Sunday 16 August 2009

PEAS & CARROTS


Challenge 63 over at Journaling Junkie is to journal how you feel in your heart at this very minute. If you weren't guaranteed tomorrow (as none of us are!) what would you want your family to know?

I created a layout about my husband, and I have never done one just about him before, isn't that shameful???!!! I have noticed the trend for paint & stitching for some time now & been holding off on it for convenience sake, but decided today that the time had come to get down to it! After all, I DO already OWN all this paint...

So I may as well use up what I own at least, & decide if I enjoy it...

Okay so my embossing powders & glitters are also in here but there's enough paint for a fair few layouts...

I also own two {small} drawers full of inks & seem to have been using them less & less lately for some reason, so decided they needed a revival...I think I have just got bored with them so I thought up a different way to use them. I keep (in the lid of my paint box - see top photo - you can just see them there...) a selection of small, flat, plastic packets that I get given with purchases, that I don't put in my boot along with plastic bags I reuse for groceries...because they are too small & flat. I usually cut these open & put them under my work on the rare occassion that I paint. Today I decided to paint & ink ON them (separately!) then turned over the plastic & rubbed/transfered the ink/paint onto my page. I was delighted with the results...kinda like digital masking. This way I don't get the typical brush stroke look & it really is very easy to achieve.

I mixed my inks a bit on this layout too. Using black, yellow, lime & orange. I mix my inks quite often. As long as the first colour has dried I have never experienced my inkpads getting "contaminated" with other colours. I have been stapling for a while now & love the hand-made look staples add to a layout. Of course I always adhere my elements properly first so the staples are purely decorative. I have a box of Making Memories coloured staples but actually prefer the utilitarian look of the original metal ones. If you do like the look of coloured staples though {and already own a ton of grey metal ones} here is a tip for you! While the staples are still in their lines simply colour them in using a magic marker/felt-tip pen & save money on buying fancy pre-coloured staples...I have discovered this works just as well!

As I haven't been able to find any fancy hat-pin type pins to buy here for my scrapping I discovered these fancy pins in my sewing drawer & thought they would give me a similar look.

I also bought a pack of different coloured felt squares over a year ago & decided that I really need to start cutting into them to make embellishments, so I freehand cut a red heart & pinned it onto my layout using 2 of my pearl-tipped pins.

I also printed my own sheet of "Peas & Carrots" printables onto an A4 sheet of white cardstock (just cut down a sheet of bazzill & run it through your printer - works a treat...)

First up I created my title in Word Art then printed it in red with a black outline (Jenni Bowlin style!) then I printed my journalling onto a sheet of butternut bazzill using red ink. I googled "peas and carrots" and found the cutest images ;-D which I then simply cut & pasted into my Word Document (I saved the full sized images just to show you how cute they are up close...) but this is not neccessary for creating a sheet of printables as you save the whole A4 sheet once you have created it in any case...

I was inspired to do this thanks to the online course I am taking at the moment, courtesy of Shimelle Laine over at Two Peas. It's all about maximizing the use of your printer to create yout own embellishments...how cute are these "cards" (so Jillibean soupish...) I printed these out on white bazzill, cut them to size & inked with yellow around the edges. BTW you can resize these images and move them around your page for the most economical fit, as you like in Word.

I transferred the white paint on using the plastic-bag transferring method outlined above but for the vermillion I transferred a small amount of paint into a tiny circular paint container (the kind kids paints come in - about half an inch across) then tipped the whole little container face-down onto the page & scraped down. I was inspired by Wilna Furstenberg to try out this look. She uses it often on her layouts.

I used papers from the Cocoa Daisy July 2009 Rhubarb Pie kit. The backing sheet is Pink Paislee Sweet Cakes Lovey Dovey & the bottom strip I cut from the Sassafras Lass Vintage Yummy Daintily paper. I specially bought a small dictionary & thesaurus at an Exclusive Book Sale so that I could tear out pages as & when I needed them so here I used one with the definition of beauty/beautiful/etc on it. I stitched across in various places although it is not very visible on this photograph (eg:- see top left of photo within layout).

I chose the title from Forrest's famous line in Forrest Gump... "Me & Jenny we was like peas & carrots" as it's one my family loves! The mini-alphas also came with the kit (Adornit tiny alpha - black). The journaling reads:- The way I feel about you right this minute is not much different to how I have always felt about you. From the moment I first laid eyes on you I knew that you were the one for me and since then you & I have only ever functioned properly when we have been together. Truly not a day goes by when I don't stop to think about what a beautiful human being you are & how selflessly you strive to give everything you can to your family.

I love how the paint dried so 3D on my layout. You can only acheive this effect by literally pouring it on & it takes a surprisingly short amount of time to dry, as the area is so small...

Donna Downey kept coming to mind as I was creating this layout & I was surprised at how much I really enjoyed doing it!

I got a bit carried away on the photographs but below you can spot some of the stitching...

And here you get to see the little bling peas I made {and the carrot...LOL}...

I wasn't sure if this look was for me or not but have decided from now on I want to make an effort to stitch & paint more...at least until my paint & thread run out...LOL!


8 comments:

Andrea said...

Another lovely scrappy weekend....scary how we scrap our children all the time but the number 1 man often gets forgotten :-) Sure he will be very chuffed with that layout.

BTW go and have a look at cosmo haberdashery in Durban, it is a tiny little shop down near Albert park (so don't go alone) but they have all kinds of things that can work brilliantly on scrap pages (including pearl head hat pins).

xxx
A

Jacqui said...

like I said before - alwyas interesting!

tania said...

ooohhh, this is very nice helen, oops, yes i also "forget" to scrap my hubby,yes that is scary!!!

Desire Fourie said...

Lovely layout Helen, and even more special because its about your DH.
Hugs
Desire

Lynette Jacobs said...

Sjoe...this is amazing!

Michelle Ramsay said...

Oh wow certainly using lots of different techniques. Very special layout for a very special man.

Diana said...

You sure got creative with this. And I loved how you detailed the process (I love learning about other scrappers' processes...)
I also plan to do a layout for this challenge. I have the photos, the design and the journaling, just have to put it all together. One day this week.
I have a bunch of those hat pin things that have been coming in my Studio Calico kits. I will never use them. I'll send them to you. Shoot me an email with your address and I'll either send them snail mail from here or ask around if anyone's heading your direction who could post it within SA.
I think your traffic feed has me coming in from Miami FL! Don't they know about my little country? Don't they watch track and field?!!!!

topkatnz said...

Well a far bit of experimentation and playing there, and it does seem like you had fun doing it. I'm not sure that it is my favourite layout of yours, but I can see that you will have learnt a bit from the processes that you can use for future layouts. Very interesting stuff.Well done.