Clearsnap: Customizing Elements for Layouts

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Customizing Elements for Layouts

Megan Aaron here with another Guest Designer project. I am so excited to be back today with a fun project to share. I wanted to create this layout about how much my daughter has grown over the years. I used the photos of her on her first day of school for the last 4 years. To supplement the colors in the Fancy Pants school themed papers to coordinate with the colors in my photos, I grabbed some Pink Paislee Mistables paper and some plain muslin and went to work with Inkpads, Stamps, and Smooch Spritz to create customized page elements.

I started with the muslin. Several companies have plain embellishments that are made to be used with inks and mists, and some of them are made from plain fabric. So, I grabbed some plain muslin fabric, folded a strip several times so that I had less cutting to do, then traced a line of half circles onto it using a disappearing ink fabric pen. I hand cut the circles and then unfolded the strip. Voila! My own custom border strip. Then I took the Rollagraph with the Words Word stamp, and some Stephanie Barnard dye ink in chocolate, and rolled the stamp onto the muslin. The Rollagraph Handle has a built in self-inking cartridge, but I elected to leave the cartridge out and ink up the Stamp Wheel with another type of ink. So, I just rolled the Wheel on the inkpad several times to apply the ink to the entire Wheel and then I rolled it along the fabric strips. After letting the ink dry, I sprayed the fabric with Smooch Spritz in Caramel Latte and set aside to dry.

The finished product looks tea stained, with a fun variegated pattern.

While the muslin was drying, I moved onto the patterned paper. I had blue from the papers and knew I was going to add some pink to play off of my daughter's clothes in the photography. I also wanted to bring in another color, a warm yellow. I had just bought this fun Mistables paper, but hadn't had a chance to use it yet. It has an embossed pattern on it that will resist ink sprayed on the paper, revealing a pattern. I used the Stylus to add Butterscotch Fluid Chalk Ink to the diamonds on the paper, in a checkerboard pattern, leaving every other row plain. Then I went back and filled in the blank diamonds with Bisque Fluid Chalk Ink. The subtle difference in colors add texture, depth, and interest to the page. Using the Stylus to apply the inks was super easy too! With the embossed design already done, I just rubbed the stylus in the open spaces until I was happy with the level of color. The Stylus allowed for complete control over where the ink was applied on the page.

Finally, I used some Berrylicious Fluid Chalk Ink to color the plain white Bella Blvd Chipboard Alphas to match the pinks in my daughter's outfit in the photo and in the border strip.

Here is the finished product!