Another newbie!

Hi, it's Tracie here, with my first blog post for Sarah's cards.
Firstly I want to thank Sarah and Lianne for inviting me to join such a fantastic design team and I'm really looking forward to working with some of the goodies available in the fabby shop!

Anyway on to scrapping......
At christmas I received some lovely handmade decoupage cards and it got me thinking about how the same technique could be used in scrapping, especially if the focus was on the photograph rather than the embellishments.
I'm already a big fan of 3D foam pads to give everything depth, so this seemed like a natural progression.

I decided to use the lovely Echo Park 'This and that' range, primarily because the plaid paper matched my son's shirt so well (in the first layout) but also because I loved the wonderful muted colours of the papers.

I started by printing the same photo 4 times. The first I used as a base, then for the next 3 layers I cut out the main subject and sat this on top using the foam pads, I then cut small parts of the image to make the next two layers.
By raising the image I was then able to add string to represent some rope for added interest (and a bit of fun!)

I then knotted some thicker 'rope' to make an embellishment and cut 'rocks' from the vintage fans paper, again layering them for added depth.

On the second layout showing my lovely granddaughter's first birthday party, I used the same technique but this time I cut some of the extra bits (in this case balloons) and brought them out of the photo to create movement

Despite these papers being predominantly for boys pages, I felt that they could work well for a girlie page too (who says girl pages have to be pink?!)

and finally....
despite this technique working best with action style photos, I wanted to show that it can be used on portrait shots too.

This is another of my lovely granddaughters, dutifully posing for her camera-obsessed nan! I swear every time I call one of them now they strike a pose automatically!
For this I used the gorgeous Yardsticks paper to punch out butterflies. The eagle-eyed amongst you will probably spot that I shamelessly cheated and doodled my stitching!

I used the same paper to cut out part of my title (using diesel font) which I did three times and layered as before using my trusty foam pads again! I scrunched the top layer to give the letters a more crooked effect.

So, that's all from me for now, apart from to wish you all a very Happy Easter!

I used the following products:

Vintage Fans	Primer	Dots & Plaid	This & That Charming - Yardsticks
Vintage Boy	This & That Charming - Border Strips	12x12 Element Stickers	This & That Charming - 12x12 Alphabet Stickers

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