Tuesday Tutorial #9

Welcome to Tuesday Tutorial. Today I am going through the steps to complete two different challenges with one layout. The first challenge was to use negative space, and the second challenge involved several steps. They were: 2 different patterned papers, 2 or 3 photos, Ribbons, Buttons, and Stamping.
STEP ONE: photos
I started with the photos this time. I decided that in order to emphasize negative space, and yet fit in all those elements for the 2nd challenge, I needed to use small photos. I had all these photos of my kids playing in their wading pool, but I had to edit out my nephew who was bare naked and I wanted to show the sheer joy on my kids faces from playing in their pool. Unfortunately I was not able to find the apropriate photo of my son from this day, but I found 2 of my daughter. These photos needed to be cropped down and distracting elements needed to be hidden behind embelishments, so the layout was pretty fluid at first. So what I focused on second, after the photos, was colour.
STEP TWO: colour
I chose colours from the photo. I focused on soft pink and soft blue. I had this wonderful piece of rice paper in my stash, so I decided to adhere it to white cardstock and then used zig-zag stitch to sew it in place. I really like the result. The paper looks textured and is reminiscent of water surface. Unfortunately it's not terribly clear in the photo below.

So once I had stitched the papers together, I matted the photos in white, blue DSP, and turquoise cardstock. This brought me to the next step.
STEP THREE: layout
Remember that layout was a bit fluid as I was working with 'less than perfect' photos. Because the photo was dark, I used white as the first layer of matting. The next layer was DSP as it was very similar in colour to the background paper, and then I mounted it on turquoise cardstock to give contrast between the two similar papers. Then I played around with the two pictures to layer them and hide imperfections.

Eventually I came up with this layout. Then I decided to look at stamping.

STEP FOUR: stamping

Well, I knew I couldn't stamp on the rice paper and get the effect I wanted, so I stamped with Brown Staz-On onto watercolour paper. I used the retired stamp set Time Well Spent. I then used re-inkers, stampin' write markers and aqua painters to colour in the flowers. Then I cut out the flowers and moved them around on the page to find the layout I wanted. While I was doing this, I started to think about the elements I still needed to add to complete the challenge.

STEP FIVE: buttons

Well buttons were easy. I knew I could use them with the flowers, and Stampin' UP! has these fabulous flower buttons, so I pulled out a few and used them to centre the watercoloured flowers.

STEP SIX: 2 kinds of patterned paper. Well I had one kind matting the photos, but I needed to add another. Now I didn't want to overwhelm the layout as negative space was important, so I went through my stash of retired DSP and pulled out those with turquoise in them. The best thing about Stampin' Up! is that all the colours coordinate, and so I knew that the blues would completely match if I stuck with SU product. I printed the journaling right on the patterned paper and added the paper with turquoise and green flowers as well.

So above is another layout with me playing around with the photos and flowers. Then I added the flowers and finally

STEP SEVEN: ribbons

I decided that this pink gingham ribbon went perfectly, so I added a band to the bottom, and a bow to the top.

STEP EIGHT: putting it all together

Finally I adhered it all together on top of the rice paper. Most of the flowers were popped up with dimensionals. Below you see the finished product.