Young Love

So this started out as blog post that was going to include a video tutorial.  However, I'm still getting the lighting right in my new workspace and the video wasn't up to my standards!  Stay tuned, more videos WILL be coming here and to my YouTube channel before you know it!  Either way, here is a photo of me and my love from last Halloween. I titled it "Young Love" even though we're old as dirt getting on up there in years.  Either way, every day I feel like it's still the first day we fell in love, so it keeps us young. (And yes, I know in the grand scheme of things we are still pretty young)

Disclaimer:  Ole boy is NOT a cowboy hat wearing guy by any stretch of the imagination...this was taken on Halloween and there may eventually be a companion LO showing the selfie where I'm wearing the hat too!

Behold...the two of us and one gigantic cowboy hat!

I wanted to experiment with the chipboard and frame the photo with it as much as possible.  I tracked the frame around the back of the photo and cut the extra off on the top and bottom of the picture.  I intended to fill in the gaps on both sides of the circle between the chipboard and the picture, but I liked the space on the left and decided to let it be!

Below you can see a flower cluster and a metal piece that I applied soft gel gloss to and filled with sage microbeads and bronze glitter.  I applied some smaller metal pieces to the flowers and LO.  If you look in the cluster you'll see one of the chipboard keys from Blue Fern Studio that I found stashed away when I moved to my new workspace (there's a lot of that happening these days).  I used some alcohol ink and sparkly pink paint (listed below) on the keys. 

Below are more flowers, more chipboard keys and one of the few "girly" metal charms I used on the LO.  Even though I try to keep some of these a little masculine, I'm never going to NOT use flowers and cute charms! 😉

Check out some of the work on the chipboard frame.  I love layering multiple mediums on my chipboard and this was no different.  Although I did lay down a base layer of white gesso, I was very sparing and did so in a think layer so that more of the light colored sprays would show through heavily on the chipboard.  

There you have it!  Sorry about the video, but we'll get it next time!  Thanks for stopping by to look!

xoxo,

Mel

Partial list of products:

Lindy's Stamp Gang Starburst Squirts in Maple Syrup Bronze & Canadian Bacon Blush

Lindy's Starburst in Sea Mint Green & Salt Water Taffy

Lindy's Flat Fabio in Aloha Avocado

Tim Holtz Distress Spray Stain in Antique Linen

Finnabair Sparks Acrylic Paint in Butterfly Spells

Lindy's Embossing Powder in Orbit Olive Gold, Hibiscus Rose Orange, & Silence is Golden

Imagine Ink Embossing Powder in Sage

Lindy's Magical Shaker in Oom Pah Pah Pink

 

Christmas Lights and Cold Nights

Happy New Year!  Hopefully everyone had a great end to their year and hopefully starting the New Year with hope and happiness for the future!  I created this layout using inspiration from the Tres Jolie Kit Club January 2022 Mood Board.  Mood boards can help spark a little extra creativity in a project, and this one made me think about some of the things we don't always get to experience in Arkansas...like large amounts of snow.  The icicles, however, now we have plenty of crappy experience joy filled memories of ice.  I'll get off my soap box after this sentence, but we we tend to get more ice than snow down here...and I'm just a little jaded! 😂

Here is the Mood Board: 

And here is the LO:

We took this group selfie when went to see Christmas lights back in late November.  It was pretty chilly that night, so we were all grateful for the hot chocolate and heated indoor area after we drove through the Christmas light trail.  I love the color blue, and I loved all the blues in the Tres Jolie scrapbook kit, and all the blues on the mood board!

The background paper I chose had some gorgeous flowers scrolling across the middle of the page, and I decided to make the paper a little 3D by replicating the page design with flowers from the kit.  Below you can see a bit of a close up of the 3D flower scroll.

I took some chipboard and used everything from mist, to embossing powder and a little bit of glitter to decorate it.  Again, leaning heavily on blue tones and a little bronze to draw the blues out.  I used some pearl bead and some Beautiful Beads from Renea Bouquets shop.  I also tucked a little bit of cheese cloth in behind the chipboard.  It made me think of wispy snow in the winter time (okay okay...dream of wispy snow and hope we get at least one good snowfall again this year!)

Below you can see where I used some more cheesecloth on the other side of the picture, along with some more of the beads and a wooden snowflake from the Renea Bouquet shop.  You can also see a few more of the flowers and if you look close enough you can see where I used some of the blue mists to splatter the flowers and the background of the paper.  The resin bird came with the Tres Jolie kit as well!

Finally, here is some stencil work I did at the top of the page.  I tried something new and stenciled some designs and colored them with the various blue mists I had grabbed from my stash (I used a couple from Lindy's Stamp Gang and a few Tim Holtz along with a few random ones that no longer have labels 🤷)  After the mist and texture paste dried I used the same stencil to add an additional layer of paste, but without the sprays.  I was going for a "fresh snow" look, and I think I did a pretty decent job.  As a finishing touch I added some white feathers because feathers often make me think of the patterns that ice and frost make on windows during the winter time!

I hope you enjoyed reading through this and I really hope y'all are having a fantastic start to 2022!

xoxo,

Mel