Gutter Girlz/Ad This and Songbird Scraps

GUTTER GIRLZ / AD THIS CHALLENGES

I should be outside... the sun is shining, I really should mow the lawn and pull out some (very stubborn) weeds, but ... I don't feel like it hehe. I've been longing for some sun for days now, and now that she's finally paying us a long overdue visit (which is predicted not to last very long), I'm here, behind my pc, looking at your beautiful blogs and feeling a need, an urge to scrap. Sounds familiar to anyone???

This is the LO I made yesterday, and I did manage to do some cleaning as well, so I'm feeling incredibly proud of myself today LOL.



After the rather "childish" LO I made previously (a style which I like as well, don't get me wrong!), I really wanted to create something funky, and what better sites to visit when you want funkyness than Gutter Girlz and Ad This!

The Prompt #25 over at Gutter Girlz was the song "Bitch" by Meredith Brooks and the specified technique was "black". I think I got that covered.

For the challenge over at Ad This we had to use 5 diffferent mediums. I used distress inks (1), black acrylic paint (2), black felt (3), ribbon (4) and puffy stickers by Making Memories (5) ... got those covered as well!

I was also inspired by the latest technique over at The Next Step, which is to alter your patterned paper. However, as I started out with plain white cardstock, I don't think I can enter this one for their challenge. I you haven't visited their blog yet, go and check it out. The wonderful ladies over there highlight a new technique every month, and update the blog weekly with new tips and variations on that technique. I love that site!

Usually distress inks are used to give a distressed look (doh!!!) to the pages, but since I don't own any funky-coloured paints, and I didn't feel like mixing them up, I decided to find out if the distress inks would work for a funky look as well ... and I think it worked surprisingly well! I started out by printing and cutting out different words to be used as masks and reverse masks. I used following distress inks all over the page: Broken China, Fired Brick, Mustard Seed and Peeled Paint. The black shade visible around the word "Saint" is due to the ink of my printer, so watch out for that. In this case it worked out fine because I wanted a lot of black on my LO, but I can imagine in other circumstances I wouldn't have been at all happy with this unexpected effect! However, this didn't happen with the words "mother" and "lover" ... I have no idea why not?? Oh yes, I also randomly applied some masking tape over the page, just to add some extra visual interest.

I immediately knew which papers I wanted to use, which is rare for me. Usually I spend hours contemplating what papers and other embellies to use, but this LO just seemed to make itself. I didn't think, I just grabbed what I wanted and adhered it to the page. Anyway, I tore the papers, inked the edges with black soot distress ink and curled their edges. I then used mesh as a mask for my black acrylic paint around the edges of the background. After that, all I needed to do was add my pics and some embellies and stitch on the ribbons. That's it really, I don't think I've ever completed a LO so quickly before.

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2ND JUNE SONGBIRD SCRAPS CHALLENGE

The new songs are up over at Songbird Scraps. I do hope you'll join us this month. This is my DT example:


This is a song about how releaved we are that our kids have switched over from children's songs (although that period of time certainly had it's charm as well) to "regular" songs. This LO features my youngest daughter Christina who's constantly singing along with the songs on her mp3, and who shares my kind of music, thank goodness. My other two children favor their father's music and let me tell you, my music and his are not compatible LOL!!!!!!!!!!

Again I was inpired by "The Next Step" to alter my pp ... I drew and coloured the stars, and also coloured parts of the journaling. Thanks for that tip Bethany, it made a huge difference to the overall look of the page!!!
To mimic CD's I simply cut out some circles and painted them with silver dabber paint by Ranger.

Okay, does it show that I'm home alone (my husband's at work), that my kids are playing by themselves and that I desperately want someone to talk to LOL???????? Still, I'm not finished talking ... I want to share a funny story with you:
Remember that post in which I told you we planned on going to the "Efteling" (a theme park), and we turned back home because of a traffic jam ... well, two days laters we got up real early and this time arrived at that same theme park even before opening time. Anyway, we were standing in line waiting to go on our first attraction of the day, when Chloë said: "oh, if I had fairy godparents (she's a big fan of "Fairly Odd Parents") I'd wish it was our turn already" ... and then she put up her finger and added "oh yes ... and world peace of course" ... haha, this cracked me up.

Talk to you later my sweet friends
Big hugs xxx Peggy