Pshht!

A little humor for the day. Happy Wednesday!

mon petit artiste...working with acrylics!

Want to add some texture and oomph to your layout?  Grab a basic primary color kit of acrylic paints and go to town!  This layout had very few materials...some acrylic paint, a button, letters, one little piece of cardstock to frame the main photo, and a vellum quote (which can be tricky to work with since you can see the adhesive through the vellum...not a problem when you use the paint underneath it as the adhesive!).  

Enjoy!

So Silly!

Cracked another case file over at CSI.  Did a bright, fun, whimsical layout that had me smiling the whole time I was putting it together.  Here it is and read on for how I put it together.

Started off with some acrylic paint on the background...added some water to make it a bit more workable and tapped my brush with my finger to get the "dots."

Then I rounded up some ribbons and paper scraps to make the base under the picture and grabbed my new Sew Easy to bring in some stitching.

I had been dying to use my new 7 Gypsies hot air balloon stamp so I took the girl from my Recollections Girl and a Poodle paper, fussy cut it, colored the girl (she was pastel) to better fit my primary color theme, cut off the umbrella and replaced it with the hot air balloon, which I colored and added some rickrack to.the balloon.  Love the way it came out!

 Used rub-ons for my title and layered them over the paper.  

Then it was time for some detail work.  Hand cut some clouds from a writing pad, inked them with sky blue, added some American Craft wood buttons and (thanks to a great suggestion by my neighbor) added my journaling to the paper ribbons on the upper left.  

Added some pop up adhesive behind the hot air balloon and the photo and whipped out my trusty gel pen to add some doodle touches.  Love this page.  Makes me happy!  Thanks for looking!

Setting eyelets

Happy Monday everyone! As promised, here is a quick video tutorial on how to set eyelets. The ways to use eyelets are endless.  You can use eyelets on tags, to anchor ribbon or fiber, or just to add a decorative touch of dimension to your pages.  Here I used them to draw the focus to the photo.

And here's a great little tutorial on how to use them.  Enjoy!

Negative Space

Happy Saturday everybody!  I don't know about you, but I love the look of negative space layouts (where there is more "empty" areas of the page than not)...they're a challenge for me because I instinctively want to cover every bit of the paper with goodies but I think the final effect of a negative space page can be pretty striking!  Plus, if you have limited time to scrap, you can usually pull one of these off in about an hour.

Here is my latest negative space creation and a little breakdown of how I put it together.

The first thing I always do is dig through my scrappy supplies and pull out any embellies and papers I think might work with the photos I am scrapping.  It usually ends up looking something like this...

I love white tags because you can design them any way you want to fit them to the style of your page. I covered this one with purple chevron paper and added an eyelet.  Plus you can buy a big thing of them for cheap...it can get pricey to buy pre-made tags and since they're pre-designed, I find them to be limiting.  

You can pick the tools up from any craft store or probably even Wal-Mart or Target.  I like the Making Memories tool kit.  because it comes with more than just the setting tools.  I love eyelets - not just for tags but also to add some depth and texture to your page.  Stay tuned for a tutorial post on how to use them...hoping to get one up this weekend.  

Then I misted my paper...

(I bought some fancy scrapbook misters....I had a coupon...yes, I did just show you how to get a similar effect without the added cost of pre-made misters...but I had a coupon!  Don't judge me. hehehe) 

Staying true to my make-do-with-what-you-have-self, though, I gave this Recollections journaling card a double use by cutting the bullseye portion out and using the two pieces separately.  This is a great way to make your supplies last or to find an element you need when nothing else in your stash seems to work.  Dig through your paper and see what you can find and cut!  

One thing about negative space layouts, for me anyway, is that I DO feel like I have to make up for leaving all that blank space on the page by loading up the embellished area.  So for this I used stamps, rub-ons, doodles, grungeboard, stickers, and an adorable "love" Little Yellow Bicycle stick pin embellie (have you seen these things yet? I'm in love!).  I loaded everything up and used the arrow stamps to direct the eye to the main focus of the page.  

Then, I added some "file" information to the upper left hand corner to document when the photos were taken, how old the munchkin was at the time, and where the hat came from.

Voila.  Layout in about an hour!  Thanks for looking!