I have been so busy and haven't done much scrapping lately!  Sad panda.  But, I have been working on a piece where I did some tie dye effects with tissue.  Will get that up once I finish.  But oh my gosh you guys...I won a challenge!  The Dr. Suess spread that I did was the winner of the November 4 Categories challenge at sb.com.  I can't believe I won!  There are so many lovely entries and talented folks that participate in it, I am truly so honored!

I recently attended an awesome scrapbook retreat weekend and completed 18 pages!  This is one of my favorites from the weekend:

 

 

I learned a good lesson on this LO: you should always shift your focal point to see if there is a better way to do the LO.  For this, the center photo, the red matte, the tags, that whole element was originally parallel to the bottom of the page.  I lifted it up to find something I'd lost on the table and it all shifted to this tilt.  I saw it and thought "YES!"  A totally happy accident!  Also, my new Cutter Bee scissors got their use...it took FOREVER to fussy cut those Seuss characters out!

Sometimes, you just don't love it

So, I am not one to rip apart my layout once I've started gluing.  Ever.  I don't stop, even if I don't like the layout much at all.  Part of me does it because it can force me out of my comfort zone.  Sometimes, I love the result.  For instance, this:

On this page, the fabric sheet I was using stuck to itself, and I couldn't get it flat.  So, I just went with it.  It came out looking a bit like peeled wallpaper.  And I love it.  Had I stopped at the "mistake," I would not have had this fun layout.  And, had it been flat, like I thought I wanted, it would not have turned out nearly as cool.

 

That said, sometimes I don't like the layout, no matter how hard I try.  For instance this:

 

 

Some people have said they like this one.  But for me, after I glued that bottom element, I realized it is too heavy for my taste.  I snipped and trimmed it down, more and more.  But I still don't love it.  I will say, once I thought of putting this picture in, where I had a lil fun with Photoshop (yes, spot color is so 1990s, but whatever), the page grew on me.  Sometimes forcing myself to keep going works in my favor, and sometimes it doesn't.  I know I won't stop any time soon, though.

 

As part of an exchange, I created my first ever tag recently!  Here is the front of the finished product:

 

 

I used the same technique with bleeding art tissue that I used on my September SOD layout (described below).  Here, I started by ripping tissue in multiple sizes and colors.  I glued them down using matte gel, and made sure to crease them to create texture.  Once everything was glued down, I used some vintage photo ink to distress, because the colors were too bold.  And then, I added some inka gold with my fingers to accent the creases even more.  Here is a close-up of the effect:

 

 

For the leaves, I spread some Tim Holtz Distress Stain on my stamps and put them down on off-white paper.  I added some distressing and accents with the inka gold and a gold acrylic paint pen.  On the back, I used a variety of Lindy's sprays and let them really run.  After dying with the heat tool, I used a stencil and applied a thin layer of matte gel, and finished with a sprinkling of distress glitter.

 

For some reason, the matte gel latched on to something almost green within the inks, and brought that out.  I didn't use any green!  But the effect is almost like a moss...so it works on my fall tag.  I hope my tag trade partner likes it!

 

 



I've always wanted to do something fun with this photo of my son from a harvest fest last year.   This is my entry for the Scraps of Darkness lift a designer challenge.  It is an homage to the wonderful Vivian Keh,  a designer/educator at SOD.  It is based on her stellar concentrated to diffuse tutorial, that you can find a link for over at SOD.

 

 

 

For the background, I started by tearing bleeding art tissue, wetting the paper, laying the art tissue, wetting it from the top.  After it dried, I peeled it off and it resulted in the nice watercolor effect.  After that, I added some yellow acrylic colorwash, applied from a spray bottle.  The next step was adding the dot pattern, using stencil and some modeling paste colored with a little acrylic paint.

 

 

 

After that, I used a hot glue gun to apply the "veins."  I then used various inks, heavily applied so that they would run.  I started with light colors and moved to darker.  Since I wanted the dark pooling, I dried with a heat tool.  Afterward, I applied matte gel to the hot glue veins so they would take paint well, and applied inka gold using a brush.

 

 

 

Finally, I used ink and inka gold on a cut piece of burlap.  For the Magic chippie, I painted with some red acrylic, then painted over with inka gold, and finally applied some Tim Holtz crackle paint.  For the leaves, I used a Tim Holtz stamp on paper that I colored with inks.  And lastly, I outlined with a metallic gold pen.

 

I am really happy about how this turned out, and the fact that I was able to create something special for my son's cute photo!

 

Here is my first page done with one of the lovely kits from Scraps of Darkness!  I've been oogling their kits for a few years now, and my fantastical husband got me a subscription for my birthday this year.  What a guy!

 

 

That background was simply black with white script, but I decided I wanted a little zing!  To get the texture and color, I used strips of bleeding art tissue paper.  Instead of wetting the paper and peeling off, I painted on some matte gel, and stuck the tissue to it, being sure to crease and crunch the paper as I went.  At that point, the colors were too bright for my taste, so I decided to dirty them up.  I used some Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Chipped Sapphire to darken and pick up the wrinkles. 

The little piece going up the side is the same technique, done on a different paper, this time black with a flor-de-lis pattern. 

 

After that, I did some more inking and distressing, and I cut up some doilies and used some Picket Fence White Distress Stain to stamp on some text.  I think the happy colors matched my little man's happy expression.