Paper Recollections

It was so much fun to go to the beach in October.  We headed to St. Simon's Island for Fall Break and even though it was overcast the entire weekend, we had a great time. I bought the entire Sunny Days collection and thought it would be perfect for this layout.  I combined it with some older My Mind's Eye patterned paper that I had in my stash.  The colors of both paper collections coordinated perfectly. It has been a long time since I have done a double page layout.  I decided to take it one page at a time.  I took the plaid paper and cut the frame shape using my Cricut machine.  I cut this shape into 2 pieces and used the larger piece of the page pointing downward on the main page and the smaller piece pointing to the right on the second page.  I only had small strips of the Sunny Days mermaid scales paper and gold glitter cardstock.  I used these strips along with a strip of the Indie Chic Forest paper and layered them next to the plaid paper. ...

Today's layout is based on a sketch from Christy's Beautiful Life 30 Days of Sketches Day 10 Round 7.   I love the triangular design of this layout and couldn't wait to pair it with patterned papers from the Me and My Big Ideas MAMBI Sheets Life is Rosy Paper Pad. I used a pink polka dot patterned paper as the background.  For the two triangular pieces, I cut a floral patterned piece of paper and a silver rose foiled piece of paper.  I backed these in black cardstock.  I placed these on the background page pointing towards the top.   I created a banner strip from black and white diagonal striped patterned paper and backed this in black cardstock.  I placed this banner piece across the middle of the layout.  I backed the photo in black cardstock and added a layer of red striped paper and a layer of pink polka dot paper.  I added another layer of black cardstock and adhered the photo on top of the triangular layers and banner piece....

Today's layout features my son's crazy antics and several Vicki Boutin products. To prepare the white cardstock, I covered it with a layer of clear gesso.  Once it was dry, I used a red Vicki Boutin Art Crayon mixed with a little bit of water and applied it through a Vicki Boutin circular stencil using a stencil brush.  I applied this to most of the cardstock and then repeated the process using an orange art crayon.  I used a pallet knife to apply Finnabair Golden Nugget Effect Paste through another Vicki Boutin circular stencil diagonally across the page.  To finish off the background, I mixed black acrylic paint with water and splattered it on the page.  I matte the smaller photo with an orange piece of patterned paper from the Vicki Boutin's 6x8 Color Study paper pad and matte the larger photo with the "Say Cheese" 12x12 piece of paper from the Kaleidescope collection.  I also placed a piece of this paper behind the smaller photo. I used a 2" circle punc...

Today's layout uses the Bokeh technique from Vicki Boutin's Friday Night Live YouTube tutorial. This technique is truly magical, and I knew it would pair well with the stage lighting on my daughter's dance photos.   I started by prepping a piece of 12x12 cardstock with clear gesso.  While the cardstock was drying, I cut a piece of acetate with 3 different sized circle dies, leaving a lot of space in between the circle cutouts.  I scribbled a purple Vicki Boutin art crayon on my nonstick mat and sprayed it with a little bit of water.  I used a stencil brush to pick up the pigment and applied it in a circular motion to the left side of the cardstock.  I repeated this until the whole left side was covered in purple pigment.  Then, I repeated the process using a pink art crayon.  I placed the acetate stencil with the circle cutouts on top of the pigment.  Using a slightly damp baby wipe, I placed it on one of the circle cutouts and rubbed away th...

Today's layout celebrates my daughter's spring orchestra concert and combines several of my favorite things - die cutting and stenciling.   To prepare the background page for the watercolor, I covered a piece of 12x12 white cardstock in clear gesso.  Next, I smooshed Evergreen Bough Distress Oxide Ink onto a piece of plastic packaging and used my Distress Sprayer to add water to the ink.  Using the "kissing technique", I "kissed" the packaging to the white background starting from the top left moving down to the bottom right of the background page.  I dried the background using a heat gun and repeated the process a few more times to darken the color.  I repeated this same process with Fossilized Amber Distress Oxide Ink. After the ink dried, I placed the Vicki Boutin heart stencil diagonally across the top right of the page.  I used blending brushes to diagonally stencil hearts using Abandoned Coral, Antique Linen, and Evergreen Bough Distress Oxi...

Today's layout was inspired by Vicki Boutin's Metallic and Watercolor Live YouTube Tutorial.  This is a fantastic tutorial showing how to make scrapbook page backgrounds using inexpensive watercolors and a foil machine. I followed along with this tutorial to create a fun blue and green water colored background with silver accents.  To cover up the rough edges of the background, I went to Cricut Design Space and layered several brushstroke images on a 12x12 square.  I sliced the brushstrokes out of the square and cut this out of a 12x12 piece of white cardstock.  I inked around the inside edges of the layer using Black Soot Distress Ink to give this layer a little more definition before gluing it on top of the foiled, watercolored background. I printed a 4x6 photo and matte this with black cardstock.  I cut the title using my Cricut machine.  The shell embellishments come from a Momenta Cut and Emboss die set.  I used my Sizzix Big Shot to dry emboss an...

Today's layout was inspired by Vicki Boutin's Friday Night Live Youtube Video: Five Easy & Fun Watercolor Backgrounds .  I used her gesso, saran wrap, and watercolor technique to create the background of this page. You can see this technique here .   After allowing the layout to dry, I used a pallet knife to spread some Brea Reese silver glossy dimension modeling paste through a Vicki Boutin dot stencil to add silver dots to the page. While the glaze was drying, I used Versfine Onyx Black Ink to stamp the three sizes of flowers from Vicki Boutin's Color Study stamp set onto white cardstock.  I used my Brother Scan and Cut to cut out the flowers. I layered several strips of paper from Vicki Boutin's Color Study paper pads and boxed card set.  I also layered two black and white striped journaling cards I had in my collection.  I fussy cut hearts and the camera from the papers in the collection and die cut sea shells from silver matte foil cardstock using ...

What do you get when you combine Sizzix, Vicki Boutin, and a little bit of Tim Holtz?  A beautiful mixed media layout.   Today's layout began with a coat of Vicki Boutin Gesso onto a piece of 12x12 white cardstock.  After the gesso dried, I applied a Vicki Boutin reddish-orange art crayon onto a piece of acetate.  I sprayed it with a little bit of water and used a stencil brush to apply the watercolor mixture through a Vicki Boutin floral stencil near three corners of the layout.  I then used a gray art crayon and applied it onto the acetate. I mixed some of Vicki Boutin's Iridescent Glaze into the art crayon using a palette knife.  I applied the silver tinted Iridescent Glaze through Vicki Boutin's dotted stencil to each of the four corners of the layout.  Finally, I mixed some black art crayon with water onto the acetate and used Tim Holt's splatter brush to make small black splatters onto the page. While the mixed media was drying, I gathered u...

Today's layout is brought to you by the freshly fallen snow that fell last weekend.  My daughter took some beautiful photos and I couldn't wait to scrapbook them.   The inspiration for this layout began with a pile of 3-D embossed holographic snowflakes.  I made these using the Tim Holtz Snowflake 3-D Impresslits.  Next, I looked through my stash to find paper that would coordinate with the snowflakes.  I decided upon the DCWV Cranberry Christmas Premium paper pad. I gutted the inside of the red and white snowflake paper and adhered the one-inch frame of this paper to a 12x12 piece of white cardstock.  I cut one-half inch off each side of the gray reindeer paper and centered this paper on top of the red and white snowflake paper.   I had two large scraps of paper that I cut into banners and layered them on top of each other.  I matted the photo using the same gray and white polka dot paper used for one of the banners.  I adhered the...

Today's layout was inspired by @christys_beautiful_life 30 Days of Sketches Round 8, Day 5.  I decided to focus the layout on my daughter's college move-in day.  The Scraptember challenge for this layout was to use a themed collection for a non-themed layout.  I used the B-sides of the papers from the Echo Park A Boy's Life collection.  I started by printing three 4x4 photos and backed these in gray cardstock.  I cut an 8x10 piece of blue and white striped paper, inked the edges with Hickory Smoke Distress Oxide ink, and backed it in navy blue cardstock.  The large banner piece measured 3.5x11.  I inked the edges of this strip and backed it in gray cardstock.  The smaller plaid horizontal strip measured 2x11.  I ripped both of the shorter edges of this strip, inked the edges, and backed it with navy blue cardstock.  All these items were layered on top of creme grid paper which was also inked with Hickory Smoke Distress Oxide ink. To...

Today's layout was inspired by Day 13 of @christys_beautiful_life 30 Days of Sketches Series 8.  Today's star sketch was created by Lottie Loves Paper.  The Scraptember challenge for this sketch was of course stars.  This layout was a labor of love as it took me all week to create it.  I knew I wanted to do some stitching, but I also wanted some color to come from behind the paper.  I designed the larger starbursts and stars in Cricut Design Space.  I cut the starbursts from a 12x12 piece of black cardstock.  The stars were cut from holographic cardstock. I popped up the larger solid stars using black foam tape. After gluing the rest of the stars to the black cardstock, I used a ruler and a pencil to draw in the rest of the lines in between the stars and radiating out from the center of the layout.  I used an embroidery needle and silver sparkle twine to stitch over the pencil-marked lines.  I filled in the rest of the spaces with assort...