A Russian Challenge

Hi there.

I hope your week has started well. If it's school holiday time for you then I hope you're getting a few sleep ins!

I was checking out the amazing work of Georgia Heald the other day on her blog and saw she was this month's guest designer for a Russian challenge site called Paperdvizhnik.. Georgia says the site has a lot of arty, mixed media layouts so I thought "this is for me!" This months' challenge is to create a layout using white, grey and two other colours of your choice. Here's what I came up with:

I chose the pink colour to match my daughter's sunglasses and I was inspired by a lovely old K & Company paper to make the second colour that gorgeous yellow-green. The weird thing is that I then hardly used any of the paper!

I had fun creating the background. I used a tried and true Heather technique - if you're not happy with it, gesso over the top and keep going! I first used texture paste through a TCW stencil to create the lines of dots. I then sprayed carefully behind the photo with Dylusions so it would colour some dots pink and not others. I coloured some of the other dots grey with an ink pad and left some white. I then added quite a bit of stamping using grey ink.

I then decided that I wasn't completely happy with the effect so I gessoed over the top of it, leaving some parts partly exposed. I now had a background with depth and texture to work with. The Dylusions softened and blended when it was wet with the gesso and the other colours were toned down. Now, I was happy with it! I then took another TCW stencil (Mayan Calendar - one of my favourites) and used multiple inks to match the colours of the paper. I used mustard seed and crushed olive Distress Inks to make the yellow-green and pink and purple inks to make the pink colour.

You can see the layers here:

I added a chippie, some Manor House Creations flowers and A Lil' Somethin' flair button to finish off the photo:

I made a pair of shades from paper and created the title with some ever-faithful Thickers.

I used another stencil behind the photo - this time a Maya Road one - and added some grey to it.

I finished the page off with some stitching in grey, pink and green and added the leftover threads to the chipboard flourish.

If you're into mixed-media layouts, hop on over to Paperdvizhnik and have a look. I'll keep an eye open to see if you post a layout there!

Cheers,

Heather

Loving the Retro Look...

Hi there,

I'm here today with my latest layout for Scrap Everything! I based the layout around those gorgeously retro We R Memory Keepers cardstock cards, available here. There is a real variety of them, some with plain colours, some with patterns and some with wonderful retro pictures and sayings.

Here's my layout:

The only thing as gorgeous as those cards is my nephew! He has a thing about playing with the balls on our pool table. The funny thing is, he can barely reach - he has to stand on tiptoes to play with them!

The paper on the outside halves is Webster's Pages Plum Tree. I simply cut a 12 x 12 sheet in half, rounded the corners and added some old lace. The trim at the top and bottom of the layout is a genuine 1960's ricrac from my stash that matched the papers perfectly. The strip at the bottom of the page is Prima Wishes and Dreams washi tape. Running a strip of it along here not only helped to balance the layout but helped to hold down the lace too. Still in that bottom corner, I added some more of the cardstock cards plus a camera chippie from Fabscraps. It comes in a set with chippie binoculars too. I sprayed it with white Dylusions and added a button in the middle.

Here's a close up:

For the title I used one of the larger cardstock cards, added a few embellies, and wrapped it all up in Maya Road twine.

Included in my kit was a bottle of Glue 'n Seal. As the name says, it's both a glue and a sealer. It comes in a bottle with a brush - I felt like I was back in kindergarten using the Clag! I liked the way it was slow drying as this is great when you're trying to place embellishments. It gives you a chance to moves things around a bit. I found the brush a bit big for small, fiddly items but it seemed to work well on the things I used it on. I will try it out on more items and get back to you.

I used two different styles or wording above some of the pics. I took appropriate words from the washi, adhered them to cardstock and cut out the shapes. I could have stuck them straight onto the card beneath but it would have shown the pattern beneath a bit and it's a bit tricky to cut sticky washi (try saying that three times quickly!)

For the other text, I used a fabulous set of mini stamps from Kaisercraft. I can see myself using these a lot. They'd be perfect for cards as well as layouts.

And just because he's so cute - here's Archie again!

Bye for now!

Heather