Photos from Chester Zoo

I've been a bad blogger of late, but the truth is that I've been enjoying the sunshine too much and not scrapping! I thought I'd pop in quickly today though, to share some photos that I took last week on a visit to Chester Zoo. Hope you like them!

Watch out for these on layouts soon!
I also have some exciting news to share - I'm chuffed to bits that my layout for the Papermaze colour challenge has won! See the news on the Papermaze blog :D

Summer Meadow

Time for a Sunday Challenge! This week's challenge at The Studio is to use to create a layout using your favourite product and your favourite technique.

I really enjoyed this challenge! My favourite product is chipboard - I love it for adding dimension to a page, and my favourite technique is layering - simple but effective :D I took inspiration for this layout from a fabulous one by Maggie Holmes for Studio Calico. 

I used the Pretty Party collection from Crate Paper, along with a smattering of Studio Calico butterflies.

Beautiful x 5

May's challenge over at the Truly Madly Crafty challenge blog is to use 5 on your layout. This could literally be the number 5, or it could be five elements. 

I went a bit mad with this challenge, and used loads of different 5s on my layout! There are 5 papers from the Echo Park 'This&That Graceful' collection, there are 5 small hearts among the ink splatters, the word 'five' and the number 5 both make an appearance more than once (including the title), and last but not least, thanks to the wonders of Photoshop, there are 5 versions of my dog, Mojo, in the photo!

This was a really fun challenge to do, and my layout came together really quickly. I hope you'll have a go too, and if you do don't forget to link up to the TMC blog to be in with a chance of winning this month's prize!

Enjoy

It was my turn to post on the Truly Madly Crafty blog this weekend, for the One Word One Technique series. This week's technique is misting, and the word is enjoy. I love misting, so this month's technique was right up my street! I shared a step by step of how I created my page, so I thought I'd show it here too. 

I started off with a blank piece of paper from a sketchbook, and some mists. I've used Dylusions spray inks,  and chose four complimentary colours; two shades of blue and two shades of green.

I spritzed both blues and the lighter green onto my non-stick craft mat

I then added a quick spritz of water

I took my paper and smooshed it onto the ink. I wiggled it a little bit, but not too much (you want to end up with bright colours, and if you wiggle too much they run together and end up looking more like mud!). I tend to spray a lot of ink and use a couple of sheets of paper and a small 'mop up' journal to pick it all up with - waste not want not right?!

This is what the first sheet looked like:

I dried the sheets and journal with a heat gun, and then went back and picked up a bit more ink around the edges. Here's the end result:

The next job is to add some detail, so I grabbed a couple of stencils (Dylusions again), and spritzed through one with the light blue and the other with the light green to give a tone on tone effect.

And to show that you can use anything as a stencil I spritzed through this chipboard sheet, which is the waste from some counters for a board game (Ankh Morpork dollars in case you're wondering!). I used the darker green mist for this to make the circles stand out more.

This is what my pages and mop up journal looked like after all that misting

I added some gesso by scraping some through a stencil, and stamping some on with giant bubble wrap

At this stage I decided that I preferred the one on the left, so I added some stamping and doodling, and that was it! Here are some close ups of the finished page:

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial, and have some fun with your mists!

Snap!

It's Sunday again! I don't know where the weeks are going at the minute :S The challenge at The Studio this week is a sketch created by our very own Valerie, and I'm chuffed to say that she used one of my layouts as inspiration, how cool is that?! And as if that wasn't enough, our lovely sponsor for this month, Crafty Templates, has not only donated a prize, but also sent some of the DT some goodies to play with! I'm loving May so far!

I finished this layout and then say for ages trying to think of a title,. I'm not happy with the one I eventually settled on, and wish I'd called it 'More Wine'. Oh well, I've got another copy of this photo, so I may just have to scrap it again! I'm sure Dad won't mind appearing twice :D