"Be You / Graffiti Pocket Part 2" by Melissa Struhs

Happy Friday Colour Blast Fans! Who's ready for some overdue creative time? A chance to play with lots of our new products perhaps....here's a little something to inspire.

You may recall that I had a scrapping disaster a few weeks back where I had to set a layout aside because I couldn't find a way to resurrect it quickly...and all I had was a graffiti style pocket embellishment. A few days later, and a fresh set of eyes and I was back on track with my original idea revisited. 

Theses triangular pieces are actually an enlarged image of a graffiti wall I photographed. It had such amazing detail and the colours were divine to match with the Colour Blast

Watermelon Mica Powders.

It takes just a small amount of the mica powder mixed with a gel medium to create a gorgeous tone. I like to apply this quite thick and not scrape my palette knife across the stencil, more like a thick buttering technique. This creates plenty of height and texture.

This unstructured brick wall stencil was placed between my photograph slices in several places and is flush with the edges of the white cardstock. Once these were dry...

I sat the graffiti pocket and other photo's in place, this gives me a sense of where I still needed to add some pops of colour. I moved them out of the way and

began flicking Colour Shimmer Sprays in Lipstick and Tangareen Dream over the white cardstock, some even ended in the mortar grooves of the brick work.

I am very methodical in how I approach mixed media, so often I will work with one colour at a time

then make another pass over the project with the next colour until I am satisfied that I have the balance right.

My wood veneer title really needed to be quite bold too, so I used the matching Colour Embossing Powder ... 

the Tangareen Dream layers at the top and Lipstick below it.

Letting the colours slightly overlap each other helps blend them into a gorgeous ombre transition.

The title makes the little kraft pocket really stand out in the centre of the layout.

Here's a couple of close up's of all of the elements pulled together, phew...project rescue complete!

I hope you enjoy a creative weekend!