Cherish .. with Alz

Morning peeps!

Important notice

Our challenge now runs from the first day of the month to the last!!!  :)

Today I'm sharing my first layout for the current Scrap Matrix challenge ..

Cherish

 

 

I was inspired by the soft photo of the baby in the moodboard ..

 

 

 

How could I not be? That baby is such a cutie patootie don't you think?? Anyways I have some photos of our friends' little girl Selina from when she was just a wee little baby. I'll be scrapping another photo of her soon and you'll see that she's grown just a tad. In fact, I think she's three now. But I'm terrible with dates and ages and stuff.

Moving on. lol. I really wanted to keep my page 'soft looking' (if you know what I mean) so decided to keep to a monochromatic colour scheme with a slightly shabby chic feel. I knew the Maja Design Coffee in the Arbour vintage pink tones would be perfect, and I love using patterned paper for my backgrounds, so used the Raspberry Cupcake. Oh and the Maja Design papers are just beautiful .. a lovely heavy weight, soft to the touch, perfect for distressing, and the patterns just sublime.

Although the Raspberry Cupcake would have been perfect just as it was, I wanted to add my own touch to the background.

I did this by applying white gesso with a brayer (you can find one in here) adding some Finnabair Texture Paste White Sand with Aall & Create stencil #10. Once all this was dry I reapplied the white gesso with a brayer over the texture paste. Then, once that was dry, I flicked on some Rose Bud irResistible spray.

I love, love, love the irResistible sprays. They dry almost glossy or even plastic-y and 'sit' on the surface as opposed, I guess, to being absorbed. Does that make sense? This colour (Rose Bud) was perfect for adding just a little pop of contrast.

Although I have other Maja Design Coffee in the Arbour papers I could have used for layering, I wanted to play with my Tim Holtz Distress Inks and Victorian Velvet was a perfect match for the Raspberry Cupcake paper. I dyed tissue paper, gauze and seam binding by squishing the ink pad directly onto them, spraying with water and working in the ink. I repeated this process several times to get the exact saturation of colour I wanted.

You can see I ended up tearing the tissue paper. Oops. I knew it wouldn't matter though as I could easily hide the tear in my layers. If you look again at my finished layout you'll notice I didn't end up using the gauze. It just didn't work. It was making the page too bulky and besides, didn't Coco Chanel say something about 'taking one thing off', meaning, I think, that simplifying things makes them more beautiful or classy or whatever?? Never mind. The gauze just didn't make it onto the finished page.

I also used the Distress Ink to colour a Chipboard doily border and Chipboard swallow. I painted the chipboard pieces with white gesso first so that I'd get the true colour of the Distress Ink shining through. Whilst the ink was still wet, I applied Glossy Accents. The Glossy Accents mixes with the Distress Ink, resulting in a lovely variegated, watercolour-like effect. I treated another chipboard piece, a flourish, exactly the same but I just wasn't happy with it and, in the end, these three pieces of chipboard on the layout were just one too many. So I left it off. But you can see it in the top right corner of a photo above. I'm setting it aside with the gauze to use on another project down the track some time.

Talking about setting things I don't use aside, a while back I sprayed a length of Embossed Paper Lace (White French Lace) with a Lindy's spray. It ended up not working for whatever project I was planning to use it on. So, I set it aside. Whilst rummaging through products to use on this project, I came across it and noticed the reverse was perfect for this layout! Bonus!

eeeek!

perfecto!

So I had my layers set and it was time to embellish. Keeping it simple, I used my chipboard pieces (duh lol!), I tied a double bow with the dyed seam binding, and added some Petaloo flowers .. Mini Paintables White Blooms and Fuchsia Botanica Minis.

I kept my journaling fairly simple; just a few words and a name and date. I printed these onto white cardstock with a free typewriter font I found online ages ago .. 1942 report. Then my title, which I also kept simple, using the word "cherish" from the Tim Holtz Idea-ology Chitchat stickers - Verbiage. Finito!

Don't forget Scrap Matrix has changed its challenge format. We now run our challenges from the 1st of the month to the last of the month. So you have until midnight on the 31st to get a pic of your project uploaded to the Scrap Matrix Shares Facebook page. Plus we'd love to know what products you've used which are available at Scrap Matrix .. I'm not alone in wanting to be inspired by your use of varying products!

Other than a few close ups ..

.. that's it for me today. I sooooooo look forward to seeing what you create for this month's moodboard challenge.

Happy crafting!

Cheers .. Alz  :)

Scrap Matrix products used:

Maja Design Coffee in the Arbour - Raspberry Cupcake

Aall & Create stencil #10

Finnabair Texture Paste - White Sand

irResistible spray - Rose Bud

Tim Holtz Distress Ink - Victorian Velvet

Chipboard doily border

Chipboard swallow

Inkssentials Glossy Accents

Embossed Paper Lace - French Lace White

Petaloo Mini Paintables White Blooms

Petaloo Botica Minis Fuchsia

Tim Holtz Idea-ology Chitchat stickers - Verbiage

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"Hold dear always" .. with Alz

Morning peeps!

I'm back to share another Tic Tac Toe Monochromatic page with you. This time I went with brown ..

Hold dear always

.. and the vertical strip on the left .. Brads (buttons or flair), Paint and Chippie Shape.    

This layout posed some challenges. First of all, brown. What was I thinking? Lol! Its not that I don't like brown. I mean crikey, I have a brown dog, and brown furniture. In fact my whole house is varying shades of brown now that I think about it. Except for some accent walls. But I digress (oops).

I created my own background on watercolour paper with various inks, stencils, stamps and 'stuff'. First, I used the same technique for sticking down dictionary paper as I used in my last project (see here). Once it was completely dry, I sprayed my page with water and started adding 13Arts Ayeeda Paint Rainbow Colour in Brown. Because I was working on a few pages at the same time, I had the luxury of allowing my page to dry naturally which meant I could allow each layer of the brown ink to dry before repeating the process, ie, spraying my page with water and adding some more of the 13Arts Rainbow Colour. By doing this, I was able to achieve, albeit not a lot, but some, depth of colour in my brown.

Of course I couldn't stop there, so I grabbed my TCW Mums Stencil and Paper Artsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint in Nougat and sponged the paint through the stencil onto my background. Once it was dry I felt it really needed some definition so messily outlined each of my Mums' petals, three times. I did it whilst I was 'watching' TV so it really didn't take that long. Next, I added some black texture paste through another TCW stencil. Finally, as you'll see on my close up photos below, I used various Aall & Create Stamps and a Jet Black Ranger Archival Ink to add that final touch to my background.    

As with my last share I decided against using layers behind my photo. With hindsight, a few weeks after creating my layout, I think maybe some plain white and/or cream layers would have worked well. But at the time, well yeah. Moving on lol! It was time for embellishing, one of my favourite parts of scrapping.

I sprayed various pieces of Chipboard (Circle Words Adore Italic #2 and Doily Border) with 13Arts Ayeeda Chalk Mist in Dark Brown and once dry (which took a while as chipboard is sooooo absorbent), inked the edges lightly with the Jet Black Ranger Archival Ink. Inking the edges gave the chipboard just a bit of definition helping them to stand out from the page.

I removed the 'pearl coloured' centres from some Prima flowers and replaced them with Prima Memory Hardware Glass Pearls in a dark colour. I also painted some Metal Flowers with black paint and then lightly scratched back some of the dried paint to reveal the metal underneath. In my embellishment clusters I also included some of my favourite flowers (Petaloo Botanica Minis) .. they're the perfect size for tucking in here and there, you can do so much with them, including leaving them plain, and a pack seems to last me an awful long time.

Because of the Tic Tac Toe line I had chosen, I had to include a Brad, Button or Flair. I went with an Um Wow Studio Flair. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I love these flairs! They're just that little bit larger than your average flair, and they're just that bit flatter. I love them!!

Some of my stamping was a wee bit messy so to partially cover and distract from the particularly bad spots, I stamped some birds with Aall & Create Stamp Set #6, cut them out, coloured them with a brown pencil from the Prima Watercolour Pencils in Earth Tones, and adhered them to my page with foam tape.    

I also scattered around a few black rhinestones I cut from a strip of Molossi Crystal Lines. If, like me, you love bling, you seriously have to get some of these Molossi Crystal Lines! A packet will last you forever. No joke. Yes, you can use them as a strip, but one packet comes with five strips, and you can cut them up into smaller strips or individually as I generally do. Aaaand at the time I wrote this post, there are eight different colours in stock, including teal and pink and lime green .. sigh!    

Finally, I needed to add a title and some journaling. You'll probably notice I tend not to journal a lot on my pages. I also don't usually add large titles. I like to rely on my product to provide my title and/or journaling. For example, I could have titled this page "Adore" as that's the word being repeated on my chipboard circle. But I have a lot of pages titled "Adore". So I added some of the words from Tim Holtz Idea-ology Chit Chat stickers - Verbiage, and that was that. My second Tic Tac Toe Monochromatic layout was finished. Yay!

Don't forget you have until midnight on the 14th of May to add your entry to the appropriate album on the Scrap Matrix Shares Facebook page. Please also share with us which Scrap Matrix products you've used. Finally, because this is yet another long post, and you might need a reminder, here's the Tic Tac Toe Monochromatic board for you to have another look see at ..

I've really enjoyed the entries loaded so far and look forward to seeing more .. even yours! So get creating and have fun!!!!! Til next time ..

Cheers .. Alz  :)

Scrap Matrix products used ..

13Arts Ayeeda Paint Rainbow Colour - Brown

TCW Stencil - Mums

Paper Artsy Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint - Nougat

13Arts Ayeeda Chalk Mist - Dark Brown

Prima Watercolour Pencils - Earth Tones

Aall & Create Stamps - #6 and #10

Ranger Archival Ink - Jet Black

Chipboard - Circle Words Adore Italic #2 and Doily Border

Prima flowers

Prima Memory Hardware Glass Pearls

So Much Metal - flowers

Petaloo Botanica Minis - white

Um Wow Studio Flair - Written

Molossi Crystal Lines - Black
Tim Holtz Idea-ology Chit Chat stickers - Verbiage

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