Hi everyone, Rebecca with you today sharing my second layout using Echo Park's 'Under Sea Adventures' collection. There's still plenty of this fab, fun collection left in the store and you can find it here.
For this layout, I took the grey Bazzill Cardstock from the Matchmaker Pack and cut some Portholes using my silhouette machine. I cut five in total - one large one, 2 medium and 2 slightly smaller. I backed the largest porthole with my photo, which is of my son and I swimming in the sea on holiday earlier this month. Then I backed one of the medium and one of the small portholes with the 'Sudsy Sea' patterned paper, and the other medium and small ones with the 'Wonders of the Sea' paper.
I wanted to add some mixed media behind my portholes, and initially reached for the Cosmic Shimmer Pixie Sparkles in 'Beyond Blue'. These Pixie Sparkles are INCREDIBLE! They are a fine glitter powder that you activate with water and they are so shimmery and beautiful - I highly recommend them! However... it wasn't quite the right shade of blue, and I'd gone a bit mad with it so I didn't like my background at all! It went in the bin and I went back to the drawing board! I decided subtle mixed media was the way to go for this page, and decided to make myself a 'stencil'.
I punched some 2" circles from white cardstock and taped them in a line next to each other to create a 'wave' pattern. I then used a Distress Ink pad in 'Salty Ocean' and brushed some ink lightly over the circles, creating several waves on my background. I concentrated on the area of the page where I knew my portholes would sit. I finished the background off with some white splatters.
Once I was happy with the arrangement of my portholes, I adhered them with a layer of foam behind to add dimension to the page.
With the portholes in place, I moved on to embellishing - which was really quick and easy! I took the Element Stickers sheet and selected several stickers to use. I stuck them all to some scrap white cardstock and then cut them out. This allowed me to use them more as die cut ephemera rather than stickers, and meant that I could move them about until I was happy with the placement.
I added some stickers on top of the portholes, some behind and some inside to create some dimension and to give a realistic 'under water' appearance. I then raided my sequin stash and added sequins around the edge of the portholes to act as the bolts. I love how these portholes turned out!
I added white splatters to the entire layout using watered down white gesso. I prefer to use gesso over white acrylic paint to add my splatters as I find it sits on the surface better - and therefore dries a truer white. I find that the acrylic paint soaks into the page and becomes translucent, so doesn't appear as white.
I then remembered that I hadn't added a title to my layout! I used the Doodlebug Sunshine Alphabet Stickers in the shade 'Blue Jeans' to add the words 'Swim Time' to the left of my design. I love these alphabet stickers - they come in so many different colours so are really handy to have in your stash.
And that's my layout complete! It's a very minimalistic layout with plenty of white space, which I think allows the elements from the collection to really sing. If you'd like to watch the layout come together, or see how I created my own stencil, there is a process video up on my YouTube channel, which you can find here.
That's all from me this month - I'll be back next month with a new collection - and I'm not going to lie... I'm a little bit excited because I'm working with the beautiful Simple Vintage Lemon Twist collection from Simple Stories!
Take care
Rebecca x
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