One of my favourite articles in the scrapbooking magazines is the one where they give the same products to a group of designers and see what they come up with. When Two Scrapbook Friends decided they'd do this challenge from time to time with the design team, I was excited!
Our products were:
- One 12x12 sheet of ‘Charles’ paper from Walnut Grove (Pebbles) – it is double sided so you can choose how you want to use it.
- One chipboard bracket shape
- Two wooden close pins (Hello & Thanks)
- One 3D butterfly (Pebbles) – colours vary
- An assortment of buttons
- Two little word tags
Keeping in mind my word for the year is s-t-r-e-t-c-h, I decided to see how I could stretch these products into a layout without adding more paper and layering, which is my usual approach once I create my background sheet.
I decided to work on the text side of the page, and began by getting out one of my favourite stencils, TCW's Blazonry, and a product I just got for Christmas, a gel medium with microbeads in it, aptly named, glass bead gel (Golden brand). I spread the medium through the stencil with a knife and allowed it to dry and then misted over top, in spots.
There is a cutout under the photo so that I could use the other side of the paper to cover the chipboard. AC Thicker letters are my title alphas, with one staying plain, and the other, a DIY style that is sticky on both sides, was perfect for applying the pink flocking. We were given a butterfly, and I used the clothespin as its body/antennae. I then added a few more butterflies, punching them from transparency material and edging them with Stickles to add a bit of lift.
A few of my favourite things on this layout, besides that beautiful girl in the photo, are the beaded gel medium - I really like how it turned out; the flocking, which I also used to frame the large photo, using narrow two sided tape; that narrow chevron, which I folded using the bar code strip.
What is the one thing missing from this layout, that I just about never exclude? Journaling. I thought about using the chipboard crest as a journaling spot, but really, these photos speak for themselves. It's not unusual to find Sandy and Sarah in a cuddle in the morning (or at other times for that matter). The only unusual part is maybe Sarah allowing me to photograph that moment - but if I make too big a deal of it, it won't happen again. If you have a young teen, you know what I mean.
Thanks for joining me today!
Blessings,
Ann
