Lessons Learnt - 14 - A bouquet for Shimelle Laine and LSNED, such a variety and so fragrant!

Dear Scribblers

The wonderful thing about Shimelle and her LSNED course, is that she gives you daily prompts and ideas for your own pages, but you aren't restricted by her recommendations. In fact, she encourages you to do your own thing, be it mini-books, with photos, no photos, add-the-photos-later photos, old stash, bought especially stash, art journalling, diary writing, drawing, digital or good-old-straight-forward-honest-to -goodness scrapbooking!

I think this day, was probably one where I went off on my own tangent.

Whenever I go to a department store, I make a beeline to the fragrance department, just like the old yellow and black striped garbed bumble to the flower. I flit from bottle to bottle, taking the cards and using the testers, trying out new concoctions and old favourites. 

I miss Sephora for their rows a-plenty of scent after scent. Alas, they no longer have stores in the UK. Please come back, Sephora. We miss you! On a positive note, Debenhams is especially good for this, with their open shelves, plenty of testers and cards, with helpful assistants there when you need them, not on your shoulder forcing their opinion onto you. Don't you hate that? However, I love perfumes! I'm not alone in the quest, as my husband adores the aftershaves. So between us, we gather a number of the tester cards.

I wonder if you have noticed, how fantastic these cards are. The plain old thin 'science litmus paper' style cards still exist, but they are being taken over by these quirky designs and logos emblazon the different shapes. Of course, any I especially like find a home in my crafty stash. 

Go take a look in your local department store, you'll be amazed at the variety - from heart, circle and apple shapes. To flowers, bows, bottles and Agent Provocateur legs! I've even found tester ribbons in shiny satin and bright yellow grosgrain. 

I think it's time, I took another amble through the aromatic glass vessels once more.

The title of the page reads, "When it comes to SCENTS, I lose all SENSIBILITY!" I printed this out using my Brother P-Touch 65 digital tape printer. (The PT90 is probably the nearest available one to my PT65.)

As you can probably guess, this was a very cheap layout to make. The whole background is made up of perfume tester cards, including some magazine advertisement tester labels.

I found the very funny cartoon comic strip called Arctic Circle by Alex Hallatt distributed by King Features Syndicate on-line, and printed it out for use on this layout only. I took a comic-style font to change the characters name to Paula. So once they've walked around the store and tried on all the fragrances, the penguin says, "You have got to learn to say 'No', Paula!" How apt!

Project of the Day: Here's a revived project of the day for you. Take a trip to your local perfume counters and see the variety of cards available, maybe collect a few and see if you can use them in a layout. It need not be about perfumes. Incorporate them as an extra layer. See how creative you can be. 

Is there anything else ephemera wise you collect? I'd love to hear about your unusual stash and how you've used it.

Happy Scribing!