When inspiration hits………

 

It’s been the kind of week where I have been working on lots of projects at once and a couple of nights I have gone to bed with my head so full of ‘stuff’ I had trouble sleeping. You know I have a thing about the front covers of paper pads and whilst working on a magazine article I got that sudden urge to recycle (or is the buzz word to ‘repurpose’?) the cover of the pad. It really was so quick to do and I am really pleased with the result.

 

This cover presented more of a challenge than usual as there were branding images in all four outer corners and a contents label in the centre. I wanted to keep the title and star image as it was too good not to use. (Another option would have been to cut inside the star outline and use the star to frame a photo that I could place behind.) So I decided to cut away 2 1/2” panels on either side but cutting around the star where it overlapped into that area.

As the cover is so busy with all the pattern designs of the papers I used one of the plainer papers as my border and also a thinner border of aqua from the pad to add interest. I made sure my finished page was 12” wide when the borders were added.

I still had to do something with the label in the centre and instead of covering it over and losing the flowers and the shape I decided to cut out inside it and put a piece of journalling behind. (I used my new ‘old’ typewriter to create my journalling – I love the look and it also stops Nige from saying “I knew you wouldn’t use that”!) I cut two fake photo mats from copy paper to gauge placement and size before I cropped my photos down. I cut some images from the pad to use as embellishments and moved them around until I was happy.

What better photos to use than ones of our new baby! I love how the colours work – particularly the one of him with his toys in his basket. I raised up all the embellishment pieces with 1mm foam pads and added some enamel dots. I tied my left hand behind my back so that I couldn’t doodle around the page edge or down the borders for a change.

I am off to Leeds tomorrow to teach at the Scrapstars Scrapbooking retreat and I can’t wait. I will be teaching a mega-interactive page layout I have designed, tomorrow evening, as well as a mini exercise in journalling. I will share those with you in a few days.

Hope your week is a good one.

Keep up the ‘crafty’

Rosemary x