thursday...back to the basics

Afternoon bloggers! I have something fun to share with you all tonight! Penny over at sb.com posted a new challenge a few days ago which sounded very challenging but it had a lot of appeal to me. I'm one of those who stacks challenges to make it more challenging to me. Well, she challenged us to make a layout using the basics: paper, ink and scissors (and glue of course!). This needs a bit of explaining as ink is a very broad term in her vocabulary. We could use any ink-distress inks, different colored pens and even the printer as it uses ink! We could use any paper and the scissors had to be regular scissors, not shaped ones.

Well, after 3 days of thinking and working on it, here is my take on this challenge and I must say that I'm very happy with the results:


I hand cut everything you see here using my handy pair of scissors. I distressed all the edges so that you wouldn't see the crooked lines plus I love to distress! I did some faux stitching on the background pieces as well as the large tag to add some interest, depth and texture. I used one of Basic Grey's old line, the Recess line, for this layout. Who said who have to use school paper on school layouts? The pretty edges are from Sassafras. I always cut them all up when I get their papers and store them away for later. I managed to use 7 pictures in this layout as I had a lot of pictures from this event.


Of course, I made my own flowers. I used Gabrielle's tutorial for the two that look similar and Helen's tutorial for the larger flower. All the flower centers are fuzzy cut from leftover papers from my stash. I don't remember them all but I remember the center for the larger flower is from a GCD Studios paper and the tiny yellow flower in the center is from Basic Grey's Origin line. I distressed them and cupped them with the back of my rounded pen to give them dimension.


For the strips of paper, I carefully cut them trying to make them the same size but as you can see, I failed miserably. It's okay that they are different sizes though, it adds character to the flower, or so I keep telling myself. I curled the tips with my scissors originally and then rolled them with my hands. I hand drew the leaves on black cardstock, cut them and distressed the edges.


The fuzzy cutting was an interesting process as was the title. For the fuzzy cutting, I used this photoshop brush. I printed it on white paper and cut around it, just like you would a stamped image. For the title, I wrote out the words, printed them on white cardstock and carefully cut around them. I didn't like the fact that you could see the white edges so I colored everything over with a thick black sharpie.


I did a few dots in white to mimic bling. Oh, how I missed being able to use stickles and 3D paint! LOL
I finished by journaling in the lower part of my over sized tag.

I do feel quite accomplished after finishing this layout using only paper, ink and scissors. Why don't you give this challenge a try? You'll be surprised at how creative you can be when limited by your supplies!