Hi everyone, Ngaire here again
so I got
side-tracked with all the excitement of finding a new company to love and
adore. I know I was meant to come back with a TC boy layout a few weeks back – and
that is still coming, I promise – but I just HAD to do this one for Madame.
It’s all her fault really, you see, as she desperately wanted some Halloween
cookies she spotted in Woolies. They did look very clever and yummy – so I
relented and got some for her and her brothers. She also decided we needed to
take photos of them before they got eaten – and the rest is history, as they
say. I soon found myself in possession of a $2 bag of spiderwebs (and spiders
mind you) and a ghoul (well really – as if I don’t have enough of them already
– with 3 teenage boys at home).
So one day during the school holidays,
Madame and I had a wonderful time in the back yard with our little photo-shoot.
We made the fence look like part of a haunted movie set – I promise we tidy up
more than it suggests. She found one of her Gymboree
tops that had an appropriate theme and colour (and the requisite matching
hairbow) and we were off. She even hammed it up for me with the ghoul. I don’t
do doubles much anymore, but there were so many photos to use up that I just
couldn’t scrap anything less. There are still a couple of lovely photos left to
use – but I did manage an incredible 6 here – even if 4 of them are small ones
of the cookies (shortbreads actually).
The colours in the Echo Park Apothecary Emporium range are a
perfect match for those in the photos - it's as if they were made for it.
Using a plain black Bazzill
cardstock (Raven)
for my base, I layered various papers together until I got something I vaguely
liked. The left half was the first page I worked on and it used left-overs from
my other projects or things I had liked and cut out, but not yet found a way to
use. The strip of Under
Your Spell was something I was dying to use - so that
was my starting point. Over that I laid a left-over block of Levitation
and Zodiac. From a strip of Striped
Toad (oos) I cut a strip which I then edge punched using a
wide decorative pattern. Using my paper trimmer I then cut through the punched
strip so that the punch pattern was cut into half, giving me a thin strip with
a patterned edge and a main piece which had a sort of deep scallop pattern left
on it. The thin patterned strip went along the bottom of the layout and
the main strip went horizontally across the page. That was pretty much the
basis of the layout, although I knew that I would be adding some of the Vanished
and Liquid Smoke (oos) somewhere (eventually it was
used as a photo mat on the larger photo).
Playing with my photos I worked out a position
that looked good to me - and then went hunting for bits to fill in the gaps.
Luckily for me there are a heap of pretties to play with on the Cardstock
Stickers sheet. I made sure to fit the most appropriate
(the Deadly Morsels label) first and then just placed others (like these cute
tabs and that gorgeous little bat) to suit. Some are up on pop-dots and others
are flat to the page. I have to confess that putting this thing together
was a bit of a nightmare and fiddly with it - but a lot of fun too.
I'd been playing with some chipboard chicken mesh for another layout and
had some still lying on my desk - a quick coat of silver ink and some Crystalina Kindygliz and ta da - girly
chicken mesh - what more could you wish for?? (You could also use some of Tracy’s real
chicken mesh too if you have some.) I cut it up into bits and pieces and used
that as the base for several embellishment clusters. There was also a great
spot for my bottle-top (last month's purchase gift) - and the perfect sticker
to put into it.
Seeing as it is a girly layout, a few
flowers were appropriate. I've used Tracy's lovely black roses from her Black,
White, Grey pack together with her Black
Petite Rosebuds and some smaller orange roses from Kaiser that were in my stash. The stems of the orange
roses I twisted around one of my small paint brushes to make those cute little
curly bits.
The black barbed-wire flourish is special. I
have a series of DT layouts I've yet to share that I needed some feminine
barbed-wire for (yeah - like you really NEED girly barbed wire lol)
and although I had organised for several very nice designs to be
made - production constraints meant that none of them were 'quite' what I
wanted. THIS is what I really wanted - it is based on one of my favorite Scrapware flourish designs, but altered
to match what I wanted in the barbed-wire. Sadly - for various reasons - I am
not sure it is going to be commercially available (though there are a few
pieces of it floating about) - but it was perfect for this
layout and after inking it black I added some Black Kindyglitz to make it all
sparkly.
What is a layout for Tracy without
some of her gorgeous charms? I bought her Black
Spider as soon as I saw it and popped one on the barbed-wire
flourish. How cute is he?
My poor old Adage
Tickets - I've had them in my stash for ages and this
is only the second time I have remembered to include one. I've left way
more open space on this double than I usually do and the adage ticket cluster
up here in the corner helped me to stop panicking too much about it all.
The alphas are my old favs - Scrapware Antique Lowercase - both the minis
and the original
size. To get the awesome finish on them takes only a few easy steps.
1 - Start with painting them white - it helps
make the later colours stand out more. Either leave to dry or use your heat gun
to get it done quickly. You can see I have done it pretty roughly and drying it
with the heat gun has added some bubbles - this is all good as it adds some
texture to the letter.
3 - Liberally spread Black Kindyglitz over the surface and
then leave to dry. The different mediums will all mix together a bit and you
will see some of the white paint show up and some of the Distress Ink will fade
to yellow. You can again use your heat gun to dry it - just be careful and
don't let it all bubble up too much.
4. When dry - press down onto the Spiced Marmalade Distress Ink pad
again to reapply some of the bright orange colour. Again, leave them to dry.
Then put on layout for a really cool and funky Halloween title.
The journalling actually helped solve an
irritating problem for me. The top section of the orange patterned paper - the
bit over the main photos - was very plain, without any of the distress pattern.
This is a result of it being the middle bit of the patterned paper. It annoyed
me that it was so plain and I could not work out how to tizz it up - but then I
realised I needed to journal about how this photo-shoot came about. Those plain
strips were now priceless - they let me include a fair bit of writing, without
having to hide it on a tag somewhere. I like to print out journalling like this
rather than hand write, as it makes it easier to control how much you can fit
into the limited space. You can print it out directly onto the paper, but I
prefer using acetate sheets.
And that's pretty much that - for the first
page anyway.
It didn't take too long for me to realise that
I had way too many photos for a single layout - so I started planning a double
about half way through the first page (and obviously before I had the title
sorted out). I prefer not to make my doubles duplicates of each other - but I
do like to keep to the same elements - so it meant for a little reshuffling of
the bits and pieces - even though the basic design is the same.
I had this left over bit of Under
Your Spell that I had earmarked for use - the lovely
black flourishes were a bit too girly for my boy layouts - but it fitted
here perfectly. I kept this piece and the orange block of Levitation
and Zodiac in the same position as the left page, but moved the strip
of Striped
Toad (oos) into a vertical position on the left. Since I
was intending on using a larger photo on this page, it would have hidden the
striped piece too much if I had left it in the original horizontal
position. Once some of the black flourishes were cut out it was an easy
enough process to slip the striped piece under them.
The embellishment cluster in the bottom left
corner has more flowers, chicken wire,
stickers and my chippy
barbed wire flourish. I also managed to pop in a cute little black
skeleton charm that is one of my favs. If anyone is
'doing' Halloween this year, this little cutie makes a wonderful earring
decoration added to a sleeper.
The other cookie photos went up the top on the
left with more of those wonderful little stickers . I think I
managed to use most of them somewhere on this project.
The final embellishment cluster with the usual
ingredients - it was cool to find so many stickers that were 'appropriate' to
the photo theme - since the cookies really were 'dreadful treats' and 'deadly
morsels'.
So that's my epic post for this month. I still
have a few layouts left to finish with this range and there are still more
photos from this session - so you might see me back some time in the near
future with more Apothecary Emporium.
I have promised Tracy a girly layout
with the stunning new Beautiful
Dreamer range from Glitz
Designs as well – so decisions, decisions...
Ngaire
Add one of our Cream Roses to the centre for a pretty embellishment
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