Unicorn Dream | Elaine King | Sparkle

Good morning one and all

Today I am bringing you a layout using lots of sparkle as per the April Prompt over on UK Scrap Addicts Blog ... I hope you can join in too?  

Firstly I took a sheet of sparkly pink glitter cardstock and used it as a mat for my trimmed down white card background. Now I don't know about you but I find sticking to glitter card is impossible...so to get around that I used wet acrylic glue..Pinflair in this instance. 

Then I took my white card, purchased from Crafts4Eternity . I buy their card stock because they  stocks a 300gsm card that twists and warps far less when using wet mixed media.  I punched out three 'chomped' pieces of the border using a Martha Stewart punch. 

I then drew three concentric circles with a sparkly Kaisercraft gel pen purchased from Merly Impressions. These are my 'Go To' pens for journalling and anything sparkly. I then drew random little hearts using the same pen along the three lines of the circles and added lots of sequins. 

Finally I matted the photograph and added a piece of Unicorn paper (and one other) from the Dream Big collection from Simple Stores that I got from Hey Little Magpie using some of the ephemera from the collection too. I raised the photo up on foam pads for extra dimension. 

Hey presto, one quick and easy layout with lots of sparkle. I do hope this inspires you to give our prompt a try..have fun!

Chilly Day: Punches: Elaine King

Good morning everyone! 

I hope today is a little warmer than when this photo was taken! Brrr! 

Anyway, today I am bringing you a layout created using some of my punches. It was nice to dig them out again..It is something I often overlook..how about you? 

To start with I chose this collection of Simple Stories, Winter Wonderland. Sticking with the UK Scrap Addicts January theme of No Cardstock.. (I know, I know, its the Feb prompt I'm supposed to be promoting..lol) I started with a piece of the wood grain paper to use as my background. I bought this collection a while back now from Pretty My Page..the shop run by UK Scrap Addicts very own creative team member Lisa-Jane. Se still has a little left in stock..and they are reduced..woohoo! She is moving over to concentrate on her fantastic cut files now so there are bargains to be had!

Anyway..back to the layout.. I then took some long pieces of patterned paper and punched along the edge of the longest piece. I then layered them along the left hand side adding a piece at right angles along the bottom and adding some punched tags tucked under he top at the far left. 

Next I mounted the photo and used foam tape to lift it off the page for added dimension. 

Once this was placed I punched little bunting flags and added it to some bakers twine along the bottom. 

I then punched several snowflakes and scattered them around the edges of the photo and added several stickers from the collection too. 

Quite a simple layout but I managed to use four different punches..shown here. 

Why not have a go yourself and let me know you've got on? 

Have fun

Good morning scrappers! 

This morning I would like to share with you a layout I have made using your September Prompt of 'Paint' for the UK Scrap Addicts Blog 

Now, of course, the ideas for this are endless and it is an easy process to liberally daub paint, either acrylic or watercolours, on to the background paper and see what effect you can achieve. Of course one of the most difficult things about adding any sort of wet medium to your cardstock is that it will have a tendency to curl..which can be very annoying! To counteract this I used tape to stick down the edges to my glass cutting mat before starting adding the moisture to the paper/card. 

I used a heavyweight white card for my background which is 300gsm. I bought this in bulk from by 'go to' supplier Crafts4Eternity.  Of course you can use specialised watercolour paper for this but it does work out quite expensive and if you follow this simple tip you can use regular cardstock just fine!

Now, I'm no artist, but to me the techniques I used were very basic and I can explain a little of how I created the Lavender stems very simply..just follow along. 

To start I took some inexpensive watercolours and mixed some pale mauve paint using reds and blues and a pale grey/green colour. I watered this down quite heavily and painted soft fluid strokes of the two colours horizontally across the page.  I then gently gently painted the stems/leaves onto the background card in upward movements in random directions using a slightly darker, less watered down, grey/green colour. You can see here how I painted across the masking tape that I used to stick the paper to my mat. 

Then I mixed deeper mauve colour using red and blue and started on the flower heads. To create these I used 'bobbling' movements with my paint laden brush in elongated triangular shapes. It really wasn't scientific..just keep your paintbrush moving in these shapes. You will see that these are varying shades of the purple I mixed as each flower head has a different amount of water added to my brush each time. This adds depth and field to the painting. 

Once I had painted all my Lavenders, and allowed it to dry, I removed the masking tape from the edges. Undoubtedly this will remove some of the layers of the card beneath so at this point I cut a border off the edges and matted the entire piece on a piece of dark mauve cardstock. 

I next set about creating the photo clusters. First I die cut two circular photos of varying size. I then used a selection of flowers and leaves to create my clusters and  added the title using Puffy Sticker Alphas that I bought from Lottie Loves Paper 

I hope you like what you see and that this simple tutorial gives you confidence to have a go..what have you got to lose? Do let us know what you think too!

Elaine

xx