So why did you choose that👇?

 Today I'm back to share a layout made using a bunch of odds and ends 

that I had left over in my hoarder-like chipboard collection 😜 

I thought it migth be a good opportunity to unpack the reasoning behind colour and embellishment choices.

I've been a scrappr for about 25 years now so when I say I have 'leftovers' ...

I mean I have enough to open a small shop! lol 😬 

So I don't reach for the 'perfect' paper to go with a photo anymore... I reach for the ones I can make work from my extrodinaryly large stash of papers, but here's what I found to be true on this journey - with the right colours and some coordinating embellishments it turns out its quite easy to use up all those last few bits of chippies in the bottom of packets, the leftover stickers and the random bits of paper floating around from a long gone collection! 

For example ...

here I've pulled in a hanging light, a bunch of word tiles and a title I had been hanging onto for ages.

 

By inking them all brown it pulled the whole layout together nicely and complimented some of the more pronounced colours on the papers as well as complimenting the tones in the pictures. 

  

But something had to be done to address that giant teal shirt my son has on in the picture - it really dominates the whole scene, so I used a similar coloured paper for the border and linked the photo and borders together by adding this simple chainlink-fence backgound stencil and some teal ink.

I used the large stencil from this set for this page, but I usually use the middle size one for busier layouts with more on them (and the small one for cards). I ALWAYS buy my stencils in sets like this now for this very reason - I love the versatility of size variations. 

Simple, yet so effective for tying 

colours and elements of layouts together!

Next I'm sharing this very busy step card - 

that was quite a challenge for me to make!

 I made it for my wild and beautiful daughter and I was determined to make the card FOR her - which meant it couldnt really be my usual style.  My daughter is increadibly perceptive and if I made her a card in my usual style she would just brush it off as 'mum gave me one of her fussy cards' lol 😆 

So I had to create somethng here that reflected her personality ... 

Wild, messy and free!

The paper itself was more than enough all on its own but I was determined to add in some little touches that showed I had gone to effort. 

One of the Scrapmatts small 'Happy Birthday' titles was perfect for the main content.

And then to contribute to the overall 'messy garden' feel I added in this twig I had left over from this lovely branch and birds set. 

The other embellishments were pretty much just added to give it that 'I just wandered into this field of wild flowers' look. I struggled with how busy this ended up - even the number 'eighteen' at the top I woud have prefered to have mounted nicely on a backing strip and displayed prominitely somewhere, but once again, in an effort to make it less about me and more about the person recieving it, I atempted to relax a bit into a more casual style 💚

And thats it from me today folks... thanks for bearing with me to the end of my creative ramblings. 

I hope you enjoy your own creative adventures until next time. 

Cheers, Kel xo

Achieving that 'painterly' look 🖌

Over the years I've been through a few different phases with my scrapbooking style but one that I just seem to come back to over and over is that lovely painterly look - I just a dore the messy edges and uneven flow of watercolour pigments so I thught I would lean right into that this month and use stencils and watercolour pens to liven up my pages this month.

For this first layout I used the beautiful tile stencil from Scrapmatts to fill in the border around my page.

I still used ink with the stencil (I find it easier to cntrol than actual watercolour paint) but I made sure to load on some edges and leave them unfinished or messy on others... the effect is subtle but really works to give the finished product a nice 'pinterly' feel. 

For my chipboard pieces on this page I simply used  water colour pens that allowed me to layer over sections to make some parts darker than others - giving the pieces that 'flowing' look.

And of course I chose papers that already had some watercolor flowers all over them - 

I just adore this set from Stampin' Up!

I also scattered some of these little gems about the layout to finish off with some sentiment. 

For the next layout I used a set of setncils to create a soft layered background look.

This wonderfully versatile set of stencils gives you 3 different size tress to use in building up a background effect - perfect for this kind of project (and very handy to have around at Christmas time lol). 

I used different colour water based inks to layer in the trees - deliberately overlapping them so they woud have that 'see-through' watercolour look. Another thing I did afterwards was some small water splatters to give them a bit of an extra painterly look (although I think most of this effect eneded up under my photo lol - you can still see a couple of the water marks on the second photo below). 

 

Giving the page a torn border is another way to add a watercolour look to a layout as that uneven two-tone edge is very reminicent of watercolour edges. 

Now I know what you are thinking - why go so much effort to have watercolour elements and not just use watercolour? The truth is that real watercolour is MESSY and you need some serious skills to control the flow of colour and form when using a brush - but these tricks make the look too easy! 😉

I used a classic watercolour look background paper here so the foreground was easy to add some shiloete shapes to and for this layout that meant thse beauful reed and grass chipboards.. 

These guys I couldn't resist adding just because of my 'Love Birds' theme for this page...

And to finish off I used this mix of chipboard words to add a title. 

And thats it from me today - I hope you have a lot of fun experimenting with your own watercolour and painterly styles - if you have any other tips for aching a nice painterly look, please drop them in the comments section below - I'm always keen to add to my bag of tricks! 

Cheers, Kel xo

 

Titles Made Easy With Inks 💥

Hi All, 

well, I'm back again this month with more layouts made using inspiring 

products from Scrapmatts' incredible range of beautiful products.

This first fun layout is brought to life by the fantastic title 

- which was coloured using a very simple technique of layering inks.

Starting with a white sprayed chipboard title, creating a variegated colour look is as easy as choosing two tones of whatever colour you like and then adding the lighter tint to the top of the title, moving towards the centre. 

Repeat this process with the darker tone coming up from the base 

until they blend in the middle of the title. 

To create the sparkle at the top and bottom of this title I then touched up both 

areas with some copper ink.

I did the same thing with the two elements of the sun chipboard as well.

Using the same coloured inks and blending them randomly, I then added the pattern from this stencil. 

The pattern helped to lift the layout by tying together the title and flowers ... 

Scrapmatts stencils are fabulous for this little design trick! 

For this second layout, I decided to just go with a plain title as the patterned papers were 

so dynamic already.... but I did use another stencil just to pull the different papers in the background together and give the whole layout a sense of cohesiveness. 

💛

This cute chipboard title was easily covered with some mat blue ink.

I used the A4 size stencil from this set and a white gel pen to create a pattern

 that blended with the white pattern on the dark blue papers of my layout.

This technique works really well if you are wanting to create some subtle background patterns. 

Gesso or white paint would have been a lot more solid and/or opaque so this gives us a 

lovely muted pattern that looks particularly good with a shabby chic design.

To finish with I added more of these ready-to-use scrap words chipboards to the page.

These make a wonderful alternative to journaling.

And to lift the whole layout I also scattered clusters of these 

4,5 & 6mm Champagne Acrylic Craft Gems around the page.

And that's it from me this time, I hope you have got a few good ideas from this 

post that you continue to enjoy your own crafty journey.

Cheers,

Kel xo