A Little Time: Tips & Techniques for my MCS pages

Hello everyone! Here are my tips and techniques for the July I made with the fabulous My Creative Scrapbook Kit.

I LOVED this kit. I loved all the bright colors with the bold black and white stripes.

You make my heart sing:

I was first inspired by the paper with all the frames.

I liked the way it looked but I couldn't just slap a photo on there and be done, so I cut out all the frames and arranged them like I did above.

It was still kind of boring to me so I said, "Hey, I'll make it look like a 3 dimensional room!"

So, I took the photo and the frame off and started using a pencil and a ruler to make some angles on the kraft cardstock background.

Corner to corner first.

Then, decide how deep you want the "floor" and draw a horizontal pencil line across the page over the angled line.

Draw a vertical line where you want the other wall to be.

Line up the "floor" and draw that angle again using pencil on the patterned paper.

Do the same thing with the trim. Line it up on the angle, use a pencil and cut along the line. Remember that the closer the trim is to the edge of the page, the bigger it should be to help give that 3 dimensional look.

I made a frame for the extra wall. I followed the angles on the floor and made the ends slightly wider.

I really wanted the shadow of the corner to stand out a bit. At first I used Copics but they just weren't working for me so I used a sketching pencil, sprayed some water on a dauber and rubbed it around until I got the look I wanted.

I added some doodling around the mat of the photo to make it match the other frames. It looks like I'm left handed here, but I'm really not. I have to take the photo with my right hand. ;)

I added a little bit of distress stain to show up behind the photo. I just needed it to stand out a bit more.

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The butterflies are 3 dimensional, too. To do that the easy way, I put half of the butterfly stickers on a scrap paper. I cut out the butterfly and used the sticky part to adhere to the page. The butterfly that's on the cardstock won't stick so it will automatically stick up and give some more dimension to the page.

I added 3-D glue dots to each of the frames before sticking them down. I also shaded around each frame with a very light Copic marker.

100:

The story of my daughter and her missing 100 Fruit Loops had to be documented on the page with all the circles! After all, Fruit Loops are circles.

I used 4 "1"s of different colors to make one big "1". I used the wood circles to make the zeros and added stickers inside the circles.

The "zeros" didn't stand out enough so I painted them using black acrylic paint.

I separated the cloud stencil from the Studio Calico mask and sprayed blue ink over them. I carefully moved the stencil around and kept spraying. It would have been easier to spray before I stuck down the "100" but I don't seem to work that way. I used a piece of scrap paper to cover up the "100" before I sprayed.

I matted the photo on black cardstock and used a white pen to make dots around the frame. I used the black ribbon, wrapped it around the photo and mat and tied it in a knot.

I wrote up the journaling on the computer (double spaced), printed it up and cut it into strips. I cut it up with a guillotine first and then use my scissors to hand cut it. I don't care if it's a little crooked. I also added green strips to help draw the eye down the page as I found that the strips were kind of washing out in the background.

After I arranged and glued down the strip journaling, I outlined each strip with an ultra fine Sharpie marker.

You can see that I had a tag behind the photo. I decided later I didn't like that and removed it.

Rainbow Loom:

When I first saw the Studio Calico mask, I knew it had to be sprayed in rainbow colors and then I said, "Oh! Rainbow Loom bracelet page!" And that's how it all came together.

I started with red ink and carefully moved the stencil around to spray orange, yellow and green and blue. I ran out of room for purple.

I layered all the colored paper behind the photo as one big mat. They're all cut in random sizes. Pssst, you can see the vertical line of the mask on the page. I covered that line up with another mat.

Later I used a ultra fine point Sharpie to outline the colored mats. On the dark polka dot paper, I used a white pen.

The circle stickers and the wooden circles are used to make the visual triangle around the photo. In addition, the two half circles and the oval do the same thing. I also made a third triangle with the title and the label stickers.

Go Chutney Go:

This darn dog is not even my dog and I love her so much. She is a dog that has no home. She lives in a boarding kennel while waiting for her forever home. She's lived in a kennel for four months and the rescue that pays for her boarding is running out of options for her.

For the last month, every morning I pull her out of the kennel and take her to the dog park. I wanted to document her energy and how much fun she has while on the grass (something we don't get a lot of in Tucson).

I used a photo app (Fotor) to make the strip of photos. I printed the photos and matted them on the striped paper.

I wanted to use a lot of ribbons and banners because they're festive, happy and energetic like Chutney. I cut stripes and placed them vertically on the cardstock.

Ooops, you don't see the ribbons here but I added them later. I liked the phrases on that patterned paper so I knew I wanted that on the page. I inked up the edges and placed it (not glued) on the cardstock. I also used the same technique (from Rainbow Loom page) of the layered mats for behind the journaling. Once I had the journaling placed and the pattern paper placed, I knew where I could add my title.