Hideaway {CSI Case File No. 38}

Case File No. 38 is open for investigation at CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration! In case you haven't heard, CSI is teaming up with Once Upon a Sketch for a super-duper, double-the-fun, scrap-a-licious set of challenges in September. Here is our Current Case File, which features one of Nadia's fabulous sketches:

Here is my page. Clues I used: Evidence: branches, birds, flowers, newsprint pattern, border, woodgrain; Testimony: newspaper article, document a pet.

I have to preface this by saying I really don't like my page. I contemplated not including it in the reveal, but I worked so hard on it. My friend Tracee tried to get me to articulate why I don't like it, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it other than to say I just don't like the way it looks.

Anyway, here it is:

So, I decided to jump into the gesso craze. I've had a pot of it for a couple of years, sitting pretty much unopened. I wanted to use the newspaper pattern that was part of the Evidence in the Case File, and I remembered an October Afternoon paper, but it had a sort of cream background that I thought would clash with the off-white in the palette. Here's the paper that I started with:

So, I smeared gesso all over it with a used gift card, let it dry, and then rubbed teal, green, and brown ink all
over.

I wrote my story like a newspaper article and tucked it behind the layers on a tag, mainly because I didn't have space. (Yeah, the placement of that bird is one of the many things I hate about my page--if I hadn't stitched everything down, he would've been sitting up higher, on top of the photo, but I couldn't move him because then he'd get stuck on the removable tag and cover up my writing. )

Here's the story: FREDERICK, MARYLAND--Maggie Tehrani retired from her cardboard Costco box and found a new sleeping spot, Farzad Tehrani informed Debbi Tehrani this morning. Maggie was spotted sleeping behind the cookbooks on the bottom shelf of the kitchen console table. When Debbi Tehrani attempted to photograph the sleeping cat, Maggie awoke and tried to make a quick exit. Debbi snapped a blurry photo of the sneaky feline just in time. "It's almost impossible to photograph Maggie," reported Debbi, "She's very camera shy. As soon as she knows you've got a camera, she's on the move."

Maggie has a history of changing sleeping spots. She tends to like closed-in spots. Baskets, shopping baskets, shoeboxes are a few of the containers Maggie has snuggled into. More recently, a Costco box, the space between the kitchen stools and the island, and now behind the cookbooks, are a few of Maggie's favorite spots in her new home in Frederick. "This morning, Maggie couldn't be found," said Pejman, nephew of Farzad Tehrani. Perhaps she's found a new hiding place.

As I was looking for embellishments, I found these Colorbok word stickers that said "lost" and "found" which were the perfect color for my page, and then I luckily found a brad that said "and" in the right colors too. I love when that happens!

The flowers as well as the circle paper are old Wild Asparagus papers. The brown leaves are cut out of an old Scenic Route paper. The letter stickers are by Crate Paper, and I chose them because they have a woodgrain look, that was part of the evidence. I tucked some scraps of dyed cheesecloth that were sitting on my scrap desk to give my page a little more texture. I added those shiny clear dots at the last minute when I was lamenting how much I didn't like my page--I was in a desperate search to add something to make it better. :(

So there you have it. My unsatisfying layout. I'm happy I got to document this story. But I have a feeling this will be one of those pages that will get an "extreme makeover" some day. 

Please go check out what the rest of the design team and our guest designers did with this Case File. Awesome stuff in this week's reveal, as always! And don't forget we have a design team call in progress, so solving this week's Case File will be a part of your application.

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog and reading about my page.