Inky Business

Hi there. I hope you've got the rain that we finally got. Except you Queenslanders - I don't think it's stopped has it?

I've been working with the March kit from Scrappy Chat designs. What I love about Scrappy Chat Designs kits is that there are always new and interesting products in them. It was the Izink that took me by surprise in this kit. I had never used it before. I had a bit of an experiment with it and the background I used on this layout was actually my 'leftovers' one. I'll explain what I mean.

Firstly, the layout:

I cut up that gorgeous Heidi Swapp paper to use as a black border for a number of the elements. The strips behind the photo and the large banners are made from the Pink Paislee 6 x 6 paper pad and I punched the leaves from the Heidi Swapp paper with a leaf punch.

Now this might sound strange but first I'm going to show you how I made the background that I didn't use! You might like to give this a go. Here's the background:

First I sprayed water all over the cardstock. I then dripped on the Izink then sprayed water over the top again to make the Izink swirl and blend. This worked really well but the Bamboo coloured Izink turns yellow when it's wet. I then just dripped on some more Izink and didn't spray water on to add more of the green colour. I dried this off with a heat gun and was pretty pleased with it.

I decided to try to colour one of the doilies with Izink so I mixed the Izink with some water in a spray bottle. Knowing that the doily would create a nice pattern when I sprayed it, I did this on the other piece of white cardstock. I then realised I had way too much Izink on the doily so I turned it over and stamped over the cardstock with it. I decided that I liked this as a background more than my first one so I used this instead.

I was very excited when I saw the Stains stamps in the kit. How cool are these? I used mine to stamp with blue ink, then I used my Metallic Melts on them. I love this combination!

I made flowers out of my sprayed doily. I cut out the solid centre then tore the remaining patterned part of the doily in half lengthways. I then just pleated the paper in my hand to form a flower shape and put a brad in the middle. This made perfectly co-ordinating flowers for my page.

After Sandra came up with so many amazing ideas for that paper wire I felt I had to be extra creative too! I formed mine into a stylised banner string and sprayed it black with Dylusions ink spray. I love this paper wire. It's so versatile. I can see myself using this again and again.

I coloured my word sticker with ink and added sequins across the page. There was still plenty of room left for journalling.

I hope you get a lot of enjoyment out of this month's kit. If you don't have it, you can take a look at it here.

 Happy scrappin' everyone!

Heather