Sweet Child of Mine | Pol Prince | Journalling

Hi scrappy friends! Pol here today with a new layout I created with this months theme in mind - journaling. 

I'm a bit hit and miss with journaling usually, I tend to add it after I've taken photos of my page since most of my pages are for design team work and will be viewed by a larger audience. Journaling is usually an afterthought for me, because I scrap more for the process and the art. I would like to try and include more journaling on my pages as a record for my children. With this in mind I've created a layout that not only tells a story, but even the photo itself is 'journaling'.

This page documents the sweet and funny messages my 17 year old son and 14 yr old daughter wrote in their Father's Day card to their step dad. We absolutely fell about laughing when we read it!

This month we were given some stencils to try from Lisa-Jane Johnson, who owns the Pretty My Page shop on Facebook, with an exciting new website coming very soon. 

My border paper is Websters Pages - an older collection that I brought up to date with the addition of some mixed media and colourful flair. 

To start with, after I had matted my white card to the border paper, I used the packaging technique to lightly add some light green Distress Ink to the top of my page. I gently sponged a darker shade of Distress Ink through one of the stencils a few times, then applied white texture paste through one of the stencils, gradually building up my base layers.

I matted my photo onto the same paper as my border, and punched out the ripped tap effect at the top. I then used foam tape to adhere my photo and mat over the inky area at the top of my page. 

I used pink and blue Distress Inks to gently sponge through two different stencils onto white cardstock, and cut them out to use as ephemera around my photo. I added enamel dots to the centres, which were also from Lisa-Jane's Pretty My Page shop.

I used three main clusters around my photo area which I defined using white thread. I added Cocoa Vanilla and Elle's Studio woodgrain shapes, fussy cut butterflies from the Kaisercraft Wildflower collection, Heidi Swapp word stickers, and flair from Cutz2luv.

I used blue Bella Blvd puffy heart stickers around my page, peeking out from behind layers. 

I absolutely love the black Pinkfresh alphas that I used for my title, in fact I love them so much I bought four packets! They last ages too because they come with lots of vowels.

I'm a massive fan of using song lyrics for my page titles, so you'll often come across a song title on my layouts!

Finally, last but not least, I wrote my journaling under my title, and splatted black ink around the page to tie it all together. 

Please do have a go at this months challenge featuring journaling, it's a great way to tell a story you've been meaning to write down, or even create a page without photos. Thanks for reading, see you all soon!

Light It Up | Pol Prince | Clustering

Hello lovelies! Pol here today with a new layout featuring our new monthly theme - clustering. 

Personally I LOVE clustering on my layouts. Usually you'll find that my pages have three clear clusters on them, but I like to challenge myself, so on this new layout I've spread them out a bit more, although you can still see the three main clusters.

I've used our FREE cut file for August, designed by the talented Nikki Rowland. The cut file gave me the idea of three photos and clusters located with the words 'hello', 'hiya', and 'hey'.

To start with I used this gorgeous watercolour ombre paper from Fancy Pants Hello Sunshine collection, and I cut the file out of black cardstock to really make it 'pop' from the background. My embellishments are all from the Pink Paislee Summer Lights collection, which I cannot get enough of at the moment! The colours are amazing! I used ephemera, regular stickers, chipboard stickers, and I fussy cut some elements out of the cut-apart sheets. The flair buttons are from Cutz2Luv.

I love these funny photos of me and my niece and nephew playing with the drag queen filter on Snapchat! The colours were perfect for the background paper and embellishments too. I used three frames from the Summer Lights ephemera pack, popped them over my photos, and adhered them next to, above, and below the words on  the cut file. I then chose the embellishments I wanted for a cluster next to each photo by playing around with them a bit and seeing what looked best where.

I then had three clear clusters but there were still more things I wanted to add, so I decided to go for a rough 'circle' of embellishments around the page.

I had originally planned to putting my title, the 'Light It Up' die cut piece, in the centre of my page. However, it didn't look right to me so I ended up putting it in the 'circle' to balance out the other larger elements. I tend to repeat shapes a lot on a page, as you can see, the circles and hearts are repeated, along with little stars to make the circle 'flow'. The flairs from Cutz2Luv were a perfect match, and I have to say, my nephew makes a very handsome drag queen!

I had as much fun making this layout as we did taking the photos! Please do join in this months challenge on clustering, and link your new layouts up on our Facebook page. There's a great prize from our sponsors this month - Thompson's Craft Supplies.