Wednesday, August 24, 2011

I love CJs

I love taking part in CJs (Circle Journals, a kind of travelling scrapbook) - they force me to scrap photos and topics I wouldn't normally do, to try new techniques or colour schemes, and they generally stretch my creative imagination.

The CJ I am currently involved in is an "open theme" one, which means that each book has its own theme and that theme could be absolutely anything.  In today's case, the owner of the book has sent round some sets of photos of her dog, Leo, and has asked us to scrap them for her. 

As soon as I saw the photos of Leo on the beach, I knew I wanted to scrap them.  I knew I had papers and embellishments that would suit the theme and fancied playing around with texture too.  Initially I planned to use colour-cored cardstock and sand it, but I found I didn't have a suitable colour.  Then I thought of using paint.  This is the first time I've used paint directly on to a page before but I'm very pleased with the result





I'm fairly new to using acrylic paints so this was a real adventure for me.  Painting directly on to the page and them journalling and placing rub-ons over the top was a new departure but is one I will definitely be using again.  And I think the twine winding round the photos adds more texture - another technique I will use again.

The "beach party" label on the left-hand side started off as a plain chipboard piece.  I painted it with a pale blue acrylic paint then the brown; when dry, I sanded it to reveal some of the blue below, giving it a beachy, distressed look.  The "beach party" is a rub-on.

I hope she likes what I've done with her photos ...

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

More photo cards

First of all I must apologise for not blogging for so long - holiday preparations, the holiday itself, and all the work that needed doing when we got home, have all meant that I've been pretty busy for the last few weeks so haven't had any time for scrapping, let alone blogging about scrapping!

But, we're home now and I managed to find a little time to create yesterday, mainly because I needed to create some cards (one of them is for an event in two days time).  So I thought I'd share two of my recent photo cards ...

... this first one uses another photo from the professional photo shoot I blogged about last month - here - and is celebrating our 21st wedding anniversary (last month).  I was so pleased to find some beautiful papers and embellishments that went so well with the colours in the photo



This card uses an old photo, scanned and printed onto glossy paper.  This one celebrates my in-laws' 50th wedding anniversary  (the photo doesn't do it justice, the light wasn't very good and the colours look a little washed out) -