Anna’s Craft Cupboard Challenge!

Hey,

I have been having fun this morning scrapping a layout for the February layout challenge at Anna’s Craft Cupboard. The challenge involves including a splash of colour in your layout and my order of LemonCraft papers from Anna’s had just arrived, providing some vibrant yellow, pink and green. I have been quite good at not buying new supplies (apart from my regular kit subscription from Uniqeley Creative) and using up what I have, but these papers have been on my want list for a while now. I succumbed to temptation and purchased a few LemonCraft papers, some Mintay papers and stocked up on some cardstock in blues and greens ( a need) which I always run out of.

Anyway, back to scrapping. I decided to go with the green telephone box image as my inspiration. The colour gave me an excuse to use my new papers and I liked the criss-cross lines of the windows on the telephone box. I used a neutral kraft coloured background and splashed around some watercolour paint in yellow and a green which I mixed. In my head, I was seeing a layout with lots of layers and texture, pulling on the colours and patterns in the photo I was using. The photo is a very old image of my eldest daughter after she had just woken from a nap. She has those dreamy eyes, tousled hair and red cheeks which all toddlers seem to have after some zzzzzzs.

Next, I used some Tim Holtz inks and a KaiserCraft stencil to add a bit more interest and texture to the background. I thought the criss-cross design of the stencil linked to the telephone box image, as did some of the geometric shapes with my photo.

I then, cut out some of the LemonCraft papers into 4′ inch strips and cut them down into 4 x 6 rectangles which I used for frames and pieces to mat the photo. The two 4 x 6 left were used to cut embellishments with my Sizzix Bigshot. I used a mix of dies, many were from the Uniquely Creative and the KaiserCraft range. I decided that I needed a few more greens and some white to balance the layout, so found some scrap papers and cardstock to cut a few more diecuts. You can see that I incorporated some traditional design styles and some contemporary designs. I used the geometric die because of the pattern on my daughters top. The top was handknitted by my mother, which I had completely forgotten about until I started working on the layout. She knitted many clothes for my children, a pastime which she has had to give up due to arthritis.

In my LemonCraft order, I purchased a matching cut apart sheet. I fussy cut out the doilies and the green butterflies.

Then, I went to town building up the layers of die cuts and papers using double-sided tape and foam tape. The title I created by painting some white cardstock with vivid green. I really love how it has turned out, it is very summery and speaks to the season when the photo was taken, the Christmas summer holidays.