Monday 27 January 2014

Inspiration Board Challenge: January 2014

Hi Everyone

The Holiday season has truly come to an end and it's back to work for most of us. Things are slowly getting back to normal and as such we have to prioritise to set some time aside to be creative. Saying that, I apologise for my absence during the last 3 weeks.

Today, I'd like to share the January Inspiration Board challenge from Scrapbook Creations Magazine. Have a look below or hop over to their blog following the link by clicking on the image.

http://scrapbookcreationsmag.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/inspiration-board-challenge-january-2014/#comments


I really loved the idea of different filters, and the photo of the colourful umbrella in the main image. It immediately reminded me of the photos I took of the hill tribes, visiting Sapa, Vietnam, in 2011. It rained on both days I was there and my guide did all she could to seek out some sunlight, by calling up relatives in nearby villages for a weather report.  We found our sunny or rather non raining areas, but the occasional showers just could not dampen our enthusiasm.

Pondering my layout and design I came up with the idea to convert my photo to black and white and then extract the colours of the umbrella in Photoshop Elements. The idea of the background originally came from an empty candy box wrapper which was stained by colours of the candy the inside. I loved the idea of all the bright colours on the white background,  but was unsure about how I would recreate it. It was then that found a beautiful tag made by Elieen Godwin on Pinterest. I just loved what she has done with the paint splatters and it was perfect for my background. I would strongly encourage you to go and hop over to her blog because her work is absolutely fabulous.

My take on the inspiration board challenge:





Step by step:

          Background:
  1. At first I played around with a couple of sheets, creating splatters of distress stain, by whacking them down on white American Crafts Cardstock. It took a bit of practice and can be a bit messy, but it's loads of fun, so do give it a try on your next layout.
  2. When the ink was completely dry I put a copy of my photo, which I printed at home on my background to see how it will look.
  3. I wanted to add some black and decided to spray a doily with Black Raven Starburst Spray. Once that was dry I again placed the photo and oily on the background and marked the position of the photo.
  4. I then used black Archival ink to stamp random flower patterns in the ink splats around the photo.
  5. To highlight the stamp images, I carefully coloured some sections of the stamps, using a white gel pen.
  6. Finally I lightly sprayed the whole page with Black Raven Starburst spray.

    Border:
  7. To create the border, I measured approximately 6mm around the page and carefully stick half a strip of washi-tape on the background, folding the other half backwards.
  8. I then measured a half an inch from the washi-tape line and draw a faint pencil line all around, and hand draw some balloon type shapes in each corner.
  9. I ran my Sew Easy tool against my guidelines to create stitching holes along the borders.
  10. Stitching holes for the balloon shapes in the corners was created manually with a piercing tool.
  11. Using some black sewing thread, I folded the thread 4 times to create a thicker line and sew the border by hand.

    Title:
  12. The Title was simply done by rub-on text I had in my stash, while the subtitle was made from shrink plastic.
  13. I firstly typed the word in Paint and reversed the text before printing it onto the shrink plastic.
  14. I then cut the shape and made a hole in it prior to heating it up for shrinking purposes.
  15. Once the shape was cooled, I colored the back using alcohol inks from Ranger.

    Embellishments:
  16. The little white flowers was made from the flowers from doilies that I cut and layered.
  17. These were then added to the stemple flowers I fussy cut and glittered with some Ice Stickles.
  18. I also added a piece of red Sew Easy thread randomly over the page.
Products:
Cardstock - American Crafts
Ink: Distress Stain - Ranger, Starburst spray - Lindy's Stamp Gang; Archival Ink - Ranger; Alcohol inks - Ranger
Stamps: Prima
Washi Tape
Rub-on Transfer letters
Black Thread, Sew Easy thread
Hessian
Material and bead embellishments from Vietnam and South Africa


2 comments :

  1. Your photographs are amazing, and the scrapbook layout is truly a work of art. Blessings!

    ReplyDelete