{Owls, birds & glitter}

Hi, it's Jen N here again today with something a little different to my usual scrapbooking this month. Having had a daughter recently I was in need of some cute decorations for the walls of her nursery. Not knowing whether we were having a girl or boy we kept the walls cream, so when she arrived we had a totally neutral base room which to start personalising the room. We chose a pink and aqua colour scheme and have been gradually adding details over the last couple of months.

 
I have created a set of three pictures to go up in her room, using scrapbooking supplies from the shop. I started off by sketching out a rough design onto a 7x5" area. As you can see I have made a few small changes from the original sketch, but this gave me something to start from. There's a big wall mural in her room which is a tree featuring birds and owls, so the choice of icons was easy, and I took inspiration from the shapes found there and from some clip art and appliqué designs found on a google image search (search for something like owl outline or owl colouring in page to get good results).

 The process of turning the sketches into finished pieces was quite simple. I used the sketch as a template by first photocopying it and then cutting out the bigger shapes and drawing around them on the back of the patterned paper. This project was the perfect way to indulge my love of patterned paper! I used 12x12 sheets with small repeating patterns, but the smaller scale of 6x6 papers would make them great for this kind of project too.

With all the main pieces cut out I started to assemble the design, and glue it all together. To add some detail to the pictures I used American Crafts Wow glitter for a little sparkle. I chose a few areas to add the glitter and applied glue with a cocktail stick so that I could follow the patterns of the paper. It's pretty tricky to photograph glitter effectively, but each piece has several glittered areas & it's a lovely and very pretty effect. Finally I stuck the whole piece to 7x5" white card and mounted with the pink ombre paper from My Mind's Eye.

 I really enjoyed taking my patterned papers outside the box a little this month, and perhaps you'll do the same. I have also been leaving little sparkly trails all over my house, because I tipped a fair amount of glitter onto myself. Whoops! Moral of that story - always replace the lid. See you next month!