Saturday 18 July 2015

An 8.5X11 challenge layout and a great YouTube channel for you to discover :)

Happy Saturday to all!  I am so glad you could join me for another layout share.  I know I have been MIA for the last couple of weeks; life interfered with my play time LOL. Nothing major, just extra work and finally some lovely summer weather !!!  How have you all been?  I have quite a few things to share so I just might be doing a few posts this weekend and over the next week.  But first, the most important one for today :

I want to share a layout I made for my  friend Kelly's  500 subbie YouTube challenge.  She is froggie251 on YouTube and here is the link to her channel:  https://www.youtube.com/user/froggie251/videos .  If you don't know Kelly, hop on over to her channel, sit back and enjoy.  She does some great stuff.  Kelly makes 12X12 layouts but also does Project Life.  She is a joy to watch and to listen to.  Lately, Kelly has participated in a couple of collaborations with a two other great YouTubers - one on project life (with Hannah Lemieux), where they challenged each other to use mixed media on some of their PL cards.  The other collaboration, also a mixed media challenge, is with Mari Clarke.  Mari makes an art journal page and Kelly integrates some great mixed media techniques on a 12 X 12 layout.  Such fun!

You still have time to participate in Kelly's challenge as it closes tomorrow, on the 19th so as soon as you finish reading this ;), get cracking!!!  LOL.

Here is the layout I made:


This turned out vastly different than the idea I had when I started to make the page.  Firstly, I wanted to make a 12X12 and secondly I mentioned to Kelly that I was going to try and do a mixed media background, in her honour :).  As you can clearly see, neither happened.

I did make a background on a 12X12 piece of black cardstock.  To reduce the starkness (yup it's a word in my head) of the black, I gesso'd the page.  I did add some water to make it more of a wash but obvously not enough - first booboo.  Then I used a star stencil with some texture paste, which I coloured with Italian Sunset Glimmer Mist.  I wanted to match the pale coral in my photo mat and on one of the layers.  The colour matched perfectly - yay - but in the end it was way too pale on the background.  So when I put my photo block on that background.... I hated it!!!  OK, well,  start over I thought - but hmmm, no more black 12X12 cardstock!!  So 8.5X11 it became.  I used my punches to cut some circles out of that MM piece which you can see in each of the three embellishment clusters. In the end, I do like the outcome.

The supplies:  I used my Scraptastic April Darlene main kit and add-on to make this page with very few exceptions :
  • The black cardstock and the pale coral carstock that I used to mat the photo, are both from Stampin' Up
  • The stencil is from Simon Says Stamp
  • The mint foam thickers are from my stash - they are Dear Lizzy. The black alpha thickers may be from a previous kit - gosh how I love that font :)
There is no story to tell about this photo - it is simply of my boy Chopin sleeping the afternoon away after quite the play session with Sophie !

Thanks so much for stopping by and sticking with me to end end of this post.  Thanks so much Kelly for a fun challenge and congratulations on reaching 500 subbies.  I love your channel and am sure that you will be at 1000 in no time at all.

Have a great weekend everyone.  I will be back soon.  Hugs xox