Short and Sweet

Hello all, and welcome to February.

This month I played with a mix of papers from October Afternoon, Farmhouse and Crate Paper, Paper Heart, I also chose to play with the fab Alphabet Pattern stamp from Studio Calico and some Jillibean Soup Journaling Sprouts.

I've had this photo of Drew taken at Clarks Since January 2010 and hadn't got round to scrapping it. Part of the reason for this is that it's not a great quality picture but mainly because I don't like the colours on the card you get from the shop. Silly I know, but that's me! Instead of trying to find papers to match the pastel colours of the card, I decided to create a bright and random background myself. I used various coloured mists dripped down a piece of white card (which I then turned so that the drips were horizontal). I used a bubble wrap stamp, a roller stamp in a grid design, some paint dabbers and a pen lid dipped in black paint to make the background busy and colourful. I then cut strips of different papers and stamped over them with the alphabet stamp and black ink, and positioned these across the page, stapling some of them in place. The journalling sprouts were made a bit more interesting by layering them with hand cut circles of patterned paper and a circle cut from the stamped alphabet. I raided my thickers collection to create the title. I love making my titles from half used packs that are no good to use on their own. The key to getting it to look good and not just a random bunch of left over letters thrown together, is to use 1 type of alpha as the main style and make sure it is used in every word. Here the yellow is my main style, with some red and a green used to make up the missing letters.

On the next two pages I used the fab alphabet stamp directly onto my back ground. Firstly I used brown sugar embossing powder onto kraft for a subtle effect. If the stamped image doesn't come out evenly it doesn't matter when used in this way as it just creates a distressed background. This time I used the journalling sprouts layered with patterned paper as bunting.

On my final page I used clear embossing powder and the alphabet stamp all over the white card background. Once it had been set I reheated small areas and added a sprinkling of teal powder before heating again. The teal powder bleeds gradually into the clear powder and gives a blurry edge.
For my title on this LO I used the left over card from the Studio Calico alphas as a stencil mixed with some green thickers, which I coloured a couple with black permanent pen. The journaling sprouts were again layered with patterned paper and used as embellishments behind the photo to make it stand out from the background. I've included a pull out tag that has journaling on.

A very short and sweet (and late) post from me this month. Next month I'll be back with more, and updates on the New Year, New Me.... which is going (very) slowly in the right direction.
Check back soon to see what the rest of the team create, and don't forget to play along with our monthly challenges for your chance to win a £20 voucher to spend in the shop. And with Sarah and Lianne away at CHA buying new beautifulness for the shop, you'd be mad not to join in.

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