Happy and crazy girl | Maria La Chica | Monochrome

Hello again everyone!

Yes, it is Maria with you again! It is May, a brand new month and also when we introduce the new design team to the group! You can see the new team in this post. I hope you join me in welcoming them to the team! But a new team means a new schedule, so I am now at the beginning of the month rather than at the end.

So this month's theme is Monochrome. We had a bit of an internal discussion beforehand trying to figure out what monochrome really means as some people had different ideas. We reached the agreement that we can do a couple of different things: we can either choose a colour and use different shades of that colour, or we can choose black and white with an accent colour.

And that's what I've done! As you will be able to see in my page below, I have gone for a very neutral background in grey, with B&W papers, and then an accent of pink-ish coral.

The papers are mainly scraps from a 6x6 pad by Simple Stories - DIY boutique. It is an old collection, but I am sure it can still be found in some online shops. It is a very versatile collection, with tons of basic colours.

The embellishments are from Felicity Jane. Unfortunately, Felicity Jane is an American company that is very difficult to get hold of in the UK. You have to order directly from them and the shipping costs and taxes are not cheap. I have bought a couple of collections, but from UK second hand shops, which makes it so much more affordable.

The photos I have used have quite a neutral colouration, so I was quite lucky to be able to choose any accent colours that I wanted. I happened to have the most embellishment pieces in this coral/pink-ish colour, so that's the one I went for (plus it is my daughter's favourite colour...)

For the title I used the "happy" word from Felicity Jane, alpha stickers by Tim Holtz (which are back in stock at Hobbycraft! yay!) and the word Girl from the Girl Squad collection thickers.

And here is my process video, so you can see how I struggled to repeat the paper positioning that I had originally come up with!! :P

Thanks for joining me today, and read you soon!

Fun and Games | Maria La Chica | Mood Board

Hello scrap addicts!

It's Maria here with you today, with a bright and fun layout inspired by this month's moodboard:

As you can see, there's tons to be inspired about! However, for me what jumped out the most was the frames in the centre of the image.

So here is my layout!

I have used Shimelle's latest collection, which is super colourful and bright, exactly what I needed!

And I've got a process video in case you want to see how I created this layout and want to hear me rumble! :)

https://youtu.be/2QmkpGHk1hM

Thanks for joining me today, and see you next month!

Love you | Maria La Chica | Sketch

Hello everyone, and welcome once again to UK Scrap Addicts!

As you've already seen from the previous posts this month, I have a super cute sketch to work with!

Here it is:

And here is the page I have created with it:

I love it!

I have used Cocoa Vanilla Studio "Bohemian Dreams" papers as I felt that the colours worked quite well with my photos. I don't always try to match the colours on the photos with the papers, but this time I thought it was a good combination.

Here's a close up:

I don't have much time to scrap lately, so using a sketch is definitely the way forward for me, as it takes a lot of the pain of having to decide on a design away from me.

Sticking to a single collection of papers also helps, as I don't have to spend a long time trying to decide what goes with what, and trying to match embellishments and papers.

Here's another close up:

I hope you have liked this page, and if you have a few minutes spare, go and watch my process video on youtube... it's quite short!

https://youtu.be/sT6zEPakckQ

Thanks for joining me today, and read you very soon!

Siblings forever | Maria La Chica | Black & White photos

Hello lovely scrappers! Thanks for joining me today with a new layout for UK Scrap Addicts.

As you already know, this month's topic is Black and White photos... and I love love love using B&W photos!. The beauty of using pictures in B&W is that you are not constricted with your colour palette when creating your layout, as you know that your colours won't clash with your photo.

And here is my layout!

As you can see, I have gone for a very straight forward layout. I wanted the photo to be the focal point. As it is in Black and White, and I am using a very muted background, I didn't want the photo to be "lost", so I printed it bigger than I normally do!

Again, because I didn't want for the photo to lose focus, I chose not to use any pattern paper under my photo... However, I then went a bit crazy with the embellishments! I did something that I don't do very often and it's to use almost a whole sticker sheet!

Here's a couple of close ups:

Apologies for not having a video for you this month. Life has taken over and I run out of time! Hopefully I'll have a super nice one for you next month!

Thanks for joining me today and I hope you'll stick around for December!

Keep scrapping!

Why fit in...? | Alpha Stickers | Maria La Chica

Hello scrap addicts!

Thanks for joining me today  for another layout using alpha stickers and Thickers! I have got a video on youtube explaining the whole process, so please have a look at that as well!

As you can see, I have used turquoise/teal and black thickers. These are my favourite colours and I have plenty of different ones to play with!

I have added some mixed media in the form of watercolour splatters and I love the effect!

I didn't want to distract from the big title and the thickers and that's why I decided not to have any pattern paper. It's funny how I hoard pretty paper and then I choose not to use it! Ha!

I hope you will take part in this challenge and create layouts where your alpha stickers and thickers feature heavily! Don't forget that the amazing Crafty Ribbons are offering a generous £25 voucher to the winner! Pop over our facebook page to learn more!

Now go and watch my video :D

https://youtu.be/3ZM7urmBViQ

Read you soon,

Maria

First Car | Maria La Chica | Journalling

Hello Scrap Addicts! It's Maria with you today :)

This month's theme is journalling, and most of the time I like adding a few lines to my scrapbook pages. Journalling is quite personal, I think. Some people want to document the story behind the photo so they will add lots of journalling, whereas other people are happy to focus on the artistic side of the layout. Whichever you choose is fine! There's always the middle ground, which is adding the date, location and people in the photo somewhere on your layout.

For this page, I have used a very simple design, as I wanted all the focus to be on the photo and the title. I chose big alphas for my title, they are from Pink Paislee and I love them!

Underneath my photo I used a very grungy stencil from this month's sponsor Pretty My Page. I believe they are in the process of launching a new website, but in the meantime you can find them on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/prettymypage/

I tried matching the colours in the pattern papers with my watercolours as best as I could, and I am not too displeased with the result! The papers are from an older American Crafts collection. I am on a self imposed no-spend at the moment and I am trying my best at using up my stash! 

This layout is for my "Book of Me" album. The layouts in this album are more focused on the journalling, as I tell stories of my past. I thought documenting my first car was a "must"!

I also did some hand stitching, as I felt I needed to bring in a bit more of black into the layout. 

And I also have a Process Video on our YouTube channel! Come over and have a watch :)

https://youtu.be/oL5AUiNkQsg

Thanks for joining me today and I'll read you very soon!

Today & Always | Maria La Chica | Large photo

Hello Scrap Addicts!

Maria here with you today with a large photo layout. As I said in the introductory theme post, I have only been working with 12x12 layouts for a few months. Before then I always used 8x8 books. The thing with 8x8 is that "normal" photos look huge on them! So my trick was to keep the layouts very simple, making the photo the main focus of the layout.

So for this 12x12 page I have followed the same philosophy and kept the design very simple, making the photo the absolute focus of the page.

Here it is:

I have kept the embellishments very minimal, with just two clusters (they are not even clusters, as the flower one only has just one item!), and I haven't added any journalling either, which is very unusual for me! I always add at least one sentence, but I thought it would mess up the super clean look that I had achieved.

Here are a few close ups:

I have also recorded a process video of this layout which you can find on the YouTube link below. I would really love it if you could pop over and watch it, and leave a comment letting me know what your think!

Thanks for popping by and read you very soon!

 | My Blog | Pinterest | Instagram

Sweet Child | Maria La Chica | Moodboard

Hello Scrap Addicts! Welcome once again to our blog! Maria here with you today with a layout inspired by an amazing moodboard.

Here is the gorgeous moodboard that I was lucky to play with:

Isn't it super amazing? In particular, I was drawn into the image with the colourful raindrops falling from a cloud of fabric scraps :) although all the images are awesome! So much inspiration to take from just one moodboard!

And this is my layout:

You can watch my process video here:

And a few more close ups:

Thanks once again to Allthingssticky.com for their generous donation of glue dots and also for their discount code "ADDICTS30" for 30% off your first order.

I hope you have liked this layout and thanks for joining us once again! Do not hesitate to ask any questions you may have!

Now and then | Maria La Chica | Sketch

Hello everyone and welcome once again to UK Scrap Addicts!  Maria here with you today, sharing a layout that was not easy...  Sometimes even the most seasoned scrapper struggles, so this one was one those layouts that started as one thing and ended as something completely different!

For this layout I wanted to use Susan's double page sketch, however, I had this idea in my head to make it work as a single page layout.  So with a certain degree of "artistic license", I have interpreted it a bit and I think in the end you can still see where I got the inspiration from.  In fact, I think my second layout is actually more similar to the sketch than my first layout was!

That is the beauty of sketches.  You can do pretty much anything with them.  They are a great starting point and you can follow them as loosely or closely as you want!

So here is my finished layout and the sketch it was based on:

So let me tell you a story. I don't believe in ghosts or supernatural beings, however, I believe there was some sort of entity preventing me from creating this layout. Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. First, my cut file didn't cut well (my fault, I know), then I managed to stick some paper all crooked, and finally, I just wasn't happy at all with how it was looking... So I decided to start all over, but the problems didn't stop there! I accidentally put glue on top of one of my photos, and when I went to reprint it, my printer had run out of black ink! So the photo is not looking great, I will have to reprint it in the future... Oh, and I also had problems with the editing of the video! As I said, maybe it wasn't meant to be.

Anyway... I still managed to pull the layout through, I think :)

A few more closeups of my layout:

And here is my video. I hope you don't laugh too much at my struggles (I won't blame you if you do, I laugh at myself too!) and really wish you are inspired to create with this sketch!

Read you soon!

Is fox safe? | Maria | Sewing

Hello everyone!

Maria here today and welcome once again to the UK Scrap Addicts blog. I hope you are enjoying all the inspiration and creativity! I certainly am!

This month it is all about sewing. I will tell you a tiny secret... I have only been hand-stitching on my layouts for about three months, and even though I own a sewing machine, I still haven't had the guts to take it to paper! Before I started hand-stitching, "faux stitching" was all the rage for me. I added it to quite a few of my projects! It's so simple and quick, but effective too!

For today's layout I have used these two techniques, faux and hand-stitching. As you will be able to see in the video below, making the wholes for the hand stitching was pretty straight forward using the paper piercing guide. I thought this was the best solution for what I wanted to do, as it was a curved shaped. Had it been a straight line, I would have probably just used a ruler to guide me.

The actual hand stitching takes a tiny bit of time, but nothing that will put me off. I made a layout recently where I hand stiched lots of sun rays and that took a while! But this one didn't take too long. Just get comfy in your chair, sit back and stitch whilst you're watching something on the telly or on youtube :)

I was actually quite inspired by the sketch that I used (you can find it here) and I didn't faff too much trying to decide what to do, which is quite uncommon for me! I used an old Studio Calico collection called Snippets for my papers. The embellishments are a mixture of Pink Paislee, Shimelle's Little by Little and stickers and enamels from my stash, The Thickers in the title are from Amy Tangarine's Follow.

I have also used Heidi Swapp Color Shine and Mr Hueys for my splatters, and a bit of watercolour too, to bring the blue from the thickers and the fox pattern paper, as I don't have ink sprays in that colour.

And one more close up below showing my faux stitching. The beauty of faux stitching is that you can use any colour pen to match your colour scheme, or even change the design! You can do short lines, or long lines, or even a mixture of lines and dots if that's what you fancy. Some people use a ruler for a straight design, and others do it by hand, giving it a more DIY look. No rules!

Please pop over our YouTube channel and watch my first process video!

Read you soon!