"Gather Pretty" by Gwen Wruck

Hi, Creative friends!!

It's Gwen back with you today sharing another "clean mixed media" project.

For this layout, I started with a picture I had taken of my craft room.  I have been scrapping for a long time now and for much of that, I did not have my own scrappy space so for this page I wanted to document my craft space and my love of collecting pretty things to fill it with.  I love vintage and second-hand shopping and especially love that I have a space of my own to decorate and keep the things that truly inspire me. #alltheprettythings

The inspiration for the colours in my page started with a printed chipboard banner from Maggie Holmes.  I just love the colours in this so I went to my swatch book and found Colour Shimmer Sprays in Punch, Envy and Bling were a perfect match so I pulled out the matching Colour Shimmer Cubes as well.

Next, I set about getting a plan for my design.  I find it helps to know where you are going to be placing items on your page before you start any background work, this way you can keep colour to those areas leaving room for "white space".  I wanted to create a vertical design using some black and white picture frames cut from a pattern paper.  I placed these onto my background and then marked their placement with a pencil for reference.

Now that I had a clear plan for the page, it was time to add some colour.  I began by spraying some mist onto a clear stamp block and stamping on my background.  I've also added a few splatters here and there using the nozzle of the spray knowing that some of these would be covered by my frames.  I was just trying to get some layers going on here.  It's super important to dry each colour off before adding the next to stop the colours from going muddy.  Below you can see the small pencil marks as a guide for my frames as well as the three colours added to my background.

Next, it was time to secure my frames onto the background. Once I had done this, I could see that the splatters I had added earlier had not really stood out, so it was time for some more.  This time I used the Colour Shimmer Cubes as I know the colour is deeper and bolder.  I tried to focus the spatters along the lines of my design following along with the frames and was perfectly fine for some to go on top of the frames themselves.

You can see here a close up of the mix of splatters I now have from the Colour Shimmer Spray and the Colour Shimmer Cubes.   Once this was all dry, I then went about stitching around each of the frames for added detail.

I was really loving the pop of black on my page here and decided at this point to roll with it!  I pulled out the black chipboard title "gather" and fussy cut some pink and black butterflies.  Then, searching through my stash, I found this laser die cut black butterfly which would fit in perfectly.  I simply sprayed it with some Colour Shimmer Spray in Punch and WOW, did that sparkle!  I really would recommend using your sprays over a darker colour, they really look beautiful.

I will add here that I was very generous with the spray I added to this element, I wanted the colour to pool in sections rather than having a light mist effect.  I was really happy with how these elements were looking so it was now time to add my photo and other elements to my page.  Lots of chipboard and some pretty pink paper flowers.

I've included a couple of close ups of the black die-cut butterfly with the Punch Colour Shimmer Spray over the top, it really does look pretty!

You can see the shimmer here, including the shine in the background too!

and one more shot of some pretty details, these gold sequins were the perfect match to the Bling Colour Shimmer Cube splatters.

and there you have it.. my latest Colour Blast project - I really hope you like it and it inspires you to pull out your Colour Shimmer Cubes, and your Colour Shimmer Sprays and try them on some dark cardstock!

I give this project a "mess level" of Medium

 (I did use a few more things for this project, a stamp block and paintbrush and there was a bit of over spray when working with the spray directly onto the butterfly, still no messy hands or nails!)

Thanks for popping by

Gwen

xox