I absolutely adore Graphic 45′s Once Upon a Springtime paper. It was love at first sight! I had to have it even though I didn’t know what I was going to do with it! I bought it a few months ago and finally came across the right pictures for the layout. I got some great shots of my two girls with Tinkerbell and her fairy friends at Pixie Hollow in Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. The girls enjoyed visiting with the fairies a lot. The cast members told us that we were going to shrink down to fairy size in order to be the same size as the fairies when we entered Pixie Hollow. Alison was worried that it might hurt, but the cast members assured us that we wouldn’t feel a thing. I didn’t feel anything – it was completely painless! Alison believed their story, and later told me that she felt a slight tingling sensation! 
Unfortunately, the pictures were a little too vibrant for the paper. Tinkerbell’s outfit is almost a fluorescent green and the paper has more of a kelly green in it. I toned the pictures down by desaturating them in Photoshop. You can do this by following these easy steps:
- Open the file/picture in Photoshop
- Next go to the Layer menu and select Layer – Duplicate layer…
- Click on your duplicated layer, and press Shift + Ctrl + U to completely desaturate the image (ie. create a black and white image), or click on Image -Adjustments – Desaturate and play with the saturation scale to desaturate the image to your desired result.
- Save the edited image by going to the File menu and selecting Save as… or press Shift + Ctrl + S. I recommend saving the image under a new file name so that you don’t overwrite the original image.
Once I had my photos edited and printed, I started to think about my page layout. Like I’ve said before, some papers ‘tell’ how they should be used in a scrapbook layout, and this one certainly does that. I individually cut out all of my fairies and sprayed all of my paper with Sheer Shimmer Spritz in Sparkle by Tsukineko. This mist is a bit more subtle than some others, adding sparkle without actually influencing the colour of the paper. I added 3D pop dots behind my main fairies in order to add dimension to the page and to make the fairies even more of a focal point. I also created a lot of layering to add interest to the whole project.
Materials used:
- Sheer Shimmer Spritz in Sparkle by Tsukineko
- Graphic 45, Once Upon a Springtime Tags, Once Upon a Springtime 12X12 paper, Once Upon a Springtime Frames, Primrose Cottage 12X12 paper
- Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Peeled Paint
- 3D dots by EK Success
- Scotch ATG adhesive
- Tim Holtz mini attacher
- Photoshop CS4
- Font, La Belle Aurore, from dafont.com