It's been a busy time of year craftwise - lots of challenges finishing up this week, so I only got to try a single challenge (other than the one I hosted).
The one that most sparked my interest was hosted by Beth Soler and was colour based and messy! (Yay!)
This is her challenge:
"Your challenge is to create a colorful background with whatever medium
you have that can work as watercolors. The twist is that you must use
your favorite color and tell your thoughts and feelings about the photo!"
Naturally the first order of business was to over complicate things unnecessarily - check! 🙄 I have plenty of watercolours in various forms and qualities, but Beth's words "work like a watercolour" made me want to try something that isn't really a watercolour to see what I could do.
Distress products are cheating since everyone knows how beautifully they work as watercolours, but the idea of using spray mist came from that.
The paper I chose to spray over was in keeping with the story. I was continuing with my "Dyan" layouts and this is number two. Any sketchy black on white design really reminds me of her stamps and this was a stamping class.
I started by gathering all my pink mists. I had about 12 (!) 😮 in various brands and formulations from very shimmery to a bit shimmery to no shimmer. From a deep hot pink to the palest blush, from opaque almost painty mist to very translucent.
My first mistake was not applying clear gesso first. I thought it would make the paper too slick. The mist absorbed quickly and didn't really run down the page the way I imagined. It looked almost passable for able three minutes, but as it spread and dried, all the colours started mixing together and I basically just had a pink paper (sob). 😢
I set it aside preparing to start again after cooking dinner since the FamBam wanted to eat (again??!) 😝. It was a warm evening and it had dried and the paper felt a lot less porous, so before starting again, I gave it one more chance. This time I was prepared to dry between colours with the heat gun but it came in more handy blowing the paint down.
Adding a bit of opaque white gave just the extra bit of interest I wanted, so in the end it wasn't half bad at all.
Plenty of paper layers and embellies as is my norm came next. I'm trying to continue using many of the same supplies throughout the layouts. There are a few things I have failed to include for the second layout running now and it's starting to bug me!
Anyway, how perfect are those Heidi Swapp phrase stickers?? 😍😍😍 I did come armed with several bottles of Diet Coke as always.
So back to Beth's challenge - Pink was an easy choice. Not only because it's my favourite, but because it featured heavily in the story. While we ended up swapping the warm paints with cool paints halfway through the classe, I pounced on the pink ones each time. Dyan likes pink too!
As for the photo - I took it early in the class. I was struggling with a flare in my jaw that triggers a hard to control migraine, so despite pain meds and copious ammounts of Diet Coke, I struggled through the stamping class and managed to screw up a simple masking exercise when I do much more fancy masking at home. 🙄
In addition to the pink paint, I also managed to snag the cat stencil to use so that photo is definitely a "happy place" photo despite being in pain. I really needed to get away and crafty - preferably away from home distractions and using messy things. I got all that and more and have come away much more inspired and motivated since then.
The smaller photo shows how messy my hands still were after I got home. They really don't show how bad it actually way! The sure sign of a day well spent.
Basically after the layout is all done, this is about the only bit of the background left, but you still get the idea I think!
As I've mentioned before, I'm hosting one of 12 challenges for the Victoria Marie Virtual Crop/Retreat. These challenges make up the virtual crop portion of the weekend. The crop will run concurrently with the actual retreat! Victoria made the elegant graphic below to promote the event.
Victoria is posting snippets from the retreat and it looks like so much fun!
Anyway this is what my challenge is called:
"Your Crafty Name
Recipe Challenge Recipe"
You know those name
generator “tests” that come up in your social media feed?The ones where you are asked to use the first
letter of your first name and the last letter of your last name or birth month
or whatever and you get a new themed named?
Well instead of
finding out that you should have been named “Princess Pop Dot” or “Pasty
Scissor Face”, your actual name will determine which products you MUST use in
your project.
I’ve listed as many
techniques, products, themes or other ideas for each letter of the alphabet,
but you only need to pick ONE for each time that letter appears.The colour suggestions for example don’t all
need to be used together (unless you have multiples of the same letter and you
really want to!!)
So…in order to see
what your name gives you, you need to: Use the FIRST THREE letters of your first name Use the LAST THREE letters of your last name
You can also use your MIDDLE
INITIAL for bonus points!
Q – quilt pattern or motif (or photo or story),
quote in title or journaling, question mark motif or question for a title
R – ribbon, red,
rainbow motif, rain or romantic story, royal blue, rose (colour or motif/pattern),
resin flowers/shapes (cabochons), retro, rub-ons
S – stickers, stamps,
stitching (hand or machine), six-by-six pad, sequins, stripes, stars, snow, spring,
summer, scraps, specialty paper, scarlet, silver, school or sports photos/story,
sketch or scraplift, square photo, selfie
T – twine, typewriter
motif or for journaling, template/stencil, torn edges, triangles, Thickers/dimensional
alphas, tangerine, turquoise, teal, travel photos or story
U – upcycle something
(e.g. packaging), umbrella or unicorn motif, ultramarine, ugly paper or story
relating to something ugly
I decided to start scrapbooking my class with Ryan Reaveley. Naturally I loathe how I look in photos, Stupid steroids make my look like a chipmunk. 🐹 The punny title is practically essential given I live with two boys who come up with them at every possible moment! Watch the video for the chaotic process:
I had the camera battery running down at the end and I did a booboo! Do you see what I forgot? It's not the extra aqua pieces near the top (I felt it needed more aqua in that pink area).
Yeah it's my letter "V". Oops! 😳 I had my vellum leaves ready, but didn't think they were the best fit. The view masters were better, but the battery on the camera was running down so it was a fairly abrupt ending with a funny feeling something was missing.
Am I happy with how it turned out? Well I don't hate it, but it definitely didn't turn out quite how I hoped. I think the pattern choices for the strips were not the best. I imagined more of that lovely black floral would show, but this is the first of several layouts and I definitely plan to repeat the patterns and include messy, painty mixed media goodness which is what Dyan is all about.
I don't use it on layouts as often as I'd like (more on cards probably) so this series will be a good way to bring more of it into my album.
I also don't want to deviate from using lots of pretty paper which is true to my style so I need to keep that in mind and try to marry the two styles together. I love it when it works out!
There are some seemingly random embellishments on the layout. I think I mentioned on the video why I included them like the globe with the map of Australia - OK that one is pretty obvious since Dyan was travelling to Australia to teach.
The double decker buses from Shimelle's first collection are very cute, but for someone who loves in Australia and tries to avoid public transport where possible, it makes them hard to use! Dyan doesn't live in London itself (she's actually not far from my frond Joy!) but it's a close enough association of me to use it and it's red.
The colours I chose were also very relevant. I wanted to save red )for Dyan's hair) for the embellishments. I got the impression from what she was saying that she likes pink too. I used pink paint where possible and hope to use some of my work from the class in my layouts.
I'm hoping to be able to play along with some of the other challenges this week and maybe ad to my Dyan story so please keep checking back (and maybe the video will even be ready!)
Many thanks to Victoria for the opportunity and all the hard work she has put onto making the even possible and including those who were not able to physically attend the retreat,
Victoria of Victoria Marie is hosting a three day retreat...in Texas.
It's a bit far to go sadly, and it sounds amazeballs to spend three days secreted away crafting to out hearts' content, buuut there is an alternative! Victoria made the cute graphic below.
Victoria will be running a CYBER CROP in her Facebook Group for the duration of the retreat! There will be lots of fun stuff happening including regular crafty challenges and prizes! Hopefully we'll even get some sneaky peeks at what they're doing at the retreat!
It just so happens that this Pink Mama is hosting one of these challenges and yes I'm definitely giving away a prize so be sure to stop by and have a go at one or more of the challenges! They will stay open for longer than the actual weekend so if you're busy you can still play along when you get time!
Please note that the dates and times are in CST timezone which you can calculate with this handy dandy timezone calculator, but if my calculations are correct, CST is 16 hours behind Australia's east coast (EDST that is). MY CHALLENGE is 3:00pm on 21st Oct CST which corresponds to 7:00am on 22nd Oct so I'd love to see you and find out what you have to do in order to be in the running to win the prize I'm offering.
All you have to do is head on over to Victoria's Facebook Group and hang out there and get your craft and chat on! Hope to see you there!
Many thanks to Victoria for all het card work. Please visit her at her blog or on Facebook or her fantastic YouTube Channel.
Naturally the first order of business was to over complicate things unnecessarily - check! 🙄 I have plenty of watercolours in various forms and qualities, but Beth's words "work like a watercolour" made me want to try something that isn't really a watercolour to see what I could do.
