Scrapbooking

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Here it is – the first Bisous Design Team project that I want to share with you!

These pages from the Grace line from Bisous were perfect for scrapping this photo of Steven.

Taken in Autumn the year before last, Steven loved playing with the Autumn leaves in the garden. I started by picking out some papers with a leafy, nature theme – the brown background with birds and the green leafy design was perfect. I cut along the design to create a decorative border along the right of the photo. This paper already had a red element which you can see on the photo, which at the start bothered me a little, so I used some distress inks to tone down the colour intensity. I also brought in a little more of this red colour by inking a piece of cardstock with distress inks, rounding off the corners and using this to bridge the title and the ‘Autumn’ sticker element. I purposely used these elements to break out of the solid and uniform lines created by the frames as I matted and layered the papers around the main focal area of the LO.

In order to make the photo coordinate more with the papers, I used photoshop to lessen the intensity of the colours in the picture. You can do this easily by adjusting the opacity levels on the layers, or by changing the layer mode into soft light. This created a more muted colour palate which made the photo less overbearing.
The title is made using felt thickers by American Crafts, which I love. The green colour links into the nature theme once again, and the felt gives a lovely tactile feel to the layout. Gotta love tactile craft products.

To put a little bit more embellishing on the layout, I added three brown ‘card candy‘ circles and a little tab of ribbon at the top left and bottom right hand side of the focal panel to create a sense of balance.

Journaling reads: Same garden, same boy, new season, new adventure.

I hope you liked this layout, and tomorrow i’ll be sharing another Bisous project with you.

Design Team work for Bisous
See my work published in this months Bisous newsletter here and you can check out my Bisous interview here.

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“Blow a kiss for Uncle Craig” we said – and she did. She blew several in fact, pausing at the correct moments so I could take photos. My niece Abbi is such a poser (I hope it stays that way forever).

This scrapbook page was inspired by a layout I saw published in one of the recent issues of The Scrapbook Magazine. The layout was by Kathleen Glossop and she had used three photos at the bottom right corner of the page, and placed the title to the left, and I thought it looked great so gave it a go myself. In my ‘ready to scrap’ box, I had already printed out these photos of Abbi blowing kisses so they were the perfect choice for this particular design.

Given the fact that the sun has been shining down upon us lately, which I am entirely grateful for, I was in a mood for bright, playful, summer colours. I picked blue for the background, like a clear sky on a summers day, and chose pink, green and orange as my core colours to embellish.

Because the bottom right of the layout has a lot of photos and embellishments, I decided to add these in layers as this gave the layout more depth and interest. Using sraps of pattern paper, I cut shapes and frames to lay under the photos to act as a way to both anchor the pictures to the page, and link them to one another. This is a great way to avoid that abstract ‘floating on the page’ look. Plus, the faux stitched frame around the whole page further anchors the whole design together, rather than the top left and bottom right areas looking disjointed. or at least that was the general idea anyway!

Mainly because I was having so much fun with my scallop edge punch, I also decided to mirror the scalloped edging along the main green coloured panel, by using strips of coloured paper at the top left corner, where I created a cluster of embellishments. This cluster also acts as a counter balance to the heavily embellished opposite corner.

Frugal Finds

Did you notice the cute and colourful heart, flower and star buttons? These I picked up at ‘The Early Learning Centre’ last weekend, a whole box for 99p. BARGAIN!! I can imagine that these are going to be used in a lot of my projects. So remember to keep your eyes peeled even when you aren’t in craft stores, as you never know what yo might be able to find.

Also the little pink fabric flowers with gems on them actually came from a batch of fabric which my Granny donated to me many many years ago. The fabric was a salmon colour and in all honesty looked simply horrendous. I’m so glad I decided to cut out the flowers as I have used them on so many projects.

Top Tip

And now a tip for you. You all know I love chipboard, and I have lots of different packets, tins and boxes full of both plain and patterned types. But I often find that when I buy a pack, I may like most of the contents, but there are always some stuff that I can never imagine ever using. The pink arrow which I have mounted my title upon, for example – was a glossy silver arrow with glitter. I loved the shape, but the colours didn’t match and weren’t really my style. So my tip is this, simply cover it in paper that does match! The key is to look beyond the obvious uses for your products and tools, and you will discover that you can make endless variations even with limited supplies.

So there you have it, another layout from me, I hope you like it and don’t forget to leave me a comment here. Kathleen, if you see this, thanks for the inspiration and if you have your page online somewhere, let me know and I will link to it so everyone can see where I found my inspiration.

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