout. I rolled the corner and backed the flower arrangement with some paper lace and cardstock.

Because the inspiration piece had flowers in it I added lots more rosebuds and daisies to a chipboard flourish on the left side of the photo. The underlying leaves were die-cuts from a kit which I toned down with Tim's Distress Stain - Picket Fence. The crocheted doily is a nod to my husband's mum and the pearls reflect her pearl necklace.
I loved doing this layout and am grateful for the push to find an appropriate photo. Thanks for the inspiration.
Cheers. Chris.