All that glitters is not gold…

Hi Everyone

Sam here, with my first layout as a DT member of the UKSA team…

If you hadn’t already noticed, the theme for April is ‘Sparkle’.

Now, I can’t deny that I have a real phobia of glitter – I think it’s because it reminds me of sand. Like sand, it gets everywhere, so it’s a scrapbooking product that I tend to avoid like the plague! I simply couldn’t face using any, so my ‘Sparkle’ was going to have to be introduce via some other means…

I found I’d got some Starlights paint, including White Gold, which I knew gave a true shimmery effect, so I decided that my layout would incorporate gold elements along with some co-ordinating sequins from my stash.

My eldest step-daughter is in New Zealand currently where this photo was taken. I thought the quirky seat on the wall that had become a painted swing was fabulous, along with the cupid and combinations of greens, teals and hot yellow. It’s not a colour combination that I’d usually scrap with, but was so inspired by it, I decided to dig deep into my scrapbooking stash and see what I could find.

To my delight, I realize that the Maggie Holmes ‘Carousel’ collection featured some of these tones. And, I’m sure that you can relate to just ‘saving a piece of paper’ because it’s too nice to use syndrome? I’d been suffering with that over the big top paper, but as it was just black and white, it meant that I could paint it to complement the photo and add sparkly details too!

I tend to mix white gesso with paint when I’m creating a background on a printed design, as it works in much the say way as preparing a background that’s going to be subjected to techniques such as the packaging one.

After fussy cutting the kites and the scallop detail for the big tops, I used sequins to add detail, with little French knots to each centre.

I found I’d got an unopened set of enamel charms, both of which were set into a gold metal, so this added to the sparkle along with my title.

Until next month…

Love and sparkles

Sam X