Here's a sneak peak at today's project:
Do you have bottles of Glimmer Mist and a drawer full of ink in your scrap-stash? How about a box full of rubber and acrylic stamps? Stencils and masks? Many of us snap up these trendy products when they come on the market and then don't quite settle down to do anything with them. Well today, that's about to change...
I was assigned a sketch at Let's Scrap that was all about circles and I was a bit stumped about how to tackle it. The photos I was wanting to use didn't lend themselves to being cropped into circles, so I decided to use the motif on my background paper instead. (One of the things I love the most about my Design Team position at Let's Scrap is that the assignments often push me out of my comfort zone and into creative realms that I may not otherwise venture into.)
So I gathered my photos of this past New Years Eve...my sweet Gigi (my son Tyler's long time sweetheart and my dear friend) and I spent the evening drinking champagne and goofing off, watching the party in Times Square, and posing for silly photos. We were having so much fun taking pictures that we almost missed the dropping of the crystal ball at midnight! I found a beautiful neutral scrapbooking paper that had a similar pattern to the lace curtains on the photos.
I grabbed my stash of Glimmer Mist by Tattered Angels, and lacking circle stencils, I located scrap paper that I had previously cut random circles out of for a previous project. I taped off the areas I wanted to protect from the spray and bravely forged ahead with a cocoa brown color.
Now if I had liked the random spots of ink that pooled on the paper, I could've left it alone to dry. I could have also blown it with a hair dryer or embossing heat tool, and it would have created cool spatters and streaks. But I wasn't going for texture here -just the suggestion of a circle shape, so I dabbed it with a paper towel to remove the access...
...and then dried it before reapplying and repeating the process. (The
intensity of the color can be controlled this way.)
Then I did the same
with other sizes of circles, overlapping circles wherever I wished.
Loving where this is going...I love the transparency of the Glimmer Mist inks
So that's what it looks like working with mists and stencils.
Stencils have open cut-outs where the ink collects as you spray. On the other hand, mists over masks have the opposite result. The mask is a solid shape whose function it is to keep the ink from the paper in the spot where it's placed. You are looking at circles of patterned paper from my scrap bin. I'm spraying over them lightly to leave a "ghost" of the shape.
This is what it looks like when I lift the masks...just a hint of the circle shapes.
Next, I decided to spruce things up with some stamping...
These are interchangeable doilie stamps from Unity Stamp Company...crazy about them!
You can see a bit of the sketch here, above the double page layout. I refered to it repeatedly for inspiration on where to place the circle images, though I didn't follow it exactly, I tried to follow the general flow.
Here, you see me adding another circle with a fabulous acrylic stamp from my stash. (The harsh line in the middle of this photo is due to the way the light hit the crease in the middle of the layout, where I taped the two 12x12 sheets together...the moisture from the mists occasionally warps the paper, but it usually straightens out in time, especially if it's weighed down or placed in an album.)
Time to loosly lay out the photos over the paper... I found a wonderfully colorful die-cut title and some gold fireworks stickers that I thought would reflect the mood of the layout. Then I decided to add some more stamping as suggested by the patterns on the sketch.
This is a roller stamp above...lots of fun to use.
Below, a great stamp by Tim Holtz.
Here's another Unity doilie stamp (below) -this one designed by Christy Tomlinson.
(Be sure to stamp over scrap paper...the archival ink will stain anything it touches.) I decided to turn one of the stamps into a clock striking midnight to go with the New Years Eve theme.
I added some more stamping with some Christy Tomlinson-designed texture stamps. Next, I glued down the photos, inked the corners and edges of the paper, added some vellum balloon stickers to pick up the few colors in the mostly neutral photos.
Oh yes...I added a little journaling circle, too. Ready to see the finished result?
Ta-da...
Do you like it? I rather love the texture of the paper and the way this layout captured the fun of the evening. Not my usual style, but I love that I broke out and tried something new. No doubt, I'll be misting again some time soon!
Passing on the love...Enikö
