Write. Click. Scrapbook.

give.away.day. featuring Art of Layers by Ronda Palazzari

Being friends with an artsy person has its perks. As I've mentioned before, living nearby said artsy person allows me to explore techniques and products that come second nature to an individual who likes to get messy. Another perk happens when said artsy person has written a book that was just released and she agrees to be the sponsor of your week's give.away.day! HEE HEE!

So if you've been intrigued in the least bit by what Ronda, I, and my fellow WCSers have shared this week, you're going to love today's giveaway.

And if you've not been intrigued, well, you'll still love today's giveaway because Ronda's book, Art of Layers, is not just about getting messy. That's only a couple of pages of this book. Packed with projects, technques, step by step photos, and delightful conversational writing, Ronda's book is one any scrapbooker who wants to learn to add a layer or two of dimension will love to have in their library. 

Please leave a comment telling us your best cleaning tip (we're messy this week, cleaning tips are helpful) and you'll be entered to win a autographed copy of Ronda's book (if you don't happen to be the lucky number, you can always purchase the book, lots of links on Ronda's blog). Comments will remain open through this evening. One lucky number will be selected at random and posted tomorrow. Please remember to check back as it is your responsibility to claim your number by midnight on Monday.

Just Add: Goo

OK, it's not really called goo, but that's such a good word to describe today's products, and it's so onomatopoeic, and I never get to type out that word, so humor me.

Today we're looking at gesso and molding or modeling/texture paste.

Gesso is defined as a hard compound of plaster of Paris or whiting in glue, used in sculpture or as a base for gilding or painting on wood.

Molding/modeling/texture paste is thicker and adds body to paint to create 3D texture. You can create a more distinct shape.

I'm sure there is a huge difference between the two products, but to me, they are both white and gooey. Gesso is thinner and dries smoother. Molding or modeling paste (name depends on the company that makes it) is thick like toothpaste and has a velvety texture when dry. Although both can give you dimension, molding/modeling/texture paste is a little easier to get the 3D effect.

First we'll look at gesso. Here are a couple examples from Ronda to show both smooth and 3D from gesso: 

 

To get the colored gesso, she misted the wet product with a spray ink, then some walnut ink. 

To get the dimension, she applied a thick layer of gesso to a stencil.

I added a thick layer of gesso to a blank canvas, gesso is sticky like glue and so I embedded a bunch of these chipboard numbers into the surface of the gesso. Those numbers are not going anywhere. I wanted texture, so I kept the surface bumpy. It dried and looks kind of like a frosted cake.
 

This layout was an exercise in "Let's see what happens." I wanted to print my journaling, but the paper had text on it, so I spread a thin layer of gesso on it, stamped a grid background stamp randomly on the still wet gesso and let it dry. Cool texture! Once it was dry, I ran it through my large format printer and yay! It worked! 

Diane used gesso as a glue here, she added a thick glop of it and covered it with sand to add some texture and ambiance to her mini album about her St. John vacation. With its glue-like ability, gesso is perfect for this sort of technique.

And Alexandra used a stencil and gesso for her mini album, this time creating a textured background instead of the main accent.

Molding/modeling/texture paste is next on my list of "Need to Try," but here's an example from Ronda. She added a layer of paste (colored with mist) for matting her photo and then added some german glitter glass before it dried. Paste is also glue-like, making it easy to embed embellishments into it.

 

We'll finish off with a lovely example of molding/modeling/texture paste from Paula. She mixed the paste with paint then applied it to her cardstock, using the negative space chipboard from an old alphabet. Another example of "Let's see what happens." Pretty cool, don't you think?  

And there you have it, adding goo can be fun! Tomorrow is give.away.day. and if you've enjoyed the ideas from this week, you're going to love tomorrow. Wink, wink.

Just Add: Ink

Two different kinds of messy to look at today: Ink, in the pad form and in the mist form. I will say that although Ronda has taught me much about misting, like to use a pizza box lined with paper towels to hold my layout and mist into, I have played with both products so much on my own now that I feel quite comfortable sharing examples with you. But it took me a while and a lot of mistakes to get to this point. I've made a lot of cards--the small canvas is excellent for trying out techniques (Ronda also uses tags for this purpose as well), I've recycled a lot of pieces of cardstock that just didn't work. And I've learned a lot. That's the fun thing about getting messy, you have to embrace your mistakes, make them work for you. It's OK to play. And you know what? I don't think she blends ink pads very often, I think I may have beat her to that technique. :P

Our first examples, using ink pads are the epitome of neat and controlled messy. I have a lot of ink pads. I do stamp on my layouts fairly regularly, but don't consider it to be "artsy." So how do I get artsy? One way is to blend your ink. If you'd like to see a tutorial on this technique, I made one a few years ago for Studio Calico.

Here's the resulting layout I made from the sample in the tutorial. It's a really fun technique, often the best techniques are ones you didn't mean to do.

Paula uses another artsy technique on the following page. She used a stencil and rubbed over it with a cat's eye mini ink pad to get her background. Ink pad=much more control.

Now to look at spray inks, known to strike fear in the heart of many a simple scrapper. I know I am not alone. You can go sparse like Diane did here, just a light layer of misting can give a soft effect, especially when you use a white mist on a dark background. The best way to get a light layer? Mist from above the layout, give yourself a good couple of feet between you and the layout. It gives the ink plenty of room to fall, landing softly on your layout. You'll want to protect the surface around your layout, newspaper works well.

Francine and Celeste employ a similar technique on these two pages. Screw off the mister unit and just drip your mist on your page.

Francine did it with actual liquid, Celeste again worked her magic with digital brushes. I shared this particular layout because she looks so dang awesome! Go Celeste!

The more you play with spray inks, the braver you become. I still need my misting to be controlled, but I can now do things like this layered effect with punched shapes. I randomly placed about between 12 and 16 butterflies, misted. I moved the butterflies to other random places, misted again. I did the same thing one last time. Cool effect, especially when you overlap the wings of one butterfly with a misted image of another. You can try this with any punched shape or border. It's really fun to try, you get great resultsf is you use similar colors and mist from higher up, like explained in Diane's example. (Recognize this picture?)

My fellow Emily, Emily Spahn did another form of masking and misting on this layout, I love the sunbeam effect she got by intermixing bits of misted sunbeam, papers, and journaling, it's gorgeous huh?

Or this layout with the entire background covered with intense misting. The mists blend much better than I expected as they dry, you don't see a hard line. To get this look, it's best to be pretty close to the paper as you're misting. A quick spray while moving along the page works well. 

Here's another video tutorial I did for Studio Calico showing the technique in action. 

Here's a layout by Ronda that uses the same technique, a solid squirt of each color of mist, close to the surface of the paper to get a nice strong color. Ronda is amazing with stencils, this shows her work quite well I think:

And should these all be more than you even want to think about attempting, there's always the fact that mist will change the color of most any embellishment to a different color. I do this all the time! The chipboard numbers, letter "E", and paper roses were misted with Maya Road's Fig Magenta. The yellow mums? They are really a silvery color but I sprayed them with Maya Road's Mustard Yellow. So easy to get a new color with nice rich dye inks!

I finish, hoping that today's post does not overwhelm, but instead inspires you to try out a few of these different messy techniques. Notice that my layouts are terribly messy? You can use artsy products in a nice and controlled way. That's what this week is for, except Friday...

Just Add: Paint

There once was a girl named Emily who used to play with all sorts of art supplies, she was a fine little artist. Then she grew up, got kind of busy and stopped thinking she was an artist. She found scrapbooking and was able to fill the need to be creative through paper and glue. She was a very tidy scrapper, she never put anything wet or messy on her pages because it might mess things up and that is no bueno. She was happy this way. Then she met a new friend named Ronda. Ronda is a scrapbooker as well, but she takes all those messy things that the little girl used to play with and *GASP* uses them on her scrapbook pages! She's really more a mixed media artist that happens to scrapbook. She adds such lovely layers of paint and ink and goo to her pages that when Emily would go over to her house to play, Emily began to miss those days of getting messy. Emily wondered if she could do what Ronda did, but in her own style. Ronda was an encouraging friend, and although Emily still has a long way to go, she has started getting messy again. Last year, Ronda wrote a book about getting messy, Emily got to see lots of the ideas in progress, and well, Emily now has lots of tools to help her add messy *GASP again* to her scrapbooking pages. And this is NOT the end. See? I splattered AND filled in the stamped letters with paint. Go me. 

Can you relate? I am a simple scrapbooker. I've flirted with other styles and added bits and pieces of them to my own look, but at the heart of the matter, I'm still a simple scrapbooker. And I'm OK with that. But there are times I would love to be a bit more artsy, just because I gravitate toward that look. I LIKE the idea of paint splats all over a page, being able to mist or ink a page and let it go (I fret), getting gooey with gesso and moulding/molding paste, but in my self-imposed rule world, I had a hard time adding them to my creative tool box. But since I met Ronda and had a few other eye-opening experiences with artsy friends, I've started adding these elements to my scrapbooking, and I have to admit, it's been fun. I add them in ways that stay true to my style, but that still gives me a chance to have the products around and play with them in a non scrapbooking way. Hang around with enough artsy people, and you it starts to rub off on you, a little bit. We'll look at that idea at the end of the week.

This week, with help from Ronda (think of her as the artsy angel on my shoulder), I am going to share ideas on how to add a bit of artsy to your own scrapbooking. Lots of examples from both me and some of the WCS collective who have also started getting messy. Maybe something you see this week will spark your imagination and encourage you to get a bit messy. And maybe not, which is OK too.

Today we're going to look at adding paint. There are numerous ways of adding paint, Ronda is really good at all of them. I am not. Ronda likes to splat and drip her paints. I've done it a few times, but it feels out of control and scary to me, the only reason I was OK with it on the page above is that I knew I wanted the paint to feel like snow. Random is OK. But it's still hard for me, so here are some other ways I make paint work for me.

Here's a couple of examples from Ronda, this first one being drips. To add these drips, Ronda loaded her paint brush and scraped it off along the top of the cardstock, like you'd scrape pancake batter off the spatula and back into the bowl, then she let them drip at will and dry. Repeat with the next color.

And this one, where she painted a stamp with some glitter paint and proceeded to stamp in different colors. I love the variegated look she got with thicker paint at the edges of the images and thinner in the middle. A stamp that looks like a splatter is an excellent way to get a little more control:

 

Now for a few more of my baby steps into paint on pages:

You can paint the whole background, then pull the paint off with a paper towel. For this layout, I painted over a piece of text paper because I wanted to have bits of the text showing through, but I also needed to write a lot and the text made it hard to read. I painted a thin layer of white paint, then before it dried, I rubbed a paper towel over the surface to pull off part of the piant. Make sure your paint dried COMPLETELY before you write on it. I've ruined a pen or three by not waiting long enough.

This technique lets you use a favorite paper that might be a little too loud to use otherwise, it tones it down.

You can drag paint down the page with a fake credit card, old Starbucks or Target gift card, or any other flexible but stiff card. Load the edge of the card with paint, start at the top and pull down, keeping the card at an angle so the paint is applied to the surface. It makes for a cool and irregular surface. The middle card has another technique, but we'll be looking at that tomorrow (wink, wink).

Or you can just paint directly onto the page, for this layout, I was working with a kit and I wanted to use orange, but there was no orange in the kit, so I decided to use paint to frame the glass baubles and to act as journaling lines.  

Paula and Celeste have the perfect solution for flirting with this messy technique. They do it digitally with brushes! If it doesn't work, they can delete the layer. If you're wanting to learn a little more about how to use digital brushes, Celeste wrote a wonderful article on this very topic at Ella Publishing.

Paula was able to create a digitally painted background that looks like a she used a dry paintbrush with a creamy yellow paint. 

And I'm sure there are a few more ways you can add paint to your pages, change the color of an alphabet by painting over it is one that comes to mind. Be sure to join us tomorrow as Ronda and I look at adding inks to your pages. Here's to getting messy!

 

Sunday Photo + Words

{Photo: Lisa Ottosson}

write.

For this month's write. Saturday, instead of a list of journaling topics, we're going to look at a list of journaling structures. You know that feeling when you sit down to journal, and you feel like you know what to write but not how to write it? Journaling structures help you overcome that feeling because they give you a way to shape what you write, no matter the topic. Think of them as the journaling equivalent of sketches.

Use a Turn

To understand this structure, first read the journaling on Marie's gallery layout. She starts by writing about the frustrating struggles of having small children, but by the end she's writing about the sweet joys of it. The turn comes with the sentence "Well, sometimes I forget, so I need to take time."

When you use a turn in your journaling, you start writing about your topic using one angle or tone. You write your way toward the turn—the sentence that changes the angle or tone. And then you write in a different tone or angle. You can use this structure for a myriad of topics, anything that causes you to simultaneously feel two different things, maybe a day that started out rough but ended well or an experience that brought you two separate understandings. You can start out funny and turn tender, start sarcastic and turn warm, begin with sadness and turn to joy.

It's a flexible structure!

Here's another example:

 

In the journaling for this layout, I started out by writing about the things I still sometimes wish I'd done differently. The turn comes in the little things my youngest does to remind me that reality is better than wishes, and then I finish by writing about what I am grateful for.

(Full disclosure: I sort of had to butcher the quote I used for the title because it wouldn't have fit otherwise. The real quote goes like this: "While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about." ~Angela Schwindt)

Use the Numbers

In her gallery layout, Keshet used numbers to organize her journaling. Try thinking about your topic by way of the count of things involved. Keshet's layout focuses on the numbers that relate to her one (so sweet!) baby, such as 14 days waiting for her test results and 11 hours of labor, but you can use this structure for countless topics. For example: think about the numbers that might relate to the first day of school. Two new binders, eight notebooks, one box of twenty pencils, seven pens, five trips to the mall for back-to-school shopping. You could use it on holiday layouts—fifteen people at your Mother's Day celebration, three cakes, four pasta salads, and one amazing mother. Physical traits, vacations, birthday parties: nearly everything imaginable has some sort of number involved.

Marnie made a layout using this journaling structure:

She details the numbers that go into an everyday sort of day with her daughter Lavender. I love the little details of the fancy shoes and the sippy cup because they add a sense of immediacy to the layout. In just a couple of years those little numbers will have vanished!

In my layout:

 

I used numbers to organize the details about my son Jake's orthodontics experience. I included the obvious numbers but also the unique ones (like the three times I thought his appointment was on a Tuesday morning but really it was a Wednesday). Writing journaling like this brings the little details to your memory in surprising ways.

Use Demonstrative Adjectives

When I read the journaling on Lisa K's layout I felt like swooning I loved it so much! She uses demonstrative adjectives to quickly and succinctly get right to the emotional point of the entire layout: the people who make her life beautiful. As succinctness is hardly my journaling strength, I knew I wanted to try this structure. It works well with photos that are particularly emotionally evocative but don't have a detailed story and with times when you want to relay the importance of a relationship, experience, or event.

Demonstrative adjectives are the four following words: this, that, these, and those. To use the structure, look at your photos and consider which specific objects contribute to their emotional feel, and then pair those objects with the demonstrative adjectives. Next, pick one overarching object and use that for your title.

Diane shows us exactly how to do it:

In her layout, the objects are girl and man, with bond as the title object. With just a few words, she writes journaling that packs an emotional wallop.

I took a stab at the structure, too:

My objects are beach, waves, and girls, and I used afternoon as the title object. I added an extra adjective to each object, but I think the emotional impact is still powerful.

So! The next time you find yourself at a loss for how to write your ideas, try one of these journaling structures. Then let us know what you think! 

Mamas We Love You

Mother's Day. What does it mean to you? If you don't have children, do you use the day to celebrate your own mother, or is it a hard day for you? Have you journaled about that? Have you created a page about your own mother and your relationship with her? be it good or bad?

If you are a mother, have you created a page about your first mother's day? Or about how the day really belongs to your mom still? or how it totally fits you like a personal glass slipper?

Have you made a page about the changes in you since motherhood descended upon you? Did you marry into a family and instantly become a mother? Have you journaled about that transition? Or perhaps you had a baby the first time you even thought about it? Do you have that written down somewhere?

There are so many mother pages to be made!!

 

On another note, it pains me to hear how many of my friends are distressed by Mother's Day. I have a Very-Funny Well-Spoken and Equally-Well-Written Dearest Friend in the World who has a blog post that I love. She writes for a magazine and has written about Mother's Day here and here as well. Take a minute and go read them. They are quick reads.

... reading ... reading ... reading ... reading ...

Funny, no? I love her permission to not try to be that perfect mother. And her honesty. I thought it important to record an honest motherhood assessment in a layout for my daughters to read later.

 

Amy gives us a glimpse into her thoughts on Mother's Day in her layout, too.

 

Christa's layout talks about the responsibility of motherhood in a wonderful way. I love how she lists the positive attributes that she wants her daughters to have and how their learning will come through her. What a powerful message.

 

And then she turns the table and puts together a lovely layout about her own mother. Oh, Christa, so special.

 

Francine's layout records the flowers she received and the goings on of her day. It has a little grouping of loveliness that she does so well. And the lace and cameo are the perfect touches of femininity.

 

Lisa has a come up with a terrific plan for Mother's Day layouts. In 2008 she asked her daughter to answer some questions about her. Then she added them to a layout.

Now, four years later, she has asked the same questions of her daughter and made a new layout.

Isn't that so clever? And she made us a English version of the quiz that we can download and use on our own layouts! Woohoo! Thank you, Lisa!

Lisa adds, "If you print the pdf you can just add a photo and ask your kid to fill out the quiz (that’s what I did in the new layout!). Easy and you have their handwriting also!"

 

We hope that this week you have found a card or project that will work for a handmade gift for a mother or grandmother in your life. I also hope that you will try to collect and write your thoughts concerning motherhood and Mother's Day so that your families will know how you felt on this annual day of celebration!

Amy will be here tomorrow with some journaling challenges from our Feeling Thankful gallery! See you then!

Grandmas Are Awesome, too!

Today we are have a project that makes a terrific present for the grandmothers in your life!

Last week our family had the pleasure of being with our extended family. All nine Flores cousins were together. The kids had an amazing time getting to know one another, and we were thrilled to meet the smallest. These gatherings are sadly not a frequent occurrence for us, so when they happen, I find myself taking oodles and oodles of pictures. This time, not only did I take lots of together time pictures, but also managed to get an individual photo of each of the kids. I was so happy. Visions of mini albums began to swirl in my head.

I remembered many of you asking for ways to use up 4x6 photos, so I thought I would try to put a mini together that made use of them! (Since I switched to digital, I have not printed out many photos and funnily, I was a bit startled by the size of the photos! Silly, huh?)

For this album you will need 10 patterned papers (fewer if they have backsides you can use), one sheet of letter stickers, a bit of twine, a binder ring, a heart punch, a trimmer, a needle, some adhesive, and some journaling cards.

I love the Handmade line from LilyBee and knew it would be perfect.

especially knowing that LilyBee has these amazing letter sticker sheets.

 

I thought these would make terrific journaling cards (aligning the number to the order of the cousins)

but alas, my local store did not have them, so instead I made journaling cards for the kids.

I was also hoping for this page to decorate my cover

but again, no luck. (I should have done some better time management on my thoughts, no? ☺) So I dug out an old heart punch instead. A bit of red twine, and my tools, and I was ready to go.

 

Here is my put-it-together list:

1. for the cover, trim 2 6x6 pages
2. for the inner pages, trim 9 6x6 pages
3. order the pages
4. adhere the photos
5. add the journaling cards between pages
6. punch a hole for the binder ring
7. decorate the cover

Not too bad, I hope. I am making this one for Richard's mother, whose term of endearment for the kids is "Angel," which I (happily!) used in lieu of Grandma's Brag Book, for the cover title. I strung 9 hearts together on the twine, representing each of the 9 kids. I had a leftover journaling card that I also added to the cover for a bit of extra decoration. And here it is! I hope you, and she, like it!

 

Here are a few of the inside pages.

As you can see, the photos sit on the bottom four inches. Nothing fancy. I printed them with their names on them, too. (Not that Grandma/Gummy/Gumball/Boo doesn't know who they are??!!)

 

(I was hoping for something sweet. I suppose 13 and sentimental are a bit incongruent.)

 

Here you can see that the cousins' journaling cards are not yet written.

I will drop the cousins' cards in the mail this morning which should give me plenty of time to get them back, reassemble the book, and then pop it in the mail to Grandma! All in time for Mother's Day--a first for me, that's certain!

 

I hope you might consider this as a fun gift for a grandma in you life!

Thank you for stopping!

 

Mother's Day

I love quotes and how they can more succinctly and accurately express my feelings than I can myself. And I am in the middle of a text art love affair. So for my mom this year (look away, Mom!) I made her a little something for her wall. I hope she likes it!

Here is what it looks like not framed.

If you would like one, feel free to download it here.

I was thinking I might shrink it down for a card front, too. Ooh, love when something gets twice used. Remember there are only 39 more days til Mother's Day! And if you donate 10 of those to the post office, you have just a few weeks to get your presents done!!

Mother's Day Times Two

Weren't yesterday's projects by Vivian and Aly just divine?

If you're just joining us, all this week the write. click. scrapbook. team are here to get your Mother's Day crafting mojo in overdrive. Cards, projects, layouts and loads of ideas all crafted by moms with moms in mind as we celebrate Mother's Day a bit early so that you have time to get your own plans in motion.

Hi, I'm Monika and I'm a Mom to three kids aged 20, 8 and 6. Even though our oldest is in the Navy, I still try to find ways to incorporate him into our holiday celebrations. If I plead with him long enough, he sends me a photo every now and then and it's one of those photos that I'll be including into these photo brag book cards I've made for our Mom's this year.

I know how lucky my kids are to have both grandmothers {Nana and Oma} living so very close to us. Having grown up in a military family with a Mom of German heritage, I don't think that I was ever lucky enough to celebrate a Mother's Day with either of my grandmothers. Therefore, when both sides of our Family get together now at our home each year, as we have for the past 13 years, I tend to create gifts and cards that are similar so that each Grandmother feels "equally" special. Wink, wink.

 

To create these two photo brag book cards with one sheet of 12x12 paper in less than ten minutes, here are your easy steps.

1.  Trim your 12x12 double sided patterned cardstock at 5.50" and then again at 11", which will leave you with two 5.50" x 12" wide strips with a 1" x 12" strip remaining.

2.  Using your scorer, score at 4 1/8" and 4.25" and then again at 8.50".

3.  Fold the score lines and fold in the right panel before corner rounding the two outer corners.

4.  Gather your small glassine envelopes and machine stitch them to the last panel of the card. If you don't want to stitch, you could use your favorite adhesive, staples or washi tape.

5.  Punch a 1" circle. With your Crop-o-Dile, attach the punched circle and grommet being sure to cut your baker's twine long enough to wrap around the card. Here you can see how I tied the twine on the underside of the punched circle before attaching the whole unit to the card.

6.  Wrap the baker's twine around the card and thread through the grommet to tie off a sweet little bow. TIP: This is a traditional sized greeting card that will fit into an A2 envelope, just in case you need to send yours in the mail. Bonus! 

Now, the Grandmother's will have a cute brag book with a photo of their two sweet granddaughters and their grandson, too. {His photo is in the glassine envelope behind the girls' photo.} In the middle panel of the card, seen in the second photo, there's room for my husband and I to each write a personal message to honor the Moms.

 

Two cards in ten minutes...Have Fun and Craft On!