Creating with Charming Chains

Hi everyone

Cathy here with a layout ...

Classy and Fabulous

You girls should all know by now how much I love to mix ranges of pp's together and I knew as soon as I saw the Glitz Houndstooth, it would be the perfect background paper to go with the Authentique Uncommon Collection Unique pp which I hand cut and layered with foam tape, then added some stemmed flowers with a few rhinestones cut from the black rhinestone chain for flower centres.  

I also added the gorgeous oval frame and double heart charms around the flower sprays. 

The Scrapware lamp post was inked in grey and I lightly dabbed some Tim Holtz black soot ink over the top and added a couple of the new white pearls.  The little birdie was cut from the Echo Park sticker sheet.

To frame the photo I used the Glitz Polka, some corrugated card which I painted white and some black rhinestone chain.  I cut the Authentique word from the strip at the bottom of the paper and finished off with some of the stickers from the Glitz Titles stickers for my title and journaling.

Cheers

Cathy :)

Hi Ladies,

Ngaire here - and I have been having a ball the last few weeks, hiding out at Tracy’s place bossing her around, demanding one of this and one of that.

Prepare to be absolutely gobsmacked at her latest creations – a bit like Pringles or CC’s (Hmmm – are they still around?) you won’t be able to just stop at one. I don’t think she even had time to set this little beauty down before I snaffled it up – because it was just perfect for the Glitz Designs, Beautiful Dreamer layout I was playing with for her.  

Love this paper range – why have you not all bought it out?? It is absolutely stunning. For this layout I have layered to my hearts content, starting with the Polka patterned paper as the base. This was given a good distressing with my Heidi Swapp Distressing tool. Over that went a slightly smaller piece of the lovely Damask paper, which was also distressed and then stitched to the base paper – with a small bit torn out on the right-hand side. I’ve then offset a piece of Polka (which I cut from my base sheet before stitching the Damask layer on) with a smaller rectangle of the Stripe paper, on which I used one of my Martha Stewart punches to give it a nice lace border. The final two layers are a piece of the newsprint reverse side of Polka and one of the Whatnots. That gave me a lovely set of contrasting layers to play with as my layout framework – the rest was straightforward fun playing with some lovely embellishments.

From my stash I pulled out some old  vines and a floral stem and mixed them up a bit to give me a nice floral cluster in the bottom corner of the layout. 
I added one of Tracy’s gorgeous Large Antique Bronze Keys and a small antique bronze Love charm. A really cool thing about the key is that the spaces in the top of the key are actually meant for gems to be placed into them. I’ve subbed in some pearls – but they look great without anything in them too.

The alphas are my favourite ones – Scrapware Antique Lowercase – both the normal size and the minis. To get that distressed look to them you need to paint/ink them white first and then dry them with a heat gun. Then ink with Tumbled Glass Distress Ink (oos) and heat dry. This colour is almost the perfect shade for these papers – a slight touch of a Weathered Wood Distress Ink pad to the alphas (lightly – the ink will bead rather than spread out) then gives them the perfect match – they now have a slightly dirty, grungy look to them, just like the blue on the Polka paper. Heat dry again. Now to give them a bit more of a colour pop – add either some Tumbled Glass Stain or Re-Inker to a gob of Rock Candy Distress Stickles and mix it thoroughly. Apply to the alphas and dry with a heat gun again. Perfecto – it will be a bit blotchy with the heat gun drying (f you want a more thorough coverage just paint it on and leave to dry naturally) – but I love the look against the patterned papers.

I’ve done exactly the same thing with the flourish corners – this time using Worn Lipstick. As an added bonus – used without the glittery coating, Worn Lipstick is exactly the shade of soft pink that is in these papers. So you get two matching colours for the price of one with this ink.

Across the top of the layout I have added a Crinkled Seam Binding Ribbon (from my stash) as a garland. I embellished it with the matching hanging pearl that comes in the Charming Chains pack. I had to grovel a bit (ok – it was a lot actually – there might even have been some begging too) to get the extra ones from Tracy – but it was so worth it. I love the sense of whimsy it gives the layout. Another floral cluster – using up the rest of my vines - helps fill up some empty space underneath the garland.

Tucked away in the torn out corner is my journalling tag. The last of the flowers and a bit of the crinkled ribbon have been used to embellish it and tied on to the tag is Tracy’s stunning new Charming Chain. The blue pearls on this chain match the colour in the patterned paper perfectly. Yes mine is a little longer than yours will be (length does vary a bit, since they are hand-made) – but that is more because mine is a proto-type and I ran away with it before Tracy could do anything about it.

And here is the tag itself – with that stunning Charming Chain. The rubon on the tag is one by Kaiser and I put the journalling on the back.

So that’s me for this week. Check out the Charming Chains in the store now and get in to get some Beautiful Dreamer papers before I go back to restock my stash. 

Ngaire