Beautiful Reef Mixed Media Layout for Helmar and Prima BAP

Vacation trips are always fun to remember. In 2012 Gary and I took a trip for our 30th anniversary to Baltimore Inner Harbor. We spent a day at the National Aquarium where I took this shot of the coral reef exhibit. The coral and fish are so colorful and vibrant. I enjoyed extending the feel of the reef onto the layout and have featured Helmar Liquid Scrapdots. I've used primarily Prima products with the January Prima BAP challenge for inspiration.

"Beautiful Reef"

Prima BAP Sketch

Tips and Techniques

When adding flowers over mixed media and layers, sometimes it's a challenge to get them positioned the way I like. A great solution is to use Helmar Liquid Scrap Dots. Often we think of this great product for adding dimension, but it's perfect for getting just the right placement over uneven surfaces as well. Here I've put a nice dot of Liquid Scrap Dots on the back of my focal flower. As you can see I've adhered it over several distressed paper layers which would normally tilt it away from the photo, but the Liquid Scrap Dots allowed me to position all of my flowers properly as you can see in the following photo. 

Here you can see how nicely the Prima flowers are positioned using Liquid Scrap Dots, despite the uneven base. 

Often, I look at my chipboard pieces "outside the box." Here the coral pieces are cut from the branches of a Leaky Shed Studio chipboard Christmas tree, painted with Lumiere gold and green metallic paint. I painted and then bubbled the paint with a heat tool in several layers to build up the paint to achieve a coral-like appearance. I adhered these pieces with 450 Quick Dry Adhesive.

A close-up of the background which was stenciled with molding paste using the Prima Scales stencil then misted, stamped, splattered with thinned gesso, and doodled. I've also scattered some Prima crystals around the page.

More flowers Prima flowers and Leaky Shed chipboard "coral" adhered with Liquid Scrap Dots.

The photo was adhered to the photo mats using Premium Craft Glue, and then to adhere the mat to the mixed media background, my go to adhesive is Helmar 450 Quick Dry Adhesive which adheres well to mixed media surfaces. 

Leaving you with one final photo.

Helmar Products
Liquid Scrap Dots
450 Quick Dry Adhesive
Premium Craft Glue

Other Products
Prima ~ Sunrise Sunset - Collection
Prima ~ Sunrise Sunset - Alphabet Stickers
Prima Flowers ~ Cottage Blossoms, Soubrette - Blue/Green, Metallic Iron, Divine Vine - Yellow, Guava Peony Brahms, Calypso Tin - Teal
Prima ~ Say It in Crystals - Circles Iridescent, 560577
Leaky Shed Studio ~ 9" Christmas Tree
Prima ~ Clear Stamp Script, Build-A-Frame Collections 1 & 2
Prima ~ Stencils - Static, Scales
Ranger ~ Distress Ink - Vintage Photo, Walnut Stain
Ranger ~ Archival Ink - Jet Black
Golden ~ Light Molding Paste
Liquitex ~ Gesso
Heidi Swapp ~ Color Shine - Mustard, Chartreuse
Tattered Angels ~ Glimmer Mist - Cork, Dragonfly
Lumiere Paint ~ Bright Gold, Halo Blue Gold
Pigma ~ Micron 05 Black
Prima ~ Distress Tool
Ranger ~ Heat It Craft Tool
Darice ~ Heat Tool

I hope you've been inspired to try out some Helmar Liquid Scrap Dots on your next project!

Thanks for stopping by today! I treasure your comments.

~ Blessings ~

"Sweet Angel" ScrapThat! Dec. Kit

Only 4 more sleeps til Christmas! I wish each of you and your families a blessed and wondrous Christmas. I have several Christmas and winter layouts I will be sharing with you between now and Christmas. I hope you enjoy our celebrations of seasons past. 

Today I would like to share the details of a layout using the

December ScrapThat! Kit.

"Sweet Angel"

Main, FAO, and EAO Kits

I have such wonderful memories of our children participating in a home school Christmas play so many years ago. I just adore this sweet photo of Elizabeth with her crooked little angel wings, so innocent and precious. I used several sheets of the gorgeous Kaisercraft Turtle Dove Collection. When I saw the angel paper and chipboard angels in the Embellishment Add-On Kit, I knew I would have to scrap this photo. 

Tips and Techniques: 

Chipboard Angel ~ My tutorial for these crackled and glittered chipboard angels can be found here. 

Snowy Mist ~ I have a couple Mister Huey Color Mists. These mists are chalky rather than glimmery and the white gives the snowy effect I used here on my background. 

Music Background ~ The center portion of the paper from the torn angel corner was a beautiful cream color. I stamped it in brown with a music stamp to peak through the die cut section. 

Painted "Photo Mat" ~ One of the sentiment blocks from the paper had the lovely green and red floral border which would be a perfect backdrop for this photo, that is if the sentiment wasn't in the center of it. I painted over the words in a sunburst pattern using a couple shades of cream to give a halo effect behind the photo. 

Wire ~ I curled the May Arts silver ball wire to add to my clusters. I snipped some of the wires off of the Prima kit flowers and coiled them to create the green vine tendrils. 

Berries ~ The red kit pearls were just a little bright for this page, so I painted some cranberry alcohol ink on them and when dry applied across my leaf stems as berries. 

Bridal Lace ~ My photo cut off the bottom of Elizabeth's beautiful dress, so I fussy cut the beaded lace flowers from a piece of bridal lace to trim out the bottom of the photo.

Flowers ~ The gorgeous jeweled flowers in the Flower Kit are by Prima, and I added some smaller white roses to the cluster that I cut from white cardstock, a staple in my stash, using my Donna Salazar Bitty Blossoms dies by Spellbinders. 

Leaves ~ I used a scrap of my kit paper to cut these beautiful leaf stems using the Spellbinder Foliage die. I used distress ink on the edges and a black marker to doodle the leaves and stems. 

Thanks for dropping by! I treasure your comments. 

~ Blessings ~

Tenderhearted Canvas - GDT at Word Art Wednesday

I hope you all have had a wonderful week!! Mine was filled with the joy of a precious wedding with Elizabeth adding Andrew to our fold. 

This is my second week as a Guest Designer at Word Art Wednesday working with the lovely Word Art of the week. This verse shares attributes of God that I want to be reminded to incorporate into my life each day, kindness, tenderheartedness, forgiveness, and God's amazing gift of forgiveness towards me. When I saw this precious Scripture, I thought it was something I wanted to display rather than include on a scrapbook page or card, so I thought I would try creating my first canvas. Let me know what you think. 

Be sure to head on over to Word Art Wednesday

to get your free copy of this fabulous Scripture. 

Techniques:

Paper Pieced Ballerina ~ One of my favorite scrap artists is Gabriella Pollacco. I receive so much inspiration from her work. I've seen a fair number of she art canvases, but when I saw hers, I just ooohed and aaaawed over it. She provided a pattern, which I used, and video tutorial. I thought with this help, I would try my hand at it. The details and shoes were added with a fine tip marker. If you look closely you will see the words kind and forgiven taken from the verse and added to the edges of her skirt. 

Doodling ~ I always love doodling, but rarely use it. With the doodled details on her dress, I thought the doodling around the Word Art and the vine edge would be nice details. 

Mixed Media ~ I painted the edges of the canvas to coordinate with the colors of my girl, then Mod Podged torn pieces of paper to my canvas. I swiped some pale green paint across the center of the canvas then spritzed with water and dabbed with a paper towel to soften the color. I brushed white paint onto some bubble wrap and used it to stamp across the piece, then spritzed on some mist through some square holed punchinella. 

I lightly laid some inexpensive sticker letters down the side to form the word tenderhearted, again from the verse, then spritzed two different shades of mist over them. Once dry, I removed the stickers and edged the letters with marker. I then created my girl as above. The white script was added last. I recently purchased Donna Salazar's Mixed Media Inx. I have to say the white "Jasmine" really showed up nicely. I've tried a number of different white inks only to be disappointed with the lack of coverage. Not the case with "Jasmine". 

Butterflies ~ I received these charming little butterflies from Elena Olinevich last week. I painted them with alcohol ink, then sanded to bring out the details of the raised edges. 

Be sure to head over to Word Art Wednesday

to see what the talented DT has created

with this week's fabulous Word Art.

I thought I'd end with a photo of Elizabeth and Andrew in front of the

Greek church where their reception was held. 

Photography by Rachel Adkins.

Thanks for stopping by! I treasure your comments.

~ Blessings ~

Celebrate Friends ~ DT reveal for The Stamping Scrapper

It's time for another of Shannon's wonderful sketches. I decided to go outside my current shabby mixed media style to a more funky feel in this layout to go with the fun photo of our girls getting together with friends and having a great time.

Here is The Stamping Scrapper May Sketch: 

I had fun with Bo Bunny Ad Lib using paper, brads, rub-ons, and stickers from the collection along with some Bazzill card stock. 

The chevron design was stamped using black Archival ink and a stamp from the Basic Grey Plumera collection then fussy cut. The orange cardstock strip was stamped with the Glitz Clear Stamps Distressing collection. I stamped the grid pattern from the Glitz collection randomly over the photo mat. The green patterned paper circle was stamped lightly with Peeled Paint Distress ink using another stamp from the Glitz collection. 

I fussy cut the funky flower design and centered the flowers with rhinestones of different colors and sizes. The circle border strip is from Bazzill. I cut it apart, used a portion on each side, and hand stitched down the centers. I also included my journaling along the border of the stamped strip and circle along with some doodling. 

I have entered this at 

Bird is the Word ~ Look/see, my journaling says Such fun to SEE friends.

Creations by Gill M ~ Stripes and Spots **

The Happy Scrappers ~ Anything Goes **

Thanks for dropping by! I treasure your comments. 

~ Blessings ~