More layouts from the June WIP Kit

I've been so busy with school ending that June is getting away from me, and I haven't shared all my Work in Progress layouts. Trish just put the July kit up for sale, but there are still a few more June kits left--such a colorful, happy, summery kit, featuring Echo Park Summer Days and a bunch of other fun, colorful goodies!

Here's a page I made for my book about Farzad's [many] quirks. I randomly number the quirks in this book, and the playing card paper that came in the kit was perfect for this. "Besalamati" means "cheers" in Farci, and Farzad always says it when he's about to drink something, even non-alcoholic drinks.

And a couple of closeups... That little umbrella drink sticker was the perfect thing for my page. I outlined it with a fine tip pen and added the layered punched circles, mounting everything with pop dots. I added some sparkles above the drink to make fizzy bubbles.

I love the woodgrain and cloud papers that came with this kit. I used pop dots to lift up one of the clouds. Again, I outlined the clouds with a fine tip pen, as I did with the other stickers.

Here's another page I made with this kit. When I saw this big ferris wheel sticker in the kit, I was immediately reminded of trips to amusement parks when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure we went every summer, but I only have this one picture of my sister on a giant slide as evidence that we went.

Journaling on the back reads: Sure, we went to Bolivia three times, but with the exception of one trip to Florida and a couple of beach day trips, we never went on any kind of real vacation. I do remember piling in the car once or twice a summer to drive to Kings Dominion or Hersheypark. I remember the thrill of seeing those sky-high roller coasters and the Kings Dominion Eiffel Tower as we approached the park. We'd always go on the weekend because my parents worked and the wait was so long as we snaked through the queue, but the thrill of zooming down the roller coasters was worth the wait. My favorite ride at Kings Dominion was the Rebel Yell, a giant white wood roller coaster. You could ride it forward or backward. Oh, and the Time Shaft, a mind-blowing ride circular room where you'd stand against the wall and the room started to spin. All of a sudden, the floor would drop and there you'd be hanging on the wall! At Busch Gardens, I loved the Big Bad Wolf, a suspended roller coaster, and the Shockwave, a stand-up roller coaster that went in a loop. Love, love, love those loops and the exhilarating sensation of curling upside down. My favorite ride at Hershey Park was the Toboggan, a little car that went straight up a tunnel, so that you were lying on your back, and when it emerged at the top, you'd go down a spiral track that surrounded the tunnel.

Sure, we never went to Disneyworld or the Grand Canyon or any of the other adventurous places other kids we knew went, but to us, these amusement park day trips were pretty exciting!

(This picture was taken in the mid 70's at Kings Dominion , and I think I can spot Dawn on the right.)
 
Here are a couple of detail shots... I added tiny Queen & Company brads to the feis wheel buckets. Man, what a pain that was, I tell you! After I started, I was wishing I hadn't thought of doing this. It was so hard poking the brads into the sticker, and the little prongs on the back were all stuck together. I mounted the giant sticker on pop dots. I outlined some of the elements with a black fine-tip pen.
 

This journaling spot was fun with the little roller coaster. I added some more of those brads to the wheels. I outlined the cars and the card with a fine-tip pen.

Those stripes at the bottom were fun and colorful, but I felt they were missing something, so I added brads in the same colors as the stripes. Yeah, I'm a glutton for punishment!

Thank you for stopping by and reading about my pages!

Color Combos Galore Challenge #166 is Live!

I've been in charge of making the palettes for the past couple of weeks at Color Combos Galore, and it's been so fun! This week's palette is upbeat and lively:

Here is the page I made. It's for an ongoing book I'm making about Farzad's many quirks. I used the Studio Calico kit called Documentary plus some odds and ends from my stash.

Our Designer's Challenge was to create texture and shadow by including dimensional elements. I used lots of pop dots to create shadows (the photo is also sitting on pop dots). And I tried to add texture to my flat elements, too, like using embossing powder on this awesome balloon stamp, and then adding further dimension with the button-topped star.

I pleated the cool Fabrips to create shadows, and I layered lots of elements, along with stitching, for added texture:

To create my title, I used letter stamps with clear embossing powder, and then outlined the letters and cut them out. I adhered some with pop dots to create shadows. I love the little stick-pins that came in the kit and thought the "explore" one was perfect for this page, since that's what Farzad does with the menu--even though he always winds up ordering his tried-and-true favorites.

The green paper I used wasn't in the kit, but it's a Scenic Route pattern I adore and have been hoarding and thought the green was perfect for the palette.

That green element is a long story. It's the cover of a chipboard mini-album that came with the kit. I'm notorious for hoarding mini-albums and never doing anything with them, so I thought this chipboard cover would be perfect for adding dimension. It had a nice embossed design on it, and I had a plan for it. A plan that didn't pan out, but I wasn't going to give up. My plan was to mix paint to give it the perfect shade of green I needed for the palette, and I'd paint the chipboard and then sand it so that the embossed part would be the raw chipboard color.

Well, I painted it and then sanded it, and nothing happened. Ugh. So then I thought, well, maybe if I rub some white ink over it, that would make the embossed pattern stand out. Nope. Okay, what next? How about if I rub embossing ink over it and add some sparkly white embossing powder. Third time's a charm, right? Wrong. I was about to give up and try something else, but I had already designed my page around this element. So I grabbed a woodgrain stamp and black ink and just stamped over top of the painted chipboard, and decided that was good enough. I liked how it kind of looked like wood.

I had a little extra white space to the left of that chipboard that was bothering me, so I added some Magic Mesh. Love that stuff and always forget to use it. I added some blue pearls for more shadows and at the last minute I added that gingham brad.

I hope you like the palette I made, and I hope you'll come see what the rest of the team made and play along with us! Thank you for reading about my layout!

Challenged

I absolutely loved the colors from the last challenge at Color Combos Galore. What am I saying? I always love the colors! And even when I don't love them when I get them in my e-mail box, I wind up loving them as I work on my page. Here's the combo Janet sent us:


And here's the layout I made. Farzad always acts goofy when I get the camera out. And when I ask him to stop and look handsome, here's what he gives me:


Over at How Much Is Too Much?, our last challenge was called 20/20. We had to use 20 patterned papers and 20 pieces of metal. I was scratching my head at the 20 patterned papers part until it occurred to me to make one of those fun little banners I've been seeing a lot lately. Here's the page I made:


I hate how metal scans! Here are some detail shots. I really love Stewart Superior's Memory Mist--they spray on in really vivid color.



I picked up these We R Memory Keepers metal letters for CHEAP at Ross a while back and thought they were perfect for this page--painting metal cars and all. This shot only shows part of them, but you can see they're silver and not the black they appear in the scan.