Mixed Media Layout & a Simple Tutorial

It's been such a long time since I've actually done anything for TCR, I always find color palettes so much more challenging than sketch challenges. But when I saw the soft blues from Palette #89 (His Room) I willed myself to give it a try although I had absolutely no mojo, and then I found Sketch #187 on Creative Scrappers and an idea started to form. Still, I didn't have the right colors and I guessed the only way around it is to go mixed media which is SO not my strong point, as opposed to my comfort zone of paper-crafting ... so I googled around and got inspired by this mixed media artist Ruby Claire and her amazing video tutotials. After watching some of her vids, I recalled that we did have a workshop on using tissue to create a textured background with Sharon of Scrappingville a few months back. What a great opportunity to put that into good use here :)

Here's The Color Room's Palette #89 (His Room):
 

Here's Sketch #187 on Creative Scrappers:

Here's the result of combining the two with some tips from the video tutorials...

This is a 12 x 12 layout on a plain blue cardstock which is decorated with tissue, gesso, acrylic paint, spray paint, gauze and a whole bunch of embellies. Below are some close-ups. Blooms are Prima. Clapper board chippie sticker from Bo Bunny.

Since this is not my usual style of creating a layout, I'm actually quite thrilled with it although I ended up with paint everywhere, on my clothes and the floor and the table LOL! Note to self to wear an apron!!! It was more of an experiment for me since I'm not so good at visualizing the end result of a mixed media project so I was pretty apprehensive along the way. I guess it turned out pretty ok albeit a little messy. Anyway I'm happy to share the steps I took here, let;s move on to the tutorial...

Firstly, we start with the background....

1. Cover cardstock surface with Mod Podge using a brush
2. Lay on a piece of white tissue (this was a recycled gift wrap! I'm so earth-friendly *beams* LOL!) Do not make it super smooth, we want lots of deliberate creases and folds, leave the edges of the cardstock uncovered or just tear along the edges.
3. Stick on some torn and crumpled book pages (I should've used bigger sheets as they didn't show up much after the LO is done)
4. Cover the book pages with gesso and sponge off lightly with paper towels
5. Stamp on acrylic paint using bubble wrap
6. Spray ink on selected areas, I tried masking with the butterfly but it didn't quite work out LOL!

Next, we'll move on to attaching the photos and embellishing.

1. Cut matching pattern paper to be photo mats, distress the edges with ink and lay them over the bubble stamped and book pages area. I also placed some mesh netting ribbon under the photo mats. Add on a little bit more bubble wrap stamp over the pattern paper.
2. Paste on photos.
3. Add bits of torn corrugated sheet, gauze and some die cut flourishes.
4. Punch a butterfly, distress with gesso and add on to part of the photo. Embellish with flowers over the gauze. Paste a strip of lace under each photo.
5. I wanted to add a touch of a lighter blue, so I used a chalk ink pad and dabbed randomly around the layout.
6. Decorate the butterfly and flower edges with a fine glitter glue. Add on buttons and gems under the main flowers. I also spritz on some blue glimmer mist around the embellishment clusters, just be careful not to spritz your photos! I kinda ruined the bottom left photo with some spritz! I used my hand to cover the photo, bad idea, will use a dry flannel cloth or paper towel in future.

Well, that's it! It's surprisingly quick to do this LO, except for the oh-so painful cleaning up process! Hope you find it helpful somehow :)

Thanks for visiting and have a nice day!

Our Manja Baby Boy TCR Challenge #73

Hi there! Don't you just love this fresh and vibrant palette from TCR?

Here's my layout; scrapping some pictures taken by hubby of myself and Lucas at the park. The "Manja" word in the title means 'precious and pampered' in the Malay language, it's a popular term of endearment here. It's not a direct translation but there's no exact way to translate it actually :)

I'm using GCD Studio Sould Food paper and some other scraps here with lotsa distress ink and spray mists.
Glitter Alphas; Pink Paislee Cherry, round tiny alphas; Jenny Bowlin.




Dusty Attic's chipboard twig painted with TH Distress Ink Pad Spiced Marmalade. Metal star charm; Momoyo.

 

Circle border is from Slice Dilly Dally and then coated with Distress Stickles Wild Honey, birdie chipboard is BG Curio. The flourish border die cut is from Spellbinder's In Spades Borderabilities.

Can't recall where the lace came from but buttons are BG Curio. Daisies are Prima, other blooms are locally obtained. The jute twine came as part of the packaging on a 7G mini album.

"Always & Forever" chipboard sticker by Narratives Antique Love

 Thanks for dropping by, hope you like this :) Have a lovely day!

The Color Room Palette #70 Ever After

Braved myself for another Color Room challenge! Here you go, this is the palette for the week, The Sun Room:


Palette #70 Sun Room


And my layout is dedicated to my hubby and our wonderful marriage in conjunction with our fourth wedding anniversary tomorrow on 11 August :) In fact we took today off to spend some time together without the baby hehehe.

Photo was taken a little after our first anniversary, just before a road trip up north. Patterned papers are MME Stella & Rose and PP Daily Junque. Alphas are PP.

Some close-ups:

Loving the Dusty Attic lovebirds chippie. Painted in gesso and added some glitter glue.

Prima & Kaiser blooms plus gauze, netting and lace.

Got the brass heart and chain from Yee Buttons at SS2.

Tag is Melody Ross, hot air ballon from PP Daily Junque, green tag is CC Odds & Ends. Doily paper layered under is BG.

The pink bloom centres are cut from a lace ribbon.

Well, now that this is done (trying to catch TCR's deadline!), we are off to my mum's place to pick up Lucas. We had a lovely "day off" but we're missing him already :)

Thanks for visiting :) Have a wonderful day :)

TCR Palette #69: Boy I Think You're Amazing!

TCR challenges are always challenging! The standards are so HIGH and I often find myself not having the shades that are on the palette (still a newbie, my stash is still very small). When I saw #69 I decided to try it out, quite an unusual color combo I must say. I had to go and get myself some pool blue paints and new papers... taddaaa ... excuse to shop!

BOY... I think you're amazing!
All the embellishments are Basic Grey Hopscotch chip stickers and office tabs. Patterned paper is an old 7Gypsies Canal Venice. Other than that, we have TA Mist in Turquoise and Adirondack Acrylic paint dabber in Pool Blue, some brown felt, some netting, corrugated paper, a button and a BG brad.

I made this felt button flower; free-hand cutting hehe. It looks really unproportionate actually. The big button did a good job hiding it. Scattered the chip stickers on the corrugated sheet. I had to resist very hard not to use flowers here, I didn't want to girlie-fy the layout too much.

I split the office tab so I can use it twice. Foil chipboard alphas from AC.

Here's the other portion of the office tab.

I got so into the color scheme after I'm done I actually went on and made a card. I so happen to pick up an orange paper from Basic Grey's Life of the Party line (Again! I'm so into BG lately!)


Using up some scraps here, plus I was just dying to use this new Penny Black stamp I got from Cherry On Top.

 

Thanks for dropping in! Have a great week ahead :)

The Color Room Palette #68

TCR palette #68 is so sweet! It's the kind of color combo I love; pinks and browns! I usually play with more boyish or masculine layouts so I was wondering how to play along with this and I found some old photos taken with my mum's princess aka the house pet aka Cuddles the jack-wawa. We call her the jack-wawa because she's a cross-breed between a Jack Russel and a Chihuahua. These pictures were taken back in 2007 when we first got her and she was such an adorable puppy you just want to hold her and shower her with kisses. Now she's so big and hyperactive she won't let you pat her for long before she runs off to chase something.



I'm using a craft background with papers from MME Stella Rose and PP Daily Junque plus a little bit of FP Happy Together (dark brown bits & butterflies) and BG Sweet Threads (pink fussy cut flower on the left). I added some pink acrylic paints to mess-up the layout (turns out too messy?). The brown centre bit is a craft corrugated sheet treated with some TH Distress Stain Dabber in Walnut and coated with some Sparkly Mod Podge. Crystals are from a knit shop in Subang Parade.


Here's palette #68 from TCR:

Here are some close ups:

Fabric flowers from Prima Whisper collection and random buttons. I layered them on some beige netting and a small piece of jute fiber cut out from a jute bag I bought from the dollar store (Daiso)

Title from AC Glitter Thickers, "hello" is a Micia rubber stamp, "sweet pea" is 7G Babycakes rub-ons.

I stamped some butterflies using MS clear stamps with acrylic paint but the effect wasn't quite what I expected so I used the punched out butterflies and netting to camouflage it. If you look at it alone, it's kind of messy-weird I think.

Well, that's my attempt at trying to play with some acrylic paints, uuurghhh I'm still not so good at it :(

Before I go, here's how Cuddles looks like now... past and present:

Cute cuddly puppy (left pic) turned into the crazy mutt (right pic) who chews on everything and chases anything. But we love her all the same.

Thanks for visiting! Have a lovely week ahead!

The Color Room Challenge #64

Here's my layout for TCR challenger #64. The colors in this palette are really pretty and sweet (almost too girly!) and it would be a challenge to scrap a layout for a boy instead of a girl. So here's my take on it, trying hard not to make it too girly so I avoided flowers and butterflies this round.

TCR Palette #64

Yummy Thumb! My lil thumb sucking boy at around 5 months old.

Craft tag stamped and decorated with Crate Paper's Toy Box Stickers. Fan flowers are handmade.

Loving these cotton border trims which I bought from a knit shop!

Handmade flaglines :)

Materials used:

• Patterned papers from Crate Paper Toy Box (yellow), Simple Stories 100 Days of Summer (red) & Pink Paislee's Daily Junque (pink)
• Baby blue cardstock
• Tag ("Remarkable" & "Unique") from MME's Stella Rose, 5" manila tag is Ranger.
• Border stickers from Crate Paper Toy Box
• Paper Artsy Numbers Stamp
• MM Baby Enamel Metal Tiles
• AC Pigment Ink Pad in Rouge & TH Distress Ink Pad in Aged Mahagony
• Liquid Pearls in Baby Blue
• Pink velvet trim bought from Papier, yellow and blue cotton trims from Lily Handicraft in Subang Parade.
• Alphas are Pink Paislee's Sweetness (yellow). October Afternoon & Jenny Bowlin's mini alphas.
• Random buttons and yellow thread

The Color Room Challenge #61

I'm playing along with TCR's pallete #61 for the very first time ever! I love this palette as it's not too girly (I don't get to scrap girly colors cos I usually scrap about my two boys!), so this color combination is simply perfect. I don't actually have anything that matches 100% exactly but I think what I have here comes  quite close.

Here's my interpretation of the pallete, I couldn't use the sketch as I'm working on a single photo and I wanted to make use of the grey Kaisercraft paper I have in my stash. I never would have imagined to use it this way. Thanks TCR for this fabulous inspiration!

The protruding green circle echoes the protruding baby bump!

Heart the Prima crochet doily! The BB Gabrielle butterfly brad goes so perfect with this.

Journal tag made from Slice.

Love the AC fabric thickers alphas!

Can't get enough of the MS Butterfly punch!

Materials used:

• Papers: Kaisercraft After Five Curtsy, MME Stella Rose Gertie Friends Forever,
• Embellishment: Prima crochet doily and flowers, Prima crystals and pearls, Bo Bunny Gabrielle Butterfly brad
• Inks & Paints: TH Distress Ink Pad in Pumice and Peeled Paint, Sticklers in Baby Blue and Eucalyptus, Liquid Pearls in Baby Blue, Buttercup and Silver Pearl
• Alphas: AC Fabric Aplhas in white, MM tiny alphas in Black, 'BABY' is cut from Slice using the Stella Rose paper.
• Butterflies: Martha Stewart Royal Butterfly Punch
• Stamp: Maya Road clear doily stamp
• Die cut Shapes: all from Slice except the green circle which is traced from something else.

I really enjoyed playing along as I never imagined I could come up with this if it weren't for TCR. Plus, I got to use some of odd stuff I have in my stash.