Mixing it some more!

Welcome to day two of my little jaunt into mixing papers from different manufacturers. Today I'm back with a girly layout....although given the photo I used, that is debatable I suppose ;)

Here's my completed page:

Please click on any pictures to view a larger, detailed image

The Spiffy Mustache paper from the gorgeous new Times & Seasons line from Echo Park was the instant inspiration for my page - as soon as I saw it I remembered this pic of Lou and I getting a bit hairy at the March retreat, and had to scrap it! That being my starting point,  I wanted to create a page with contrasting male/female feel to reflect the ladies in 'taches (!) theme, so in addition to the vintagey bold black print I went riffling through my pile of recently purchased stash with one thing on my mind - pink!!

After pulling out about 12 sheets of paper form various manufacturers, I settled on this little lot:

1. Spiffy Mustache - I misted it with a spritz of Maya's Pomegranate Pink.

2. "Special" from Authentique's Uncommon range-
The muted pink tone had a perfect vintagey quality to it, and the cream spots with typed print inside them worked well with the background of the Mustache paper.

3. "Handpicked " from Crate's Farmhouse line-
This paper had a range of pink colours in its design, which helped balance the darkest tones on my page through to the lightest.

4. "Farmers Market " also from Crate's Farmhouse line-
The strong red pattern is a good mate for the bold black colours in the Mustache paper, helping to balance my design by adding additional deep colour.

5. "Rose bud" from Studio Calico's Autumn Press range - 
This pretty paper's pale background and red flora balances out the range of pinks and red already chosen, as well as adding a pretty, feminine stamp to contrast the mustache images. The shape of the rose buds themselves echo the mustache shapes too - both are roughly triangular in design.

As well as colour, one other factor led me to choose these papers as my final line up from the also look at pattern contenders I pulled out from my stash. If you study each of the papers, they are all made of a diagonal pattern. This is obvious on the two Crate designs, but if you look at the arrangement of the mustaches, rose buds and printed circles on the other papers, you will notice each row of the pattern it offset from the one before, creating a subtle diagonal effect. So in addition to matching mixed papers by colour as we saw yesterday, I have also teamed them up by pattern.

Of course, it is totally fine marry up papers that aren't simply all pink or all red (it just so happens that that's how my particular pages here turned out). The important thing to look for in such a case would be a small element of recurring colour (maybe using embellishment to tie the colour scheme together or one multicoloured patterned paper that can tie several other to it), a similar pattern (e.g. polka dotted paper paired with other spotted/circular designs) or matching by hue (e.g. all soft warm colours, all vintagey hues, all bright colours).

Finally, here's how I created some of the details on my page:

I made the little scalloped border of mustaches by punching out several from the patterned paper, and then sticking them to a spare strip of card (I used the little name strip from the bottom of a sheet of 12x12 - not only was it to hand and the perfect size, but hey, reduce, reuse, recycle people!)

I inked the edges that would be visible to give it a uniform look, and tucked it under one of the papers on my layout to just the bottom half of the circles show, thus giving the scalloped effect.

I wanted to use a mix-mash of overtly feminine embellishments mixed with very bold, black ones, and decided to create the ultimate combination of these two ideas by making a "pretty mustache". I did so by stamping and heat embossing a lacy design in white powder on to some black card as seen below,

before hand cutting a mustache shape from my custom cardstock:

Check out the huge collection of fab American crafts Zing embossing powders here.

I created my handmade flower by punching circles of various sizes from some of my papers already used, and snipping between the scallops to make petals:

I layered them together and away I went:

I also used a variety of stickers, including Authentique Uncommon Diction Mini Word Stickers to create amusing journalling, a gorgeous Jenni Bowlin Bow embellishment and a film strip sticker from the Crate Portrait Border Stickers.

I hope that if it's something you are usually wary of, you'll give mixing up your papers a try! It really is enjoyable and satisfying :)