Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Tips & Technique by Guest Designer Heather Binnie

My Creative Scrapbook guest designer Heather Binnie is up today sharing techniques that she used with our May Creative Kit!

Here's Heather:

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Miss You:

In order to get the splashes of paint, I used spray paint. I once watched a street artist use this technique. Spray the paint directly into the lid of the spray can and pour over onto the paper to get the splashes. In this instance, I used black paint and then immediately used white paint over it. Make sure you do this when no one is home because they will simply complain about the spray paint smell. ;)


I usually let it dry at least overnight before I continue with my page.

Cut and layer the papers as show.

I left the cut off strip on the paper because I liked that it said, "Family Forever". Ink the edges with black ink.

I usually like to line up one layer right at my subject's eyes. It helps bring attention to the subject.


When taping the papers and photos down, I usually just add the tape to the longer sides so I can later tuck a tag for journaling behind the photo.

I stapled a ribbon to the top of the tag so I could easily remove it to read the journaling.

The "Dog is Good" sticker is from a T-shirt I purchased a few months ago. I also saved Liberty's dog tag and added it to the page with a brad. I save a lot of tags, etc because I love ephemera and like to use it on my pages every so often.

The Rainbow tab above the photo on the left is to signify the Rainbow Bridge where I will meet Liberty again some day. :)

Open

We patiently waited outside in Downtown Disney for Disneyland to open.

I decided how I wanted to arrange the photos and then I stuck the star border sticker below them.

I matted just one photo.

I tried to punch out "2 Day" from the die cut, but I had to use sharp scissors to finish it.


I used 2 different circle punches to make the Mickey Mouse head. I put the "2 Day" die cut on top of the larger black circle.

When I use stickers, I never completely stick them down until I positive where they're going.


As you can see, I was going to have the word sticker here, but ended up using it to ground the punched flag banner.

I inked up the flags that I made using a punch, glued them on and stapled the word sticker to the top.

Instead of taping the long sides of the photo on the mat, this time I taped the short sides so I could again add a journaling tag behind the photo.

The journaling tag/folder was yellow, the flag banner had yellow and so I needed another piece of yellow to complete my visual triangle. I punched out a yellow striped circle and added the "O" on top of it. This completed the visual triangle and gave a little more interest to the title.

DYE

For the background, I used 3 different colors of dye ink and a few pipettes. I love pipettes because they make perfect drops and they're much easier to control than a traditional eye dropper. You can get 100 of them for about $5.00 on Amazon. I kept 20 and donated the rest to a pre-school.


Use the pipette to suck up some dye ink and drip drop the dye ink all over the page.


For the dye ink to run in different directions, pick up your paper and tap it on all four sides until the ink dye moves and soaks into the paper. I always like to let it dry over night before I move on to the rest of the page.

To clean the pipettes, I squirt out the remaining dye ink back into the bottle and just throw them in a sink of warm water. If you have kids, they'll love sucking up the water and squirting it back out into the sink. I just let them air dry.

I arranged the vertical photos as shown. I put them right up into the corners of the paper with no matting. One of the reasons I stuck the photos at the very top was because my kids were looking down in the photos. I then took the horizontal photos of both kids and matted that one. They're looking down in this photo, too. I used the photos as a technique to help move the viewers eyes down the page.

I kept the dye ink at the bottom so it would look like part of the mess the kids were making with their eggs. I added a horizontal strip of patterned paper to the bottom of each vertical photo, but made sure that the horizontal strip was in alignment with the kids' faces on the horizontal photo.

I used a paint brush and using the same ink dye I used for the background, I painted the wooden pieces.


I added these pieces to the horizontal strip of paper.

I later added the small blue piece of paper at the bottom in alignment with the middle piece on top. My eyes kept going off the page so to stop that, I added a base/stopper to the very bottom.

Love You

For this one, I wanted to add texture. I used a stitching template from Bazzill for the circle I aligned everything up and starting punching holes using the template. You could easily do this with a plate or lid and trace a circle using a pencil and then going back later and poking holes.


Here's a tip that I will use for next time. Tape your paper and photo down using a temporary adhesive to make sure you have it on and it's centered. Because I rarely measure anything, I discovered after all the hand sewing, that I was about an inch off center. I had to cut the white paper off on one side to center the sewing. Ooops.

I didn't want to take away from the photo and embellishments with my circle, so I used white embroidery floss. I just wanted to add some texture.


After sewing the circle and cutting off the one edge to make it center, I taped the patterned paper and photo over the circle. I wanted, again, to highlight my subject so I made sure the circle lined up near her eyes.

I simply added stickers, words and more stickers to make my visual triangle around the photo. When I was done, it didn't look complete, so I painted some wooden flowers and added those as extra embellishments. I used Distress Paint and painted them yellow.


When you're all done, date the photo somewhere which is what I now need to do because I forgot. Always date the photos!

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Be sure to check out Heather's beautiful work in our Design Team Gallery!

Here's the Creative Kit:

We invite you to join us and experience the possibilities that our coordinated monthly kits offer. To purchase a kit, please visit our website, here.

2 comments:

Mycreativescrapbook said...

Heather Awesome tutorial, Thank you

Unknown said...

Wow that is a tutorial! Love