"Here, Waiting For You"

For thirty years my neighbours Karen and Les shared their lives together, and when Les passed away a year ago, his absence left a significant void in Karen's life. They were each others soul mate.

One year on, and Karen and her daughter are moving overseas to start a new life. The house they're moving to is one that they have stayed in previously. And so when Karen was getting her belongings organised for the big move, she was thrilled to come across a photo of Les enjoying a hot cuppa on the very veranda of the home she's now moving to. It made the decision to move feel right - that although Les will never live in this new home with them, he is as Karen said, already "here, waiting for us".

That night after my neighbour relayed this to me and showed me the photo, I had an inspiration to make a layout. I could see it perfectly in my head. A few days later I asked Karen for the photo so I could scan it, and I set to work on a little gift for her.

Of course, once I began the project, I found the papers I'd matched the photo with inside my brain didn't actually suit the photo in real life. I went through my stash and found a new set of papers to use (Bo Bunny 'Time Piece') but I couldn't find the right alpha for the title. Thus I decided to Photoshop it into the photo itself.  The suitcase was a last moment add on to symbolise the move overseas.  Ultimately, it looked nothing like I had originally intended, but such is life, isn't it?

Exceptionally boring details: The layout was mounted on an A4 sized canvas block, and there were a few mistakes made with attaching the cardstock to the canvas. Namely, I cut the cardstock to A4 before considering I needed cardstock to line the sides of the canvas block. I bound the sides with strips of cardstock and the striped paper, then when I laid the A4 cardstock sheet down, I found I'd cut it askew and it didn't quite meet the edges. It looked pretty rough, as you can imagine, so I decided to just go with that and sand the edges of the cardstock as it has a white layer in the middle that shows through with a wee bit of sanding. Kind of hid the mistakes (or added to them? Whichever way you want to look at it...)