Play

Whew! Don't you notice how the days pass so quickly when you are busy? Before you know it, another week is over. In fact, I almost didn’t make it to my quota of 1 LO this week. It’s a good thing I had some quiet time last night and got to finish this in one sitting. This LO was done pretty quick (by my standard, that is) because I already got inspirations from Au’s tilted LO using BG Scarlett Letter. What motivated me further was Lee’s Mother’s Day LO. And oh, the inspiration for the three picture layout was also scraplifted from Valerie Salmon's tilted LO which I saw in the slide show of her gotscketch blog.

This may seem like simple but I really got to enjoy this one because like the title suggested, I got to play with it as I went along. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Joann for her great tip on using Foamies. It really did add dimension and interest to what might have been a flat layout. Thank you ladies for your inspirations.

Techniques Used: Distressing and paper cutting.

Materials: American Craft Bookshelf pps; polka-dot pps; Scrapbook Walls Poolhouse stripe pps; Brenda Walton chipboards; Teri Martin Swoosh Lower Case sticker; MM Mixed Font foam stamps; 2mm thk Daris Foamies.

Others: White and violet acrylic paint; EK Success Tag Types; Ribbon.

The Process: While laying out the pictures on the polka dot pps, I noticed that I may need to matt them in white cs to emphasize the photos and echo the white in the floral and polka dot pps. However, I was feeling stingy about using a big portion of the cs just to show a thin matting on all sides. So instead, I decided to distress the pictures with white acrylic paint to simulate the matting, which worked pretty well.

I then superimposed the Bookshelf and Poolhouse stripes pps and simultaneously cut the two in a slant. Why did I opt to cut the stripes in a slant? Because if I only cut a strip of the Poolhouse stripes pps, the 12” length will not be sufficient to reach both ends of the base paper when placed in a diagonal position.

After adhering all three pps, I cut-out several flowers in various sizes and colors from the Bookshelf pps. When I laid them on the paper, I noticed that they looked flat and uninteresting. So I decided to cut some Daris foamies and stick them behind the cut-out flowers to give them height and dimension. Next, I did the same thing with the ampersand which I drew free-hand from the back of the stripe pps and later cut-out.

If you happen to think that the cut-out flowers were all randomly placed on the page, you are mistaken. The group of small flowers on the middle of the page is strategically placed there to cover up an unwanted background in the lower left-hand picture. I decided to cover them up because not only are the plastic garbage bin on the background unsightly, they are also distracting the attention from the pictures.

I used violet acrylic paint on the MM Mixed Font foam stamps and slightly super-imposed it onto the main picture and base pps. Next, I individually glued the Brenda Walton chipboards and attached the cut flowers on the page. To create visual balance between the multiple floral pps on the left-hand side of the page, I placed the title, word journaling, and the biggest and darkest colored flower on the right-hand side of the LO.

As a final touch, I placed a jump ring on the circular tag, stamped it with the date and thread a ribbon on the ring before attaching on the lower left-hand side of the page.