Ha Ha! Learning to Make the Most of a Kit!! -- Citrus Twist September Kit

The Citrus Twist kit I received (#1 of my 2 kit test)  was heavy on embellishment, lean on papers.  Compared to other kit clubs so far, that is.  This kit contained full packs of chipboard stickers, wood veneer, ephemera pack, as well as an alphabet, a stamp set, enamel dots, and cut-a-parts.  Wowzers.  And me not being a huge embellish-er...  So I set to work to learn the skill of embellishing -- heavily, without having the resulting page look as though someone just dumped a whole pack of embellishments and glued 'em where they landed! 

Before I could begin my quest to conquer embellishments (quest/phobia, take your pick!), I had to choose a paper.  The pieces I had left from the kit were full of yellow, lots and lots of yellow and that was just not gonna work.  I chose to make my own by using three different colors of Heidi Swapp texture medium.  This went relatively quickly just be squirting the three colors down both the top and bottom of a plain white cardstock and then using an old credit card, scraping them from one side to the other.  Loved the result metallic sheen and the texture this created.  

Next, I tried to determine where I might want some splatters and went with placing them at the top rich and bottom right of the page.  I wanted to get the gold ink dripped on and allow it to dry before I started monkeying around with papers and smudged those pretty little golden drops!  After the paper was dry, all four sides got trimmed down a smidge and roughed up a bit with my Heidi Swapp paper distress tool. 

Now for the photo.  Since I was dead-set on using this photo of my granddaughter, I first tried multiple layers of pink and pink patterned papers from the kit....too much.  Finally determined I would use several layers of crumpled and flattened tracing paper (I'm out of vellum and tracing paper makes a good substitute!).   When I laid the photo bundle in place on the page, it was apparent that I needed to add some foam dots to even the height a bit, and I also opted to tuck in another kind of large wood veneer heart.  You really only see a tiny bit of it and that's OK with me because it's one of those gem stone cut looking things and I'm not truly partial to that particular design.  Using it this way allowed just a touch of the wood veneer to peek out, it evened out that corner of the photo bundle (height wise I mean) and I used up another embellishment! 

 

I used quite a few of the wood veneer pack on this page and still have some left!  I also used one of the ephemera pieces and added one of my own doilies.  My mission was to learn how to use embellishments as effectively as pieces of paper.  So I decided to treat them as layering pieces on this page and layered the floral wood veneer, a leaf veneer piece under the corner of the photo and layered a wood veneer heart on top.  I also tucked in one of the rose ephemera die cuts and the smile piece as well. 

I also created a simple cluster at the top of the page by using another wood veneer floral piece and a section of a doily (used another piece of the same paper doily among the photo layers).  I'm not even sure this qualifies as a true cluster since there are only two pieces, but hey that's what I'm calling it! 

I used one of the veneer pieces as a title for the page, the "love you" was one of my favorite pieces.  I wanted it to be prominent as the title but also kind of be connected to the veneer cluster at the corner of the photo, so I placed it such that it almost touches the floral piece, but is just a hair away. 

The trimmed down and treated paper was placed on another piece from my I don't think I'm gonna use it for anything pile...I liked the color of the border of this paper and that was about all, so it was perfect to use under my painted page!  

Overall, I am really happy with this page.  I successfully used a bunch of embellishments, created a background paper that has great texture and yet appears soft and not over worked and was able to finally scrap this photo of my granddaughter that has kept popping up on my desk for weeks now!! 

Mission completed!  Am I completely comfortable with using a lot of embellishments on a page.  No, not yet anyway.  It will be an ongoing learning process.  And that's OK with me too!  It was fun to do; I like the challenge of working with materials I am not completely comfortable with. 

So what are you uncomfortable working with?  Try making it your mission to work those materials into a page.  Focus on one aspect, one product type and work with it in a familiar way.  You might find you've got a knack for it!

happy scrappin' all
Cheryl