VC Weekend Album Covers Challenge 7th Edition

Welcome back to the Album Covers Challenge, it's been a while but this month I chose to look at an iconic album from an artist who has been in the news locally as he finished his world tour with three gigs in Ipswich just up the road from me. Ed Sheeran's X (multiply) album was released in 2014 and remains one of the top 10 streamed albums of all time.

The simple bold design lends itself well to translating to a layout and I chose to take the X motif for my layout rather than the colour palette. Of course the layout needs a photo and embellishment so is not quite a clean graphic copy of the album but the X is the dominant design feature in this page. 

I would love to see what you come up with using this very simple starting point for a layout. Don't forget to head over to the ATDML # Create facebook page for Virtual Crop day chat throughout the day and upload your take on this challenge to the album cover challenge to the gallery.

Come back at 10am for Ann's Class.

VC Weekend Album Covers Challenge Edition 6

Welcome to June's Album covers challenge, I can't believe this puts us at the half way point of our album covers challenge.

This month I was inspired by an album that reminded me of my teenage years. Much the same as the No Doubt album from February anything by Blur, regardless of the release date reminds me of my late teen and the Brit Pop years!

This album was released in 2000 and is a "Best of" compilation, it's album cover is clean and simple but also pays homage to the 1982 Queen album Hot Space

From both of these albums I took the grid of four design. The rounded font on the blur album reminded me of some silver thickers I had so I went ahead and used those over the grid of four photos on my layout. They are however a total pain to photograph so for clarity, all the lettering is the same silver font.

This will probably be the simplest layout I put together all year - four 5" photos with the edges inked, white cardstock and on top of that the acetate cover from a pack of Vicki Boutin Mixed Media paper and some thickers!

I loved the colourfulness of both the album covers and so I mirrored that by choosing these photos of graffiti at the East Side Gallery that Isabelle took on her trip to Berlin this year.

I do love a grid although I more frequently use a grid of 9, 16 or even 25 but I was reminded of a layout I did a while ago with a grid of 4 which I am adding below for a more visually calm example if the graffiti and the colourful acetate background is not your thing!

Virtual Crop Weekend Challenge - Album Covers Edition 5

Welcome to this months Album covers challenge. My album of choice this month is Bowling for Soup Drunk Enough to Dance. I love this album because of the interesting design, because the title speaks to me (I NEVER dance unless I have had a good few drinks first!) And finally because one of my best festival memories is getting right to the front row of the crowd for Bowling for Soup, enjoying a cracking set and then being lifted over the barrier by security to get out afterwards as the next band due on were rubbish!

So here's the cover...

For my layout I used the four vertical elements to include three photos and a journaling box. I did give some thought to adding quirky angles to my photos but in the end decided to offset the position instead.

For my title I added a two line title in different fonts.

As soon as I chose this album I knew which photos I wanted as I had already printed the 5x2 vertical images of Isabelle climbing and jumping off the pillars at Ferry Meadows. However because they were quite small I felt like the whole lot needed to be contained in a smaller space so added the doodled border 3/4" around the edge.

I ended up using very little patterned paper which meant I could use up some scraps from the Studio Calico Yearbook range from several years ago. In my stash I had some of the Bramble Fox perspextives including the sub title pieces as well as the arrows, chevron and camera.

I hope you enjoyed this months album cover challenge, do head over to our Facebook Group ATDML # Create this weekend for the Virtual Crop on Sunday and if you have a go at the Album Challenge do upload your layout to the Album Challenge Gallery.

Virtual Crop Weekend Challenge - Album Covers Edition 4

Hello and welcome to the April edition of our Album Covers challenge.

As this is posted I am at the retreat so I am scheduling this post in advance.

For this month I chose the untitled album from Blink 182 released in late 2003. I loved the modern pop art style and zingy high contrast colour palette.

For the layout I wanted to stick pretty close to the origianl design substituting a photo in place of the smiley face and bringing the smaller circle (face outline) down a little to allow my title and embellishments to feel connected rather than floating apart. Initially I was going to replicate the black title on cream wonky cut card pieces but I found a title in a perfect colour to work with my photo and caved in and used that!

I used inks to create the blocks of colour and added drips of the pink and black.

I cut the circles and arrows on my silhouette but if you wanted to recreate this but didn't have an electronic die cutter you could replicate this with a manual circle cutter or even draw round something circular and use a thick tipped pen to create the circle.

I found the suitcase and globe in my Paige Evans Horizon stash and the title was from the Horizon puffy thickers sheet.

I hope you enjoyed this months album cover challenge, do head over to our Facebook Group ATDML # Create this weekend for the Virtual Crop on Sunday and if you have a go at the Album Challenge do upload your layout to the Album Challenge Gallery.

Virtual Crop Weekend Challenge - Album Covers Edition 3

Hello, it's Virtual Crop weekend which means it's time for the third instalment of our Album covers challenge.

This month I was inspired by an album from a group I love, they were one of the few groups that my husband and I both liked way back when we first got together and in those days we did a lot of driving most weekends following our football team so they provided the soundtrack to many a road trip.

Parallel Lines by Blondie was released in September 1978 and was their third studio album. I love the striking black and white stripes which provide the background to this album cover and the pop of red they used for the title.

For my layout I decided to keep the black and white strips but add them onto a kraft background. I cut long banner shapes into the kraft cardstock so that my black and white strips of cardstock would sit behind rather than on top of the kraft cardstock.

I knew that I wanted a black and white photo to keep the colour to a minimum and allow me to purposefully choose which colour to add. As the band are all wearing black and white using a black and white photo echoed this nicely.

Initially I had planned to look for a red alphabet in a font similar to the one on the album or to cut a similar style font but in the end I used the Letterman Thickers (one of my favourites) as they mirrored the font used by Kaspa's Restaurant so tied in with the subject of my layout.

For embellishment I did add a little more than just red but I felt that the little border strip with the yellow, aqua, orange and green just gave the over all effect a little boost.

I was really pleased to find the "Gather"  perspextive in my stash which worked well on the layout, we are excited to be becoming a stockist of Bramble Fox products and those of you joining us at the retreat should have a selection of these gorgeous products available for you to buy and they will appear on the website shortly after that.

I hope you have enjoyed this months Album Cover Challenge, please do share your creations over on the ATDML # Create Facebook page and add them to the Album Cover Challenge Gallery.

Join us tomorrow for three fantastic classes from Ann, Katherine and Tricia!

Virtual Crop Weekend Challenge - Album Covers Edition 2

Hello and welcome back to the Album Covers Challenge. It was great to see several people joining in and posting their layouts based on The Beach Boys' That's Why God Made The Radio from our January challenge. (It's not too late to go back and have a go at that one!)

This month our album cover is No Doubt's "Tragic Kingdom" Album. It was their third studio album and was released in October 1995 - for me that meant it coincided with my first term in sixth form and I can remember "Don't Speak" one of the tracks on this album playing on our sixth form common room speakers quite a lot!

I am a fan of a big circle so I loved this album cover and, as before I found it helpful to make a sketch to plan my layout. In this instance I substituted a 4x6 photo in place of the foreground figure.

I sorted through and wanted to use some of the Paige Evans Whimsical collection but took nods from the blue and yellow in the album artwork. When it started to come together I had to flip my design so that the photo was on the right and the embellishment cluster on the left as the photo I wanted to use had Olivia looking towards the left and I usually prefer my subject to look towards the middle of the page rather than off to the side.

For the title I dug out some Thickers in a blocky font to match those on the album artwork and, although they didn't make it onto the sketch I noticed the flies on the edge of the circle on the album cover and added some clouds to echo their placement.

I hope this gives you a little inspiration before the Virtual Crop tomorrow. Don't forget to join us tomorrow morning at 10am for our first class. Over on the ATDML # Create Facebook Page we would love to see what you are scrapping and if you have a go at this challenge please do upload it to the Album Covers Challenge Gallery.

Virtual Crop Weekend Challenge - Album Covers Edition 1

Hello and welcome to my new series of challenges and inspiration for 2019.

This year on the Saturday before each months Virtual Crop we will post a new edition of The Album challenge. This will involve an image used on an album (or occassionally a single) cover which is then used as inspiration for a layout. It could be that the layout uses the colour palette, design or subject matter of the album artwork as it's starting point.

I will add the album artwork and my layout to the Album Challenge Gallery on the ATDML # Create Facebook page, if you join in and create a layout for this challenge do go ahead and add yours to the album aswell.

So our first album artwork comes from The Beach Boys 29th studio album "That's Why God Made The Radio" released in 2012 as part of their 50th anniversary!

Now obviously album covers don't always include the elements we might want on a scrapbook page and although I loved the rows of scallops reminiscent of the sea there is of course no photo on this artwork so I made a sketch to plan out where I would put my elements.

I found the perfect paper in my stash from Bo Bunny's Lemonade Stand and set to work cutting up the scallops to make the waves. Then backed my scalloped sections onto cream cardstock.

I took inspiration from the yellow and black title and of course the "Beach" element then used smaller letter stickers to add a subtitle. Of course I couldn't resist adding a couple of extra bits so the word stickers on the bottom left of the photo were added. Finally I trimmed the layout by 1/4" top and sides and mounted it all on kraft (sadly I have realise that this is not that clear from my photo!)

So a fairly simple layout to start us off on our Album challenge, I look forward to seeing what you come up with.