Dear Lizzy, Tando chipboard and mess with Katherine

Hi everyone!  I was trawling the internet for some inspiration and have sometimes watched a little Vicki Boutin over on her Facebook channel and found some of the videos from her Facebook live.  I love the mess that she creates and beautiful backgrounds....and it inspired me to get my gesso out, my mists and have a go at a technique that I haven't used in a long while...some of you my remember a class using this technique several years ago!

Essentially I gesso my cardstock so that the watery mist doesn't seep in...I use a credit card and just get a really thin layer of paint.  Now it does curl when it dries - I have known people to iron out the curls...but they do flatten in an album and a bit like the end result you have to just go with it!  I added some spritz of just water first and then had 3 mists - a pink tattered angel, blue and gold Bobunny mist - all colours taken from the Hear and Now papers .  I spritzed, added some water - the fold has something in it that seems to repel the other mists a little too which is lovely.  In some places I took off a bit of the pile of colour with a gauze which I then used behind my photo.  So lots of fun and then drying with my drying tool which creates all the little trails of colour around the page as you can push it around.  Next the chipboard - I did base coat it with some gesso, then for the Tando clouds I added clumps of texture paste and for the ship a couple of watercolours in broken china and abandoned coral.  The title is from a super Thicker holiday set...a little bit of distressed Hear and Now paper layers.

Here you can see the texture paste and white paint on the Tando clouds.

As you heat dry the mists you tend to get dots of white if you have used a metallic mist which I really love and went well with the watery background.

Dear Lizzy with Mel

I had a lovely time at Ann's crop on Saturday playing with the new Dear Lizzy Here and Now collection, I was particularly in love with the gorgeous gold Thickers. (Find the collection including the Thickers Here)

I used them on two layouts, a title for one and a whole lot of them on the other page.

The first layout features a photo which I have wanted to scrap for ages but struggled to find the right colours for. The pinks, purples and blues in the papers worked just perfectly the photo. I opted for a clean and unfussy design to let the photo do the talking.

For the second layout I had a real "aha" moment as this paper could have been made for this photo, I needed the pop of green from the header strip and so cut the equivalent off the bottom edge which gave me the gorgeous strip with all the colours. I was playing about trying to decide which of the Thickers to use when Antonia came up with the idea to use "all of them" - well as many as would fit on the pink section!

I'm a bit disappointed that the gold on some of the thickers hasn't photographed so well but I can assure you that in real life they are lovely.

Do take a look at this months Design Team Inspiration Gallery as the ladies have all been playing wth this collection and the gallery is gaining new additions often!

February Virtual Crop Class 3 with Mel

Hello and welcome to the last class of todays virtual crop. This month I was working with the Bo Bunny Faith range and, as with the Believe range I  loved the colours and was keen to show that we are no always constrained to use papers based on their intended them. Neither of my pages are faith themed and I hope you will see how with a little creativity these can be used by anyone to showcase photos on a wide range of themes,

Here is one of my pages, for the other page and full instructions click here.

Do come over to the ATDML # Create Facebook Page to share your layouts either from the Virtual Crop or the scraplift challenge or even just what you have been working on this week.

February Virtual Crop - Class 2 with Katherine

Hello everyone, here is my class using the beautiful Pink Fresh line Every Day Musings....the papers are lovely.  The class includes 3 pages, and you will have enough for a 4th page too as the kit is packed with papers.  If you are up for getting your paints out you can make your pages messy, equally if you don't enjoy painty bits then just skip those steps.

I hope you enjoy the class and the pages and look forward to seeing your creations.

You can find the class here....

February Virtual Class by Karen Leahy

Welcome to another virtual crop and I have three pages for you in my class today.

The kit contains some gorgeous papers from the Graphic 45 Princess collection and. as always with Graphic 45, the papers are double sided and super thick and lush.

They are very heavily patterned and themed but I wanted to show in the class how such papers can be really versatile too and so the three pages are very different in style. Sometimes papers which are very themed and patterned can be daunting - hopefully this class will show you they can be flexible.

This is just one of the pages from the class and once you download the instructions you will see pictures and instructions for all three pages.

If you haven't bought the kit you can, of course, play along with your own papers too.

You can download the full instructions HERE and please do upload what you create to our facebook Gallery HERE

Mixing it up, using old and new stash!

Like many of you I like to collect beautiful bits of paper and ephemera, this month I've really enjoyed  digging through my embellishment box and using older items with some of the beautiful new lines that are in the shop.  For this first page I used Just a Little Lovely papers from Pink Fresh - they have all the watercolour done for you - I did add the gold mist flicks but no other paint on this page!  I used some of my older stash for layers - so a layer of patterned vellum and some hessian ribbon.

I used up some of my typewritten little word stickers - I wonder about using these up as a feature on a page - all the little phrase stickers that you end up collecting and I forget to look through and dig out!

For the title I used a Vicki Boutin collection of die cuts - I have loved this pack and am still working my way through it.  It has lots of embellishments with wonderful phrases on in all sorts of colours, so you can find something to match most collections!

Another really good use up of old with new is with colour - so this beautiful paper from the Simple Stories Hey Crafty Girl teamed up with buttons, washi and embellishments that haven't been dug into in a while!

I tore off little strips of washi - and added in a few more of the word stickers that I could find.  This paper collection is beautiful - do check it out in the shop!

Finally a really good chipboard use up!  Again this is a Pink Fresh, no mess watercolour base (not even flicks this time!), but it also goes really well with the Midnight collection from Cocoa Vanilla....I'd used a few frames from the back and challenged myself to use as much as I could - so lots of layering, few more words and here is what I came up with!

I hope you've enjoyed a little tour of my pages from January's papers - do keep sharing your beautiful pages over in our Facebook group - it has been lovely to see them all.

Scrapping through the storm

Storm Ciara is having a field day with us today. The 84 mph winds have taken down our fences and I am fed up of getting soaked retrieving them. So what better way to beat the storm blues than to scrap with awesomely sunny papers.

The new Dear Lizzy Here and Now is gorgeous and bright and beautiful and it sure does cheer up a winter day.

The pink just seemed as if it was meant to be flamingo bright and the little journalling card couldn't have been more perfect.

I hope wherever you are you are staying safe in the storm and do have a look at Dear Lizzy Here and Now to brighten your winter days.