Making a Poinsettia Flower with Cheese Cloth

Over at Off the Rails Scrapbooking Challenge Blog I've shared my youtube video of making a Poinsettia out of cheese cloth for the current challenge "Create Your Own Embellishment".

There are great prizes on offer for this challenge from our fantastic sponsor Prairie Bird Boutique. 

You still have another week to enter so get creating those amazing embellishments!

Follow the link HERE to the blog and join in the fun.

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FIONA

ScrapFriends Colour Challenge #21 Jan-Feb & Berry71bleu Feb challenge "Mixed Media"

This is the first time I've entered either of these challenges. I've entered ScrapFriends sketch challenge before but never their colour challenge and Berry71bleu is a whole new experience for me but I loved their theme this month "Mixed Media".

So I created this. I've also made a little video of the steps taken to get the background affect with water colours, gelatos and gesso. You can view it in the "My Tutorials" tab or by the link at the bottom of the page.

Zeneva Kovic, over at Scrapfriends provided us with an amazing colour wheel and mood board. I picked up on the Raspberry, Lilac and yellow in the wheel as my feature colours and then mixed the grey and plumb in as highlights.

I also edited my photo to depict a Deep Pink sea so as not to add too much blue to the page. From the picture I took the texture of the hanging lights and transferred this onto the page by using lots of different mixed media techniques and corrugated cardboard cut outs and backing paper.

I included the chevron in two ways. The modelling paste with my little chevron stencil and the chevron washi tape strip underneath the photo.



I wanted this page to be really different from anything I've done before and to really focus on the mixed media aspect. A lot of water colour work makes up the background along with stamping and stencilling. I'm a painter from way back and so I'm not fearful of using acrylic paint on my layouts but water colours are a different medium all together!

All of the background is created by water colour, Gelatos and gesso. You can see it unfold on my "making of" video in the tabs section called "My Tutorials" at the top of my blog.

I've given depth to the page by adding 2crafty and UmWow Studio chipboard pieces. I've coloured them using Gelatos and adding a little bit of water.

I made a paper ring from scrap card to create the big circle and I used smaller rolls to create the other circles. They were transferred onto the page using black gesso, water colour or gelatos. I finished the page off with a Tim Holtz background stamp "Honeycomb" and splattered some watered down black gesso.

This was a scary page for me. It could have gone very pear shaped very quickly. There are of course lots of things I'd do differently next time but overall I'm pretty happy with the end result.

I can't wait to try this type of layout again. I think I could easily get addicted to a Mixed Media dominated style of Scrapping!

 

White with "Grape" February Challenge

I Love U

Grape hey??? Never in my whole scrapping life have I ever used purple. Not a lie. NEVER. So when I say "challenge" in this instance, I really mean it. But ........ I have to say after all the stress I went through planning this page, I actually think it's o.k.

White With One had some awesome inspirational DT pieces to share and this certainly helped alleviate my stress a little. I do love their challenges. Before I discovered them I rarely only stuck with one main colour. I've found that the challenges have shown me how to reign in my tendency to over colour my pages in the past and I have to say that every piece I've designed for these challenges so far are a few of my current favourites. It is also for some reason the first challenge I do at the beginning of each month. I think I love how it's straight to the point. My mind can work with that well!

I struggled to find purple anything in my stash but luckily I had Dyan Reaveley's  Ranger Dylusions Ink Spray "Crushed Grape". Talk about perfect!

I sprayed, stamped and stenciled the background until I was happy with the effect. Then I started working on my papers. They are scruffed, gesso'd and punched to make them look grungy to go with the background. I also used a collectable's frame from Kaisercraft "The Lakehouse" collection. It was a cornflower blue colour so I sprayed it grape! and wiped the excess off with paper towel. I also sprayed a white Prima flower.

Another Kaisercraft piece I used was this wooden flourish flower. I roughly painted it with white gesso and then while it was still wet, I sprinkled white embossing powder over it. When heated it reacted with the gesso and left a gnarly lumpy affect that I just loved.

The feathers I collected off of the beach on a recent little weekend holiday at the beach. I love the way designers are incorporating feathers into their work recently and have been desperately wanting to give it a go.

I love this photo of my daughter. She's the selfie queen as most 19 year old girls are. I'm thankful for that because I get a huge variety of Instagram photos that I can scrap. Now I just need to get my 21 year old son to do the same. Hmmmm now that'll be a challenge.

Again I find myself with a page I'm really chuffed with that I didn't have much hope for in the beginning. Thank you White With One for pushing me out of my comfort zone once again.

Cheers

Fiona

Join me on Facebook at Pastiche Scrapbook Studio fb page

Off the Rails Challenge "Loved One" February

"Loved One"

Hello again. In this post I'd like to share my contribution as DT member for Off the Rails Scrapbooking Challenge Blog. The theme is use a photo or memorabilia of a loved one. This is my take on it.

I used a very old photo of me with my mum on Christmas morning with my Dolls House that I got from Father Christmas (Dad made it). I have many fond memories of playing with this dolls house and even though it wasn't as big or fancy as some others I still loved it very much. Only now do I truly appreciate how much love and time must have gone into making it. I wish I still had it but as we all do, it was thrown away many years ago when I "grew out of it".

As i mentioned, the photo was taken a very long time ago. In the 70's in fact. I think i would have been 4 or 5 at the time of the photo. So I decided to go with a bit of a 70's devour theme. I had been hording this amazing piece of 12x12 paper for exactly this photo but had never had an inkling to do anything with it. Until now.



Such a fun page to create. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope you enjoy it too.

Pop over to Off the Rails Scrapbooking challenge blog and check out the challenge. The prizes are amazing. This time round the challenge is sponsored by Fancy Pants Designs. I just love their stuff. The prize that you can win is amazing. It includes the beloved collection kit, buttons, decorative bags and ephemera pack!

Good luck xx

Fiona

Scrap it With Attitude February challenge

Scrap it with Attitude

I'm so happy to have been asked to join the Scrap it with Attitude team on face book as a designer. I already know a few of the team from Off the Rails Scrapbooking Blog and I knew that if it was anything like Off the Rails, that it would be fun to be a part of. I was right. The February Challenge was my first contribution and it was soooo much fun to do.

Here is my take on it.

The theme was "Love" and the colours chosen to use were simply divine. 

I used a Sketch from ScrapFriends (I just love their unique and amazing sketches) and I was ready to start creating.

I had a pretty nice photo of my darling husband (lol) that I'd wanted to scrap for a while now and the theme suited it well but the colours I was concerned about. Then I had an idea As I do! What if I made the page very geometric? Because that will often make a page look more masculine regardless of the colours.

Most of the triangles are cut from patterned paper (scraps mainly). The smaller triangles are made from Shrinky Dink. I Googled some patterns that would suit the layout, used my technical skills (ha ha) and created triangles to print onto the shrinky dink plastic. It prints through a printer well but you have to lower the colours by about 70% or they come out too dark. Remember with shrinky dinks, everything is 7 times. 7 times smaller, 7 times thicker and 7 times darker.

I also used a chevron washi tape from Kaszazz and small chevron stencil to add some texture to the layout over the triangles. Some black watered down gesso paint splats finished it off.

I'm pleased I managed to incorporate a masculine photo with such sweet colours and an even sweeter theme.

Pop on over to the Facebook page for the current challenge at Scrap it with Attitude and give it a go.

Cheers

Fiona
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Guest Designer at ScrapFriends for February

Guest Designer

February sketch challenge

Again I have to say what a privileged it is to be asked to be a Guest Designer over at ScrapFriends. The sketch number #22 was so much fun to play with. Zenova so cleverly put together a perfectly balanced sketch. I didn't go with love hearts, because my girl is a bit of a tomboy at times and I added lines of ribbon, arrows and so forth over the paint drips but that's me, I always struggle knowing when to stop.

I've put together a full step by step tutorial of how I put this page together so if your interested, follow this link over to the Off the Rails Scrapbooking Challenge Blog.

Here are some close ups of the layout.

For a full tutorial follow the link HERE to Off the Rails Scrapbooking Challenge Blog.