A layout, a canvas and a card with Jackie

Hello! It's Jackie with you today, sharing three projects for October.

First up is a Halloween layout using the new Montage collection. I love how versatile these papers are - a little strategic layering to cover the more non-Halloweeny elements (in this case the fairy on the Fairyland paper), some thematic paint colours and you're off to the races. Paired with Blue Fern Studios' Halloween chipboard, and you have the makings of a spooktacular layout.

The Halloween Collage chippy is so cool - it just had to be the centrepiece of my layout. I treated it with a combination of painting (the moon, pumpkin and the green base of the grass) and heat embossing (for the ghost, bat, checkers and atop the painted grass) using one of my favourite techniques for the heat embossing - painting on the embossing ink with a fine paintbrush to allow me to use several colours on the same embellishment.

Once I'd painted the grass green I wanted to give it a little texture, so I use the same silverizing embossing powder I'd used on the bats, but sparingly this time, to give the illusion of dew on the ground.

Carrying over the diamond pattern of the Halloween Collage chippy to the background using a checker stencil rotated to create diamonds rather than squares and glossy black paint helped to marry the chippy to the Montage papers and give the whole layout a more Halloween-y feel. I added some sparkly orange watercolour paint and black and orange flowers to complete the transformation.

One of the Cobwebs chippies, painted white and heat embossed with a shimmery powder, was great for filling in a gap in the cluster while letting the details in the fussy cut piece from the Society paper peek through.

The Creepy House chippy was heat embossed black, and then sparingly with silverizing embossing powder for a worn, pitted appearance.

Blue Fern Studios Products:

Montage papers:

- Fairyland

- Society

- Now and Then

Chipboard:

- Halloween Collage

- Creepy House Set

- Cobwebs

Next up I have a card created from a piece of leftover pattern paper from the layout above. I am loathe to cut into a fresh piece of 12x12 paper to make cards, but I'm always eyeing my scraps to see what leftovers I can use for cards. When I was tearing the strip of Now and Then paper, I was sure to save the lovely fussy-cuttable image from the flip side of the paper. I wanted to keep the background fairly simple to highlight the incredible details from the paper, so I used a piece of watercolour paper which I painted with complementary colours, then added some stencilling and flicks of black ink. I left the Turkish Bits chipboard naked for a bit of extra contrast.

Blue Fern Studios Products:

Montage papers:

- Now and Then

Chipboard:

- Turkish Bits

My third project is a whimsical 6" x 12" canvas featuring the bottom half of the Olga's Balloon set. The two pieces are designed to be layered together, but I chose to go "off label" in my usage as I wanted to add crazy dimension to my canvas. Never fear, the top piece will find a loving home on another project!

To get the 3D balloon, I traced the shape of the balloon part (the second image in the graphic below) 8 times onto Charlotte's Dream paper (it took 2 sheets) and cut these out, then folded them in half, alternating sides so that 4 pieces have the blue side and 4 pieces have the flowered side showing. I then adhered the negative sides together.

Before I adhered my paper balloon to the chippy I set about altering the lines and the basket. For the lines I painted them with a couple of shades of brown, and touched them up with white gesso once dry.

For the basket, I trimmed a scrap piece of Ombre Dreams paper to the exact size of the basket, and then sprayed it with a gold/brown. I then set about weaving my basket out of wire thread. It was finicky work, and I'll admit I burnt myself several times on my glue gun. I adhered the thread to the left and the bottom and then wove each individual strand, fastening it to the opposite side at the end. It is imperfect, and I love it! A little touch of gesso for aging, and I was ready to adhere my balloon to the chippy.

To add detail to the top of the balloon, I created a net out of gauze coloured with mist, and adhered wire and flowers, as well as a banner from the Dream Cards paper.

To build my background, I started with a piece of Susan's Dream paper trimmed to the size of the canvas then set about creating my landscape by tearing hills from Ginger's Dream.

What would a scene of a hot air balloon be without drifting clouds? To create texture on the Cloudy Skies chippies, I used some snow texture paste.

Blue Fern Studios Products:

Ombre Dreams Papers:

- Susan's Dream

- Ginger's Dream

- Charlotte's Dream x2

- Dream Cards

Chipboard:

- Olga's Balloon

- Cloudy Skies

- The Optimist Word Set

Home decor using Chipboard- by Keren Tamir

Keren here today for you again on the Blue Fern Studios blog.

One of the things I love about chipboard is how versatile it is. You can create so many different projects and ideas. You can alter it and incorporate it to so many types of designs.

I really love experimenting with new ideas on how to incorporate chipboard into off the page projects and home decor and that's what I've done below in both my projects.

A Perfect Moment

- Shadow Box Frame -

Recently I created two identical canvases using these images of my children picking seashells from the sand. I gave away both canvases as mother's day gifts so I decided to create a new project with the same photos to hang up on my wall. 

The Seaside Treasures and the Seaside Seashells were the perfect chipboard pieces to use for this sandy beach scenery. I used all the different types of seashells and the corals from the sets.

Each shell was covered with two different shades of crackle paint. This allowed the shells to look more realistic. I used some real shells and sand that I collected during my trip, too.

The Coral shaped chipboard from the Seaside treasures set was covered in Shimmerz Texturez to create coral that is similar in texture and colour to the real one.

I used two little chipboard birds that are perched on each side of the shadow box. I inked them in brown fluid chalk ink.

Finally I used two clouds from the cloudy skies set and thickly covered them in white Dazzlerz to make them look like clouds. I edged them in brown ink to create a shadow.

The chipboard title was inked with two shades of fluid chalk ink, 

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Enjoy the Journey

- Door Hanger -

The second home decor piece I created was a Door Hanger for my scrap room. 

The project started as a tag but then I realized how cool it would be if I could use it as a door hanger for my door. That's why I attached two pieces of twine to the back.

I used two papers out of the Blue Fern Garden collection: Love Letters and Timeless.

The Grand Balloon was used as the main focus of this project. I primed it with gesso and then painted it with Shimmerz paint. Then I stamped it in black using a script stamp. Finally I inked it in two different colours of fluid chalk edgers: blue jeans and summer field.

I applied the same treatment to the title enjoy the journey. However once I had inked it, I rubbed some of the ink off to give it a worn out look.

So next time you give tags to people for a celebration or simply for any occasion, you could add a piece of string or twine in the back. That way people could display your beautiful tag by hanging it on a door or on the wall instead of it just going in a drawer.

How is that for a practical use?

Hope you enjoyed my home decor creations today.

Have a wonderful day!!!

Keren

A layout and an art journal with Jackie Clark

Good morning! I'm Jackie Clark, and I'm very excited to be a new Design Team member at Blue Fern Studios for 2014.

A little about me... I am a very soon to be 35 year old mother of three little boys. I have been married to my highschool sweetheart for 10 years, and we have a rowdy black Lab who rounds out our family. I live in beautiful Vancouver, BC, Canada, and we enjoy all the West Coast has to offer - skiing in the winter and boating, biking and swimming in the summer.

I have been scrapbooking since 2000, but took a couple years off after the birth of my oldest son; when I came back to it my style evolved from flat, multi-picture, two page layouts to what I love today - texture, color and dimension. You can see more of my work on my blog at www.scrapsofbrilliance.blogspot.com.

Now on to the projects I've prepared using Blue Fern Studios chipboard for January.

I generally scrap photos with people in them, however this lighthouse on the easternmost tip of Mexico that was attached to the hotel we stayed in last year was too beautiful not to scrap, and coordinated perfectly with the By The Sea set. I also added in the word "Sunshine" from The Optimist Word Set and some clouds from the Cloudy Skies set.

Though the color scheme for both sets of words differs, they were treated in the same way - I primed them with gesso, then built up colors with Gelatos and finished them off with some shimmery paint which added some dimension and toned down the brightness of the Gelatos. I quite often add additional layers of media to my chipboard until I get an effect I am happy with.

The lighthouse was painted with shiny dimensional paint to match the lighthouse in the photo.

The clouds were also treated with two colors of shiny paint which I applied with my finger to give them texture.

Blue Fern Studios Chipboard Pieces Used:

By The Sea

The Optimist Word Set

Cloudy Skies

My next project was a Christmas gift for my niece, who loves art journaling and card-making. I made the covers out of cardboard and built the journal up from there with her tastes in mind.

The Circle Groups chippies provided fantastic anchor points for my cluster. I started by painting them with a metallic paint, then ran them through my embossing machine and added touches of metallic purple paint to accentuate the raised areas.

Lo and behold, one of my metal clock accents fit perfectly inside one of the circles.

The film strip from the Picture Perfect set was simply pressed into a black ink pad, leaving some areas untreated. The word "Captured" was painted with gesso and then I added some of the metallic purple paint I'd used on the circles.

Blue Fern Studios Chipboard Pieces Used:

Circle Groups

Picture Perfect

Thank you for stopping in to have a look! I hope you will check back often; the rest of the Design Team will be introducing themselves and sharing some marvellous inspiration over the course of the month. And a special thank you to Leslie and Valerie for including me in this wonderful team!

Layouts by Kotlyarova

Hello, scrapbookers!

Merry Christmas!

Kotlyarova is here today two show few new layouts with Blue Fern Studios chipboard pieces.
You know I love to use watercolor paints :)

First one

I've decorated chipboard with white acrylic.

 Cloudy Skies

Memory Frames

And lots of hot embossing here.

The Optimist Word Set

   Directions 

This is my last post here, but not last layouts with great Blue Fern Studios stuff! So feel free to visit my blog :)

I hope you've enjoyed my project! Wish you a lot of inspiration and have a nice holidays :)

A Quick Tutorial with Kelly

Hi there! Kelly here, with a quick tutorial and some ideas on how to use your chipboard and the punched out bits from your chipboard shapes in a new way. 

"The Best Day Ever"

I decided to use this to create a whimsical layout...I added in some of the "Cloudy Skies" pieces, which I primed with Gesso, then used the same emboss/resist technique as I described above. I fussy cute the photos of my little girls and placed them upon the clouds.

Behind the cloud pieces I tucked away threads, cheesecloth, tissue paper, and pearl flourishes to add to the whimsical feel. Here are some close ups of the finished project:

I added the Best Day Ever title, which was simply embossed with white powder.

The small hearts are also "left over" pieces from the Hearts Panel.

Chipboard Used:

 Best Day Ever

Cloudy Skies

along with "punch outs" from...

Quatrefoil Panel

Bits of Honey

Heart Panel

Lattice Gate

Here is another layout I created using a similar background style, once again using "leftovers" from the Quatrefoil Panel, along with the Directions set.

"Three"

Nothing like a cluster of arrows to draw attention to the photo, right?

To add extra texture to the quatrefoil pieces I sprinkled on some white mica fragments, and also dabbed them with a texture medium.

Chipboard used:

Directions


Quatrefoil Panel:


Thank you so much for stopping by today and taking a look! I hope you've enjoyed my tutorial, and will try it out yourself!!

*Kelly*