More from the April Flying Unicorn KOM

Wow, with the paper addon to the April kit you can make so many LOs, cards, etc. whatever your please is.  I think I have made 8 layouts so far  and I can still get at least a couple more out of the kit!

ON this first LO I used a Prima mask and molding paste on the right side to add some interest and texture to the cardstock.  I used a sheet of Arbor Ruby Rock-It from he August Moon collection and a strip sheet from Meg's Garden on this layout.  Lots of border punching too, all with martha Stewart punches.  Everything on this page except the letters and leaves came in the April kit.  It really is an awesome kit - so many great things you can do with it.  Those gorgeous blooms are Manor House, aren't they just lucious?  Oh yes, the little girl is me with my baby brother, photo from 1957.  Hmmm I need to add that little detail to my layout!

My bff's and I decided to celebrate our 40th year by taking a trip to the wine country of California.  We spent a week there sampling the wine and just having fun!!  Again I used Ruby Rock-It August Moon papers on this combined with a sheet from the Fabscraps Organic collection.  I particularly love that Dusty Attic piece (from my stash), it was so perfect for this LO.  I painted it with acrylic paints, smooch paint on the grapes which I then stickled.

One of the things I really love about this kit is the diversity of the papers included.  The Glitz French Kiss and Pretty in Pink papers really worked well together.   This is a photo of my Mom's sister, Elsie.  I made the peach flowers from Core'dinations cardstock (included in the kit) using a McGill Floriano punch.  I especially love the lace that came in the kit, its sooooo feminine.

This layout is also done with a combination of the August Moon and Organic collections.  They work sooooo well together!  I added the Dusty Attic piece and Family embellie from my stash. The journal reads:

Mom and her brother, Alex.  I often called Uncle Alex my Uncle Daddy because in many ways, he was a father to us when my Dad had to be overseas without us.  Dad did two one-year assignments in Vietnam and a year in Korea, and six month in Nepal.  During these times we always returned to NC so that we would be among our families.  Uncle Alex always helped Mom find a place to live and he was always there with a strong shoulder for Mom to lean on.  One house that we lived in was so close to his office that he stopped in nearly everyday for coffee and just to check on us. 

This layout is a companion page to Tobacco Road that I revealed yesterday.  I wanted to tell the story of raising tobacco here in NC as it is was such an important part of the economy here.  My greandparents on both sides were tobacco farmers.  I am from a rural area of NC and farming is what everyone did back in the day.  Here's the journal if you'd like to know a little something about "barning tobacco" as we call it.

“Barning tobacco” was hard dirty work.  Tobacco ripens from the bottom of the stem up and the first pickings of the season are the toughest.  The field hands spent their days stooped over, picking the bottom leaves from the stems and placing them in a wooden cart that was hauled up and down the rows by a mule or horse.  As the season wore on, the work got a little better in that picking the leaves further up the stem didn’t require so much stooping.

When the cart is filled it is taken to the tobacco barn to be strung on poles for later placement inside the barn.  The barn usually had a shed off the side where the “stringers” and “handers” did their work.  The handers gathered 3 or 4 leaves of tobacco together and handed them off to the stringer who then looped the tobacco with string onto a pole.  When the pole was full it was hung there in the shed until the end of the day. 

Green tobacco is really sticky and leaves a gummy substance on your hands.  We had to use Lava soap, which is harsh and gritty, to get our hands clean.  Imagine how much dirt and sand is stuck to those first leaves coming off the bottom of the stalks.  Don’t forget that here in the hot southern summer, it is humid and often 95º or higher.  I’d call this a true recipe for misery!

At the end of the day, the field hands passed the poles of strung tobacco into the barn where it was hung to dry and cure.  The barns had furnaces, often oil fired, to speed the curing process.

When I was growing up in the sixties, the field hands were paid 75¢ an hour and the handers and stringers were paid 50¢ an hour.  The handers and stringers were female and the field hands were male.   These were the summer jobs available for kids in those days, I guess you could call it character building!  Today, barning tobacco is a whole different process and now most of the laborers are migrant farm workers.  I think it would do our youth a lot of good to put down their assorted electronic devices and engage in some manual labor, perhaps building some good character like that of our mothers and fathers, many of whom  grew up where manual labor was just part of the daily routine.

I  used Lindy's Cattail Copper Brown and  Gator Gumbo Olive mist stains to color the Dusty Attic piece.  I just dabbed it on and it gave such a pretty patina effect.  I painted the Copper Brown onto the roses.  I love the old metallic effect.

Thanks for stopping by my blog, I really appreciate it!  I hope your day is scrap filled and fantastic!!