The orange mesh in the kit was
my starting point. Orange is a
colour often associated with Hallowe’en, but it also reminds me of summer. And it goes surprisingly well with
turquoise, another great summery colour.
I found a photo of my daughter having fun in a swimming
pool, and started thinking about how I could use the kit to create a summery
layout.
First, I took the plainest paper in the kit, and had great
fun spraying it with inks. I used
Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist in Sunshine, Turquoise Blue and Riptide, together
with a homemade mist using a mixture of water and Tim Holtz’s Distress Re-inker
in Spiced Marmalade.
I wanted the layout to give a feel of the fun that Caitie
had in the pool on that holiday, and thought a banner would help to achieve
this. The tags in the kit were too
big to use as a banner, so I cut the tops off two of them, cut them in half,
and cut triangular banner shapes from each half. I inked the edges of the triangles with ColorBox Blue Lagoon
Chalk ink ink, and used the same ink to stamp a letter on each of the
triangles. I clipped a tiny
clothes peg in the top of each, and stuck them to the layout with some 3D foam
tape. I added some of the string,
which I coloured with Spiced Marmalade Distress Stain. I completed the title with some wooden
letters, which I inked with the blue ink.
I cut the orange netting in half lengthways, and stuck it
underneath the photo, together with some washi tape and some old Heidi Swapp tape.
Finally, I stamped a swirly stamp several times in the
bottom left and top right colours, using Spiced Marmalade distress stain.
I had great fun with this layout. Challenging myself to think outside the box and use the
Hallowe’en kit for something completely different became a great excuse to get
out all my messy inks and have a good play!
So next time you buy a themed kit, don’t just use it to
scrap that theme – challenge yourself to do something different with it as
well, and enjoy the creative boost it gives you.
Top tip: When
buying kits, try to choose ones that have neutral, non-themed products in them
as well as themed ones, as this will give you much more versatility. The main reason I was able to use this
kit to create a summer layout was that the background paper and several of the
embellishments were in a neutral colour scheme (cream), which enabled me to
colour them to suit my theme.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ideas for you … Hallow'en Witch
You know, for a kit that I really wasn’t sure about to start
with, I have had so much FUN with this!
First the challenge of using a Hallowe’en kit for a summer layout, and
this time the fun of doing lots of tearing and distressing, plus just a little
bit of experimenting.
My one and only Hallowe’en photo is pretty colourful, so I
wanted to add some bits of colour to my layout, while still keeping it looking
very grungy and spooky. A few bits
of green and orange did the job nicely .
I tore off 1/3 of my Basic Grey paper and inked the edges
with Vintage Photo Distress Ink, then glued it to the right hand side of my
dark background paper. The photo
needed matting to help it “pop”, so I found some green to match the witch’s
face, tore around the edges and again inked it with Vintage Photo.
The other half of the orange mesh (I used the first half for
my summer layout) went perfectly underneath.
I really wanted to use the black grunge ribbon, but it
didn’t look right laid across the page.
So I fiddled around with it, and created a flower, which could also be
seen as a spider’s web, depending on your point of view. I used a mixture of stitching and glue
to hold it together, and put a green gem on top. As I was picking off the strands of glue left from the glue
gun, it occurred to me that they looked just like a web – and so I put a lot
more on instead!
I cut several images from the sheet of spooky clipart. The skeleton was inked with Vintage
Photo, as were the words (and also the journaling tag). The pumpkins were inked with Spiced
Marmalade. My very old fibres came
in handy to decorate the tag a little more.
Finally, the title.
I had been planning to colour these grungeboard letters, but found that
I liked them just as they were, and so left them bare.
As I said, I’ve had
lots of fun with this kit, and I still have enough paper and embellies for at
least one more layout, probably two.
Posts
