October challenges combined

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Here's my contribution to Scrap around the world and to Once upon ...a sketch for October. To two of my favourite challenges, that is! I was inspired by the butterflies and rich colors of Scrap around the world's October moodboard, especially because many of the colors, such as dark blue, yellow and gold, are not colors that I naturally gravitate towards. It's good to challenge oneself. And I wanted to use a lot of butterflies, but more as texture than as butterflies...

I played with color in all sorts of forms, mainly gelatos, acrylic paint and ink. Inspiration for the layout's composition and journaling came from Once upon ... a sketch's October challenge. I did twist the sketch around. The journaling, in Finnish, tells about the importance of girls being able to go to school and how relatively new of a privilege it is, historically speaking. Glad to be inspired as always!

Fantasy layout for Scrap Around the World

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 Scrap Around the World September moodboard (below) was very much storybook related with fairies, fairy tales, authors, and vintage mechanical parts of broken machines... I was inspired by the moodboard and ended up creating a fantasy layout, with lots of gesso, spray mists, ink, stamping, metal - and lost of playing with the material, to be honest :)

There's a cut-out of an actual photo, taken at an amusement part in the middle, and the title reads "Imagination is the beginning of all". I wanted the layout to resemble a scene from a nonrealistic dream...

I am a big fan of journaling, but sometimes it's nice to make fantasy layouts like this one. After all, scrapbooking is a great way of staying in touch with the child-like desire to create and play, which can be found in all of us. Thanks for the inspiration! 

Jotain ihan muuta - ja pienempää

[for a short summary in English, see below]

Askartelutarvikkeissa on se hyvä puoli, että skräppäyksen ja paperiaskartelun lisäksi ne taipuvat myös muuhun, esim. nukkekotijuttuihin. Olen huomannut, että vedellä laimennettu gesso on loistoaine minatyyrihuonekalujen "valkopesuun", chipboard-koristeista ja kuviopapereista saa hienoja yksityiskohtia, ja mustasta kartongista voi tehdä paistinpannun, vaaleanpunaisesta paperista ja kimalteesta kirsikankukkia....

 

Nukkekotijutuissa minua kiehtoo myös tarvikkeiden uusiokäyttö, esimerkiksi raastinraudan tekeminen tuikkukynttilän kuoresta ja pullonkorkkien käyttäminen piirakkavuokina. Mikään ei ole liian vähäpätöistä materiaaliksi. Samaa asennetta ja oivalluskykyä olisi kiinnostava tuoda lisää myös omaan skräppäykseen.

Alullaan oleva nukkekotiharrastus ja jo pidempään harrastamani skräppäys limittyvät muun muassa sillä tavalla, että saatan saada ideoita nukkekotiharrastukseen myös skräppäyshaasteista. Esimerkiksi tämän huonekalun chipboard-koristeluun sain inspiraation Blue Fern Studiosin toukokuun haasteesta, jota ajattelin ikään kuin "pohjapiirroksena" huonekalulle. Toinen, vielä ratkaisematta oleva tapa, jolla harrastukset limittivät, on säilytys... Skräppäys- ja nukkekotimateriaalit ja kesken olevat projektit sijaitsevat samassa kaapissa. Se ei ehkä ole aivan ideaali juttu. Toivottavasti kesälomalla on aikaa löytää nukkekotimateriaaleille ihan oma hyllynsä, tai pari.

The May challenge at Blue Fern Studios got me thinking about something completely different from scrapbooking- that is, creating dollshouse scale miniatures. I've noticed that surprisingly many scrapbooking supplies are great for making miniatures as well. Gesso with water, for example, is great for "white washing" furniture, Blue Fern chipboard pieces and patterned paper (the pink tile like paper and the banner) look great as decorative elements on miniature pieces. Black paper is perfectly ok for making miniature frying pans and so on... Even the to-be-floor material is patterned paper from Blue Fern Studios. It may be surprising to find inspiration for making miniature things from a scrapbooking challenge, but, hey, sketches are like blueprints, if you see them that way, and the opportunities for using chipboard and patterned paper for dollshouses scale miniatures are endless.  

Scrap Around the World: Colors Galore

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Scrap Around the World is celebrating its anniversary this month, and I was thinking about the mood board for this month, when I had the opportunity to play with Emmo's (a fellow scrapper) Gelli plate, acrylic paints, stencils, bubble wrap, modeling paste and Pan pastels! Oh the joy of not having a plan and just trying things out... 

I primed a 12*12 paper with gesso, and started playing with lots of red and yellow acrylic paint (from the moodboard) using the Gelli plate, with and without stencils. When the paint was dry, I started stamping with bubble wrap (round shapes from the moodboard), and filled in gaps with Pan pastels - painting the bird and creating the stencil image on the upright corner. The white branch effect on the bird's wings was created using a stencil with modeling paste, and the bird was later covered with glossy gel medium.

The title of the page, in Finnish, reads "Sweet life" and refers to the macarons, a few of them heat embossed, the rest painted with Gelatos, falling down from the sky to the hands of the dreamer, who in real life is into anything and everything sweet (very much in the spririt of the mood board).

I added a few details with gold paint (from the mood board).This was my first try for both the Gelli plate and the Pan pastels, and definately lots of fun. Instead of adding a lot of layers and using a lot of patterned paper, I was just playing with different types of color. I'm also new" to Scrap Around the World in the sense that I haven't been featured before, but "old" in the sense of having participated before, too. :) Wish them many years to come!

Here I go again...

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Once again it's time to take part in the Once Upon A...Sketch challenge, this time for May.  It has been my favourite challenge for a while, for the combination of the sketch and the journalling theme, which combined trigger my imagination. For example, for the May layout my thoughts began with the journaling theme of "Anything goes...", which got me thinking about the feedback my daughter received from her 1st grade teacher, who said that she is "always ready to take part in everything, be it singing, ice-skating, or orientation, and does it with joy, also noticing if someone is excluded and will encourage that child along to take part as well". It almost made me tear up hearing the feedback; that behavior is something that I value greatly.

Anyhow, it's not easy choosing a photo for this type of a topic, which is not necessarily photo-related, but thinking about the feedback (which forms the title and the journaling), I picked a photo of eager gardening, which to me was a good example of "taking part in everything" - getting really excited about learning and doing things, no matter what they are.

I wanted the layout to have a free-flow kind of a feel, so I did quite a lot of heat embossing, playing with modeling paste, painting and stamping with different liquid mediums, and, as a first, painting with water colors on rose embellishments and petals, which thereby got a new, more hand-made feel. The dark gray stains are not shadows or dirt, they are spray mists for giving more depth. My daughter has contributed to the layout by adding crochet (the light green embellishment)! I am hoping for many more months of the Once Upon A...Sketch challenge & wish the best of luck for the group running it from now on. 

 

Vesivärikokeilu

Vaihteeksi kortti - ja samaan aikaan vesivärikokeilu. Jostain syystä vesivärit ovat alkaneet kiinnostaa viime aikoina, olen käyttänyt niitä myös skräppäämiseen. Tässä niitä on hyödynnetty minimalistisessa kortissa, joka on samaan aikaan aakkostarrojen hyötykäytön maksimimointia. Vesivärisuikaleessa olleet aakkostarrat toimivat tekevaiheessa maskeina ja ne on vesivärin kuivumisen jälkeen poimittu pinseteillä parempaan talteen. Kortti on pop-up -tyylinen eli onnittelu pomppaa korttipohjasta esille, kun kortin avaa.

Tekstuuritekniikoita

Viime viikonloppuna oli ilo osallistua Tekstuuritekniikat-kurssille. Osa roheista tekniikoista oli tuttuja, osa uusia oivalluksia. Mieleen jäivät erityisesti tekstuuripastaan leimaaminen (tummasävyisen sivun yläreuna) - ei muuten onnistu yhtä hyvin, jos pasta on liian "märkää", esim. pelkkää gessoa, nimimerkillä aiempaa kokemusta on & puolihelmien naamioiminen gesson ja suihkevärien avulla muun tekstuurin joukkoon (vaaleamman sivun alareuna).

Maskinesteen kanssa leikkiminen oli eksoottinen kokeilu (keskimmäisen sivun keskellä oleva verkkomainen tekstuuri). Tykkäsin myös siitä, miten kurssilla käytetty pronssiväri korosti tumman sivun eri elementtejä. Kurssin jälkeen teki mieli lisätä vielä pari kukkaa lisäämään korkeutta.

Muiden kurssilaisten tekemiä kansia löytyy kurssin opettaneen Maikkiksen postauksesta. Onnistuneen kurssin merkki on, että olen jo skräpännyt kurssilla tehtyjen kansien inspiroimana. En tehnyt samanlaisia, mutta jokin ajatus niistä jäi kytemään...