So Pissed!

No, not me...my spunky little lady!  Haha!

Hi everyone!  It's Friday and as usual CSI has revealed a fabulous case file for you all!  CLICK HERE to see what the rest of the fabulous design team and special investigators did with this file!  I had a blast working with this color scheme and the evidence requirements were easy because my stash was full of lots of goodies that fit the bill.  (Love when that happens!)

Here's the case file:

And here's my take on it.

This kid had me in stitches over her absolute disdain for the seagulls. She's an animal lover, but NO ONE messes with her chips.  When she wasn't screaming at the scavengers, she was chasing them a way, full speed down the beach.  My journaling reads:  "This is you at 3 1/2 telling off the sneaky seagulls that kept stealing your chips. I love that you made it your personal mission to safeguard the food and chase away the seagulls for the rest of our beach trip (all the while screaming at them to "shoo!") Love your spunk, kiddo."

Here are a couple of closeups.

I hope to see some of your creations in the CSI Gallery this week!  Enjoy the weekend!

xoxo,

Shawna

Sketchy Solutions...

So I recently discovered a great challenge blog and online scrapbook supply store called  The Memory Nest and I decided to play along with their January sketch challenge.

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Looks pretty easy right? Nope.  Not for this girl.  It's these simple sketches that stump me. Especially with a vertical 4x6 photo.  I've grown quite used to scrapping smaller, usually square photos, so to scrap a larger photo was more of a challenge than I expected (and I still had to skinny it up so it's more like a 3x6).

I started a layout with the larger squares of paper layered behind my photo.  Agonized over it for a couple of hours, then tossed it and pulled out a light grid covered cardstock and my good old Faber Castell gelatos.(shocker, right?) ;-)  Every time I have struggled with a layout I have ended up coming back to the gelatos and I always feel happy with the outcome.  So here's a bit on my process of putting together a layout using mediums as substitutes for paper elements on a page.  Give it a try!

For this layout, I used the gelatos as a stand-in for the lighter gray paper layer shown in the sketch.

First I put a decent layer of gesso over the background paper.  Once that dried, I scribbled big lines of color with the gelatos, finger blended them, then went over them with water and a watercolor brush.  If you want your gelatos to blend well without hard lines, apply them softly to the paper - you don't have to press down hard at all.  Then wet a watercolor brush and apply a generous amount of water on the lines that separate your rows of color.  Blend the colors out until they look the way you want them.  I stood my paper up and tapped it on my desk to get the colors to run into each other and make some dripping and pooling.

I used a stencil and added some circles with modeling paste over the gelatos, then layered strips of vellum to stand in for the darker gray paper in the sketch.

 A few hearts, a button flair, and a little bit of doodling.  Viola.  A super cute pastel page of the kiddo. :)  I switched the elements but stayed pretty close to the sketch shape.

I hope enjoyed this little how-to...and link me to your layout if you give this technique a try! :)

Have a fabulous weekend!

xoxo,

Shawna

Citrus Twist Sunday Sketch - Selfies

Good morning!  Today I'm sharing a layout I made from Kasia's Sunday Sketch over on Citrus Twist.  For this layout I used bits and pieces of kits from past months, and threw in some great feather doodles from Leann Pearce over at ScrapFriends.

Here's the sketch:

And here's my layout:

I stayed pretty close to the sketch, with the exception of the circle clusters.  I really liked the simple design and think it was the perfect design to showcase a few mother daughter silly selfies.

Like many of my layouts these days, I started out with a couple of Heidi Swapp mists (teal and mustard) that I focused on the lower right corner and overlapped to get a minty color in the middle.  I chose some patterned paper for the base, adhered the photos to black cardstock, and stuck another piece of white cardstock between the photos and the patterned paper for contrast.

I printed out the doodled feathers on white cardstock and colored them in with red, yellow and orange gelatos.  Then I outlined them with a black sharpie to make them pop a bit and colored an American Crafts basic white frame to match.

Love this mint green paper clip arrow from last month's kit.

That's it!  Today is the last day to upload your sketch-inspired creations to the Citrus Twist gallery, but be on the lookout tomorrow, when the new Sunday sketch is revealed.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by!