Scrap Africa Guest Design Projects

I am honoured to have been asked by the talented Denise van Deventer to Guest Design for Scrap Africa for this month's sketch challenge. When I saw the beautiful sketch and started pulling out photos and possible frame elements, two very different layouts started to take shape in my head, and I thought why not go with it and do two?

For the first layout, I combined gesso, paper scrap triangles, mists, embossing powder, stamping and chipboard to create the backdrop for my photo, sticking to earth tones and geometric shapes for a masculine feeling.

A couple closeups:

For a grungy, textured feeling on the chipboard piece, I layered black gesso, embossing powders (which I heat set, them dabbed with a paper towel while wet to lift some away and create texture) and mists.

I stamped the background with black ink, and while it was still slightly wet flicked some embossing ink across the background, and added two iridescent embossing powders to the background. You can see the texture it lends to the background in the photo above.

Supplies Used:

- Prima Timeless Memories: "Moments", "Everlast", "Timeless"

- Prima Craftsman: "Draftsman"

- Liquitex Gesso: Clear and Super Heavy White

- Prima Color Bloom Sprays: Tea Stain, Gold Foil, Worn Leather, Deep Teal

- Blue Fern Studios Chipboard: Triangle Eclipse

- Lindy's Stamp Gang Embossing Powders: Midnight Teal, Midnight Copper

- Ranger Embossing Ink Dabber

- Prima Heavy Gesso: Black

- Scrapbook Diaries: Zipper Stamp

- Prima Vintage Vanity Stamp: Triangles

- Prima Timeless Memories Say It In Crystals

- Prima Something Blue Flowers: 575335

- Prima Memory Hardware Louviers Antique Chains

- Prima Memory Hardware Amiens Antique Clocks

- Prima Junkyard Findings Industrial Lamps

- Prima Lyric Flowers: 565695

- Prima Serenity Flowers: 571351

- Prima Cigar Box Secrets Cork Stickers

For my second layout, I selected a chipboard frame to use in the place of the frame in the sketch, and built my layout from there, adding bright colours inspired by the photo to the background, and using black lines and white splatters to ground everything.

A closeup view of some of the background work. In order to achieve the patches of blue and pink, I added super heavy paint to crumpled plastic wrap and stamped it onto the background, adding splatters of mustard yellow mist once it was dry to add a little more dimension.

I wanted the chipboard brickwork to look as though it grew out of the background paper, and I achieved this by colouring it with an off-white chalk edger (actually pastel violet), adding script stamping in metallic purple, and then going over the whole thing roughly with beige.

The chipboard frame was painted with shimmering mists and a paintbrush, with details scribbled in roughly with a pencil crayon.

I tucked the flowers in between the layers of chipboard and propped the picture up using foam tape.

Supplies Used:

- Blue Fern Studios Sanctuary collection: "Conservatory"

- Blue Fern Studios chipboard: Treasured Floral Frame, Brick Bits

- Prima Color Bloom sprays: Tea Stain, Worn Leather, Lime Wedge,

Boysenberry, Yellow Mustard

- Prima Chalk Edgers: Old Road, Pastel Violet, Metallic Purple,

Dark Rust, Shabby Tote

- Faber-Castell Aquarelle pencils: Neutrals

- Liquitex Clear Gesso

 - Prima stamp: Script

- Shimmerz Dazzlerz: Pucker Up Pink, Gummy Bear Blue

- Prima Heavy Gesso: Black

- Liquitex Super Heavy Gesso: White

- Prima Fairy Rhymes Vines (564520)

- Prima Epiphany flowers: Bombshell (578831)

- Prima Epiphany flowers: Manifest (578817)

- Prima Hello Pastel flowers: Flower Stem: White (564421)

Thank you to Denise for inviting me to be a guest designer. If you've never played along at Scrap Africa, I urge you to check out their challenges - their sketches and mood boards are chock-full of inspiration.