Distress Marker Spritzer - Head in the clouds

Head in the Clouds - Full page Scrapbook layout using Graphic45 paper Mother Goose

I was excited about two things when doing this layout. You can laugh if you like but it was my first full page scrapbook layout. Up until then I had only done pocket layouts. I was a little nervous about breaking out from the neatly defined rectangles and going so free with my layout...but I think it turnned out ok. What do you think? (Please comment below this post). Secondly I was playing with the new Tim Holtz Marker Spritzer. It's fresh from CHA and very cool but I have a little disclaimer here. This layout is not the best example of it in use as I hadn't got the hang of it yet! More projects will follow. Just to show you it does work when you know what you're doing I will put a picture of a butterfly my son did as part of a lovely letter he crafted.

My son using the Tim Holtz Marker Spritzer

Now back to the scrapbooking, I started out with a base of blue American Craft cardstock 12x12 of course. I began experimenting with Graphic45's Mother Goose paper which I had nabbed a while ago and put in store knowing one day I would start scrappin my daughter's baby photos. So here I was inspired by the "Bedtime Story" line on the paper so I cut that out using my knife, ruler and self healing mat. I also cut the strip of nursery rhyme stamps and played around a while deciding which should act as the bed for the photo to rest on. I used the rule of thirds, more or less, in placing my photo on the page where the points of focus would converge with the points on the imaginary grid of the rule of thirds.

Glueing on strips of paper using 3M glue applicator

Then I glued the strips on using this awesome double-ended applicator glue tube from 3M.

These mini ink pads from Tim Holtz are new and oh so cute. They are designed to be just like the larger versions but more compact and portable. You can click them together to stack them up. Also available are new rounded mini blending tool and refill pads but I haven't splashed out on those yet so I can't show you what they look like. I can only tell you that they work better than the larger rectangle version (in my photo) because they don't leave the harsh edges when you're inking. I used some broken china ink and the mini black soot one to put some vignette edges around my photo and at the base of my layout on the corners of the blue card. 

I used the Marker Spritzer on the clouds to give some silver, grey, white or blue speckles to the various clouds. Some of the cut out cloud shapes were placed under a Tim Holtz Dot Fade Stencil and then Distress Paint applied over top to mask out some cloud areas in the background sky at the top of the page. Then I stamped with embossing ink and sprinkled on some clear embossing powder and used my heat gun to set the large star top right in the layout. Gem stickers were placed around the sky as stars. Clouds were layered on with dimensional tape.

Pocket Scrapbooking - Blank Journal Card pfffjazzled (new word - made that up!)

Pocket Scrapbooking with Blank Journal Cards

I know it kind of goes against the whole grain of the pocket scrapbooking ethos, to decorate your own journal cards. It kind of is putting the work back into something which is designed to take some of the work out of scrapbooking for those like myself who have zilch time. However I must confess to feeling excited when I saw that Blank Journal cards were available. In my last pocket project you saw I altered a ready-made card from the colours of it's theme to suit my spread. This time I have been able to totally make my own creation for a journal card and as a little mini project in itself just making the card was quite fun!

Blank Journal Cards from Becky Higgins Project Life.

Miss Crafter's journal and pencil case in the grass.

I started this journey in the grass outside my son's piano lesson where I have to wait for 45 mins and hence there is time to craft and no excuse not to. I bought along my pens and journal and some blank journal cards to decorate. This was my first experiement and imagine my dissapointment when I discovered my mini mister was missing from my pencil case! How was I going to wet the distress marker marks and get a lovely Tim Holtz effect? The school drinking fountain of course! The other mums may have thought I was nuts but who cares.

Wetting journal card distress ink with school fountain.

Using a Tim Holtz, Ranger stencil to add a layer of distress paint.

This stencil by Tim Holtz is called Schoolhouse and it's a good flexible one because it has alphabet and numbers.

Using the Scotties Pink heat gun to dry my stencilled paint.

Add ink to a Mini Mister using an eyedropper.

Couture Creations finger dauber adding distress ink.

Using another Tim Holtz stencil with the ink sprayed from a mister.

This stencil from Tim Holtz is called Dot Fade.

Finishing touches. Couture Creations stamps and Archival Ink.