My Creative Scrapbook: Background Techniques plus Handmade Swirly Bling by Nicole Doiron

My Creative Scrapbook design team member Nicole Doiron is up today with some July Main kit inspiration and techniques for you.

Here's Nicole:

Remember this whimsical Summer page I created with the July Main Kit? Since i'm very shabby chic in style lately, it is my favorite layout of my DT reveal this month. It was also inspired by the July sketch at My Creative Sketches.

Today, I will share with you how i made the background and the handmade swirly bling seen on my layout.

First. let's talk background!

The July Main kit comes with this fabulous Prima Chevron Grunge Art Stencil.

Using an art spatula, i put a generous coat of molding paste onto the stencil on different corners of my background paper. After drying it with a heatgun, i then added some glimmer mist.

Next, i decided to try a technique i had seen a few times on other crafty blogs. I took a piece of plastic bubblewrap and covered it with white acrylic paint as if it was a big stamp.

I have to admit that it didn't turn out exactly as i expected, but that is my fault. First, my bubbles were pretty much all popped (yes! I have a bubblewrap fanatic and i just can't resist popping when i have a piece of wrap in my hands!!!) so they didn't absorb the paint as evenly as i would have wanted. Second, i think that instead of pressing the bubblewrap onto the paint, i should have brushed the paint on the bubblewrap. As they say, practice makes perfect! I will definitely be playing around with it again soon! Here is the result of my first attempt:

I then layered my patterned papers and using 3D foam tape, i stuck the title that i had cut out of my pattern paper.

I added the rest of my title with Thickers.

Next, i whitewashed everything with a light coat of white gesso here and there.

Finally i was ready to add the rest of my elements like the picture and flowers which brings me to my 2nd tutorial for the day... handmade swirly bling!

I used leftover plastic sheets from bling i had used before on other projects.
(Sorry about the glare in my pictures... my camera and shiny plastic do not go well together! You can make out the swirly patterns.)

With my very handy styrofoam block underneath, i then placed a sheet of plastic over my layout and proceeded to piece a hole following the bling pattern, using the bling imprints on the plastic as a guide.

I didn't pierce all the way through, just enough to make a mark on my paper. I didn't want the holes to be too big.

Here are the outlines of some of the pierced swirls. I kinda love the way the pierced designs looked (as seen below) so i almost decided to leave them be and forget about the bling.

But i stuck to the initial plan and took out my Liquid Pearls. I will definitely be trying out the paper piercing technique on another project though!

Following the pattern, i covered each hole with a drop of liquid pearl.

I wanted the drops to be more round and delicate like pearls, but my hand was cramping from all the piercing so the end result is a bit more shabby, but again... practice makes perfect! :)

Let me know if you decide to try these techniques on your projects and if you do, please share in the comments on here and on my blog (http://scrap-utopia.blogspot.com) so i can see! :)