Rondeau Beach layout

As I'm sitting here typing this blog entry, this area is under a tornado watch! Yikes! After seeing the pictures of the destruction left behind from the F3 tornado that touched down in Goderich (about 2 -1/2 or 3 hour drive from here) it is a little unsettling to say the least. I think I'll grab my cell phone and head for the lower studio (aka the basement) for the afternoon.

However, I am going to post another layout that I really like. It is based loosely on a layout I saw in Scrapbooks Etc magazine. Impossible to follow their designs entirely because who has all the exact paper and embellishments? I know I don't...but the layout itself is what I sort of follow. Here is the two page layout.

Several different brands of paper made up the background striped edges. The leaves were cut using a Sizzix die and just pieced together. I didn't have the exact colour of teal for the frame around Jack so I used some ink to get it to the colour I wanted. The large letters were the perfect size but the wrong colour. No problem. I just painted them. The small letters were cut from a Cuttlebug alphabet die set. I first ran the paper thru my Xyron to get glue on the back - so much easier. I would be lost without the Xyron. 

Here's a tip for painting or inking small items. I laid down a piece of freezer paper (the kind you pick up at the grocery store) which I use for a lot of painting and inking. Then I tore off a long strip of masking tape (cheap stuff from the dollar store is good for this) and tore off two small strips. I laid the long piece sticky side up, and adhered the ends with the small strips to the freezer paper. Now, lay your letters or what ever you are working on onto to the sticky masking tape and press firmly. Now paint or ink them, including the sides. They will stay put and you don't have paint or ink all over your hands.

Here's a close up of the two pages.

I really wanted a multi-coloured braided look for the top so I punched circles out of same cardstock I used in the layout and layered and glued them together.

See that light teal strip above the brown one - that was plain blue with a very light design so I inked the edges with teal and stamped a flying fish all over with the same teal ink and then stamped some small clusters of dots here and there.

 By placing the teal scalloped frame around the small picture it brought it to the foreground instead of losing it between the two larger pictures. The leaf on the right side mimics the larger ones on the left side of the other page.