Shine Bright by Gwen Wruck

Hi, Creative friends!!

I hope you are all well!  I have a layout to share with you today featuring more beautiful Colour Blast products in my "clean mixed media" style.  I got a  bit "painty" with this one!

For this project, I started with this black and white photo of Miss 10 proudly showing off an award she received at school that day for "Outstanding Work Ethic".  It inspired me to document a reminder that she should always "Shine Bright" and that she could become anything she really wanted to be if she worked hard enough.  I then had the idea to use a butterfly motif to represent the "growing into something beautiful" theme of the page.  So I went about cutting out a large butterfly design on my Silhouette in white cardstock.

Next, I went to my stash of Cocoa Vanilla products and pulled out some of the butterflies from the Wild At Heat collection, I knew they would pull the page together nicely.  I then also knew what colours I wanted to use in my mixed media background.  I went with Rose Petal and Lovely Lilac in Colour Shimmer Sprays and Colour Shimmer Cubes as they were the perfect match.

Having an idea of the design for the page I wanted to build, I went about working on my background.  (I did apply a thin layer of clear gesso)  I began by "smooching" the cardstock using the plastic packaging technique with both of the mists.  I found the Lovely Lilac is very soft and Rose Petal is considerably darker which is a really nice contrast.

I then dried this off fully before adding more layers in the same technique.  I find this is the best way for me to build colour, slowly, layer by layer.  I've also added some splatters, using the sprayer from the Colour Shimmer Spray bottle.  I simply keep layering and adding (always drying in between each step) until I am happy.

At this point, I really wanted to lock in the position of my cut file butterfly, so once it was in a position I was happy with, I traced around it with a pencil.  This then gave me really clear guidelines as to what parts of my background were going to show and which bits wouldn't.

Using a paintbrush and the Colour Shimmer Sprays, I went about painting in between the gaps of the cut file, that is, the sections I knew would show through once the cut file was in place.  I used a watercolour style, focusing on keeping the edge outlines soft.  While I had my paintbrush out, I also coloured my title word "Bright" at this point I had already decided that there would be too much black and white on the page and painting the letters would brighten things up and balance the page out a little.

That was all of the mixed media components completed, it was now time to build the page.  I started by mounting my photo with a couple of pattern papers also from the Wild At Heart collection by Cocoa Vanilla Studios.  I then attached the large die cut butterfly and hand stitched around the edge.  Next, came fussy cutting.  The black and white flowers are all from the same pattern paper.  I just kept shuffling them around the page until I was happy with their position.  I kept the space between the bottom of the butterfly and my photo for the title.  Lastly came the remaining smaller die cut butterflies and pretty sparkle enamel dots.

You can see below the pretty effect water colouring with both the Colour Shimmer Cubes and Shimmer Sprays achieved.

I give this project a "mess level" of Low

 ( I've just used plastic packaging, a paint brush and the nozzle from the Shimmer sprays to apply my mixed media, no overspray and no muddy colours so this clean scrapper is very happy)

Thanks for popping by

Gwen

xox