Trial and error

Hello ladies, Tracie here.

I've had a very busy August with my son getting married and the arrival of five kittens which a neighbours cat delivered to us!
So, when I finally got a few free moments to scrap, my mind was still full of weddings and kittens! My mojo was out sunning itself somewhere.

Looking around my craft table in desperation I came across my little travel watercolour set and got to thinking that it had been a long time since I'd used paint in scrapping.
My first four attempts went in the bin! (I refused to give up!!)
After a great deal of trial and error though (and working out that most card and paper isn't designed for watercolour and the amount of water I was adding had to be greatly reduced to avoid ruining the paper!) I finally had something passable for a background.
Mostly scribbles and splotches, granted, but passable all the same!

I then dived into my new and very lovely Teresa Collins stamps! By very carefully dabbing watercolour directly onto the stamp with a sponge I was able to get a something I was reasonably happy with, and adapting the amount of paint I was using meant I could get a lovely soft graduated background.

Sticking with the Teresa Collins memorabilia range I built up my layout around the painted bacground, choosing a photo of me and my other half from the aforementioned wedding!

Here's a close up of the watercolour stamp effect with my random paint scribbling!

For my second layout and deciding to stick with the wedding photos (you may be seeing quite a few more of these in the upcoming months - so I will apologise in advance!!)

I loved how the dappled effect of the sun through the trees was highlighting the happy couple, in this photo taken by the brides mum and wanted to use my watercolours to make it a focus of my layout.

Again, I went with the wonderful Teresa Collins papers but I used white paint dabbed through a stencil to create the suns rays,

 I also had some pearlised paints which I used to further highlight the 'rays'

So that's all from me for now, I had fun playing with watercolour and despite having a few disasters will definitely be using them again,
 I would love to see your watercolour layouts so feel free to leave a link to your work in the comments box so we can all have a look at your creations!
Bye for now!

Life is a Journey

Hi all.  I think Claire and me must've been on the same wavelength this month.  I've been thinking about doing a few layouts themed around the journey of my life over recent times, which have been the most challenging for a long time and I thought the papers and embellishments from the Teresa Collins World Traveller range would work well - now in the sale!  (Just love the trims!)

I've been looking up and reading blogs/websites etc which regularly give positive messages a lot of which have really rung true with me.  My first layout is made with one of these images and quotes.

My First layout - Life is a Journey, I decided to blow the dust of my maya road mists and instead of spraying, I unscrewed the lid and randomly dropped the ink over the blank page.   The flowers are made up of papers from the 6x6 World Traveller pad and I used some gloss lustre mod podge over the top.  The finished page is lightly misted over the top with maya road irridiscent.

My Second layout - On my Way (to getting my life back).  This is a short trip I took to Munich with my sister a few months ago.  Again, I dropped ink from the mists bottle and spritzed a tiny bit.  I've used glossy accents over the top of the photo corner and the two labels "Vacation" and "Journey".  Finally, I spritzed irridiscent over the top again.

Thanks for looking and I'll pop back with a few more bits and pieces from the range soon.