Created for the November 52 Inspirations Challenge hosted by Ona/wombat146. We were asked to create a layout about our favorite season, using at least three 52 Inspirations kits from Oscraps.

When my husband and I were first dating, we often visited a state park near us, and took long walk-and-talk hikes in the woods. Or sometimes walk-and-listen hikes. The park we went to had once been farmland, but they were letting it return to a natural (managed) meadow. In the autumn it was this lovely chaos of wildflowers and dried things and milkweed pods, with milkweed seeds floating through the air like fairies. That was my inspiration for this layout: a golden fairy goddess orchestrating all the chaos of the transition.

I started by looking over all the fabulous 52 Inspiration kits and fell in love with many of them! My wishlist over-floweth! I was finally drawn to a template by Anna Aspnes, a kit with gorgeous cornflowers and wildflowers by NLD Designs, and a Wild Soul kit with gorgeous aqua flowers by et designs. After finding these kits, my inspiration and the story I could tell on the page came together.

I started with the Anna Aspnes template. Then I added in the gorgeous fairy goddess from Foxeysquirrel. Next, I spend a good deal of time masking one of the papers in the kit by NLD Designs to extract a triangular riot of wildflowers. Then I flipped the wildflowers horizontally to make them fit the template design better.

Next, I layered in some mixed media paint layers from Anna Aspnes' Coolth ArtPlay Palette and ArtsyTransfers. Anna's template and these paint layers often come as layered Photoshop files, so when you add them, you can turn some of the layers on or off, or add layer masks to blend the edges of things better for your layout. I picked a wrinkly background paper from Coolth and spent a good deal of time turning things on and off and blending things together until I got the look I wanted.

Then, I moved the two frames from the template and added my photos of the milkweed. I tucked in some floral clusters on either side and added metal embellishments, ribbon, and string. Then, I decided to flip the entire layout horizontally for two reasons. One, I wanted the goddess to be facing the future, which is usually represented by the right side of a layout. And, second, I wanted to show all the chaos of the transition behind her, with space opening up to breathe in front of her. Finally, I added the title.