Yeah, I guess I am on a roll with pages welcoming the new year. 🙂 But when I saw these new brushes by Ali Edwards, I couldn’t resist!

I knew I wanted to use one of the brushes in a bold way. So I added a gradient color overlay, and printed it out on white card stock. Then I spent a loooong time stitching around it with four different thread colors. [why do I always underestimate how long it takes to hand stitch something?? LOL.. But it was totally worth it! ;)] I thought about adding some small photos + journaling + embellishments around the word art, but then I decided to make this a 2-page layout instead.

I just added some stamping, a journaling card and a photo on the second page, and scattered a few stars throughout.

I love how this turned out!

First hybrid/paper page of 2015: done! 🙂