Sunday 18 September 2011

Explore ~ a challenge layout

Happy Sunday to you. It's been a rotten old day weather wise here, so it's been a bit boring being stuck in with the kids while hubby is at work. At least I've managed to finish a layout in among playing shopkeeper, animals, and other fun toddler activities!:

Supplies = American Crafts Ash Cardstock; Pink Paislee Nantucket 6x6 Paper Pack, Wood Shapes, and Ephemera; Pink Paislee Mistables Scallop Ribbon; Pink and Turquoise Acrylic Paints; Pumice Texture Gel; Uniball White Gel Pen; PMA Adhesive Stones 'Red Hot'; Yellow Thread.































.
I combined a couple of challenges for this one - the weekly challenge on the UKScrappers forum, to use a beach theme, the colour turquoise, and two photos - and the Sarah's Cards Ltd Blog September Challenge sketch:


I've used a fair amount of the new Pink Paislee Nantucket collection on this layout - I love it! Gorgeous colours and patterns, and the beach theme is great for me as we live near the sea and have a lot of beach photos.

I used four sheets from the 6x6 paper pack to make the circle in the background. To make sure my circle quarters were all even in size I drew around a plate onto a spare piece of paper, then folded it into quarters, and used this as a template on the Nantucket papers:


I placed them on my cardstock (which I'd machine stitched a border around with pale yellow thread) with a 2cm gap in between the circle quarters, and began layering everything else on top.

I knew I was going to like the Nantucket items, but when they arrived I was also pleasantly surprised to see how much you get for your money in the Ephemera:


So many pretty bits and pieces to choose from! I used them all around the page, including under and next to my title, for which I used a Nantucket wood shape. I painted it with pink acrylic paint with a bit of pumice texture gel mixed in to make it look sandy (you could mix in actual sand instead if you have some!):


The scalloped turquoise strip below my photos is some Pink Paislee Mistables Scallop Muslin Ribbon. I coloured it by watering down acrylic paint in an old plastic food pot, and then dunking my ribbon in until it was coated: 


I squeezed the excess out, and hung it to dry overnight, with some newspaper underneath to catch any drips. Once dry, I used my Crop-A-Dile Big Bite to punch holes along the scallops, and a white opaque gel pen to add a wavy white edge (the acrylic paint had stiffened the muslin so it was easier to do these two steps - they might not work if you'd coloured the ribbon by misting it. I don't know - I haven't tried!):


The final touch was punching some little suns from the left over 6x6 pieces, and adding them to the layout with 3D dots. I also added the word 'sand' (which was originally 'sand castle' in the ephemera pack) to the top left corner over a tiny tag from the ephemera and a flag which I'd cut from a scrap of the 6x6 paper:


So there we go. What do you think? I warn you, there may be some more projects using Nantucket coming up - I have lots of ideas for how to use it!

Do you have any favourite collections at the moment? x

11 comments:

Lou said...

great layout and I enjoyed your tutorial. The muslin border turned out well too....fab idea!

Sarah said...

Lovely photos and the page is so effective with all the extra details! x

Lisa-Jane said...

Not seen this Nantucket stuff previously but it looks wonderful. I love the sandy looking title there too. My DH works weekends sometimes and I hate it - feels so much worse than during the week for some reason. We have to be grateful they have jobs though :-)

Meghann Andrew said...

Lovely layout, Jennifer!

Susanne said...

That's a very pretty layout - love the soft cool colors.

Lea said...

Love how you did the circle, such cute pictures and fantastic embellies!!!

Sian said...

Ooh, I do love the look of that Nantucket - those little fish add a special touch here I think. I'm holding out for some OA farmhouse. That collection has my name all over it.

Alison said...

Love what you did with the muslin...great papers and LO!
Alison xx

Louise said...

I really like how you split the circle into quarters of patterned paper, greta idea.
Thanks for joining in with our challenge.

Ifa said...

So many great things going on here. I also adore the Nantucket collection especially the die cuts.Love your mistable muslin.

Nat said...

Wow! I'd seen this on UKS but had no idea how much work had gone into it until I read your blog. Fab tips on using pumice gel and colouring the ribbon - thank you! Thanks for playing along with us at Sarahs Cards xxx

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