Posted on By Yes Please Paper Crafts

"Scrap-A-Thon 3" Day 7 – Stencils Scrapbook Layout

It’s Day 7 of the Scrap-A-Thon 3 with Nicole Jones 911 and the technique for this day of the Scrap-A-Thon was to use a stencil.  The stencil I used was from TCW (The Crafter’s Workshop) and it is called Stripe Explosion.  The stencil reminded me of rays of sunshine, so I decided to use some distress inks in orange, pink and yellow (ripe persimmon, festive berries and wild honey).  First I went over the entire background using a large makeup brush with the distress inks.  Then I applied Fossilized Amber distress ink through the stencil.

The colors were really beautiful and I decided to use some pictures that I took while picking oranges from the tree in my backyard.  The background was really pretty, but I needed to tone it down and decided to add some patterned papers in light blue, navy, orange, and peach.
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I had family visiting for the Christmas holidays and they asked If the oranges on my orange tree were any good.  The tree was covered with hundreds of oranges … I think there were more oranges than leaves.  It was truly an amazing site.  I told them they were free to pick some and try them out but the last two years since I had been living in my house, they had been really, really sour.
We were all really surprised to discover how sweet and delicious the oranges were.   I’m not sure what type of oranges these are, but I think that they are mandarin oranges.  They do have seeds, so they are not satsumas.
The only thing that we can think of that may have changed the oranges was every time my nephew cut the grass, he would put the grass clippings around the orange tree … and we also had a lot of rain during the year.  So, I guess the tree just needed something to help it make a sweeter orange.  I’ve never had an orange tree before so I didn’t know that feeding a tree would make the fruit taste different … but that makes sense to me that if you give an Orange tree better food and water, it can do a better job growing the oranges.
Anyway … my family and friends picked oranges for several weeks.  They picked bags and bags of them.  Then at the beginning of January, my Mom told me that I would need to pick the remaining oranges from the tree before they went bad.  So, one day, I decided to tackle picking the oranges.  The picture of the tree shown in my scrapbook layout was taken on the day that I picked the remaining oranges.   I was up on the ladder in the tree picking oranges for 3 hours.  I couldn’t believe how many oranges that were still on the tree.
After I picked all the oranges, I realized that I was going to have to do something with them, because I couldn’t possibly eat that many oranges.  I gave oranges to my family, to my neighbors, to my friends, and to anyone that came to my house.  I even brought oranges to my eye doctor, dentist, chiropractor, orthodontist and anyone else that I was visiting over the following weeks.
It was a lot of work getting the oranges out of the tree, but also a lot of fun.  Can’t wait for next year!!!

One more layout done.  I need to get busy tomorrow because I’m still way behind.  So, I have seven layouts done in sixteen days and only 15 Days to go!!!!     

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