Scrapping on a budget!

I was issued a random challenge on the Forever Always forums - to create a LO using:
1. Arrows
2. Home-made transparency
3. Photos without people

These criteria seemed to fit in really well with the LO I'd been planning for the April 1, 2, 3 challenge, so I decided to combine the 2. The 1, 2, 3 criteria:
1. Make your own embellishments
2. Stamp with an everyday object
3. The word "April" and/or "Showers" somewhere on the LO

Here's what I came up with -


Title: April Flowers

I started with photos of flowers taken at Keukenhof in Holland. The next step was to create my own embellishments. For these, I used a facial cotton pad to stamp the sun and the flower centres. I then clipped bent paperclips around the orange stamped image to make the sun. I clipped untouched paper clips to make 2 flowers and topped off with a button in the centre of each. The biggest flower has a painted cotton pad as the flower centre, with plain cotton pads cut in half to make the petals. Everything is held together with a large brad. I also used one painted cotton pad as the "o" in the word "flowers". I cut green arrow shapes from cardstock and stuck them down beneath the flower centres as stalks. The sun's rays actually are 4 arrow-heads too. The last step was to make my own transparency. By this stage, my page was already looking pretty cluttered and I really didn't want to add too much more, so I just made a transparency tag - just punched holes all around, threaded ribbon through and tied at the top.

Very happy with this LO as it was cheap to make but I think fairly effective.

Other materials used:
-Bazzill cardstock
-Creative Imaginations, KI Memories, Lil Davis and Sei alphabet stickers
-Craft Affair chipboard "S"