In an Octopus' Garden

I've been working on getting back into a regular scrapping routine since having returned to work recently.  It's not been easy - especially the work; but we won't get into that.  But I do have another new LO to share with you today; this time returning to my Barcelona holiday photos.

In an Octopus' Garden

I am totally in love with these CP retro slide frames.  Not only do they look great and are a great eye-catching feature on a page but I love just how quick and easy they can make a page come together.  I also especially like that these chipboards have a smooth texture, unlike many of the matte/pixelated chipboards used by many companies.

I started by blotting some blue and green spray mists onto my cardstock base, then sprinkled on more blue, green and some white mist and stamped some 'bubble' shapes around the page.  There was a dicey moment when my acrylic block somehow flew out of my hand and landed stamp-side down in the upper right-hand corner but I just rolled with it.

For the title, I reached into my basket of current supplies and just grabbed the first thing that called out to me - Amy Tan's vellum sticker alphas from Yes, Please.  I decided to mix things up and use the orange letters, since there were pops of orange in several of the photos and I liked the idea of using a complimentary colour palette.  I knew I also wanted to use this cute wave border strip so layered it up in the title along with the circular letter stickers and I really like the effect.

I took my time fussing cutting this little octopus from FP's Down by the Shore.  Got to use a new SC cork embellishment and added another pop of orange and some enamel dots.

I've had these adorable fish buttons for a while now, just waiting for the perfect project and when I saw the little fish paper in Down by the Shore, it inspired me to use them here (even though I didn't use that paper on the LO in the end).  A few white enamel dots add some textured air bubbles to each fish.

And I was so thrilled when I discovered that yes, I did have bright orange enamel dots and sprinkled a few in the topmost cluster, along with a piece of flair from a package I hadn't yet broken into.

To finish everything off, I decided to back the page up with some distressed orange watercolour paper, do a little machine sewing around two of the corners and really distress the inner border for some depth and interest.  I also think the distressed edge gives a little impression of an old 'message in a bottle' feeling.

Box Time Fun

So it's suppose to be WIP Wednesday today but I'm pleased to say that after a week or more of doing nothing creative (or nothing of anything, really), I actually have a completed project to share with you.  Hurrah!

Box Time Fun

If you've been following Shimelle's blog recently, you'll know that she's been on a real vertical design kick and has a number of fun challenges and sketches up and that combination is what helped to get me going on this LO.  I wanted to have a go at this sketch and remembered I had these cool Instagram photos of Oskar.  I also realised it was the perfect opportunity to use this CP kraft chevron paper - like many scrappers, I bought it based on the preview photo that uses the white-based paper from the paper pad collection and was horribly disappointed with how dark it is once I had it in hand.  I remembered wondering how/when I would ever use this paper that I didn't really like but it works perfectly for a story about boxes and now, I actually love it!  Okay, love might be a bit too much but I really like how it works here.

The patterned papers are Plum Seed by Webster's Pages, a collection that was carried (although not in full) at the local Panduro a few months ago and I challenged myself to buy and use these papers.  I haven't cut into them much so again, I was pleased to be able to use them more and I love how they not only work so well with the kraft but they perfectly compliment the slightly over-exposed, muted colours and undertones from the photos.

For my embellishment clusters I used some lime green accents.  My mum calls injecting this sort of 'odd' colour into a palette 'the poison' - there's something just slightly jarring about it that actually works to pull the whole piece together.  Later I realised the lime green matches that of Oskar's eyes, something that my brain must have recognised on a sub-conscious level.  Serendipity again - love it.

I also realised after completing the LO that I used the chevron paper 'up-side-down' from how I would normally use it to help draw in the viewer's eye.  Meaning, the points are leading up rather than down.  Whoops.  Nothing I can do about that now but I think it still works.  I also used one of the Jilliebean Soup wise word stickers and some black enamel dots that I received as a recent Stash Busters prize.