Finding Inspiration with Carrie

Dearest Lollipops,How are you all getting on?

I admit I am starting to struggle a bit with being inside so much, especially when its so lovely and the world is full of spring.  This month’s Secret Garden kit is beautiful and has lots of flowers and spring time elements inside.

Because of the lockdown, picture opportunities have been a little scarce so I have been looking for inspiration on Pinterest.  I love Pinterest, not only for inspiration,  but also as a great way to while away an hour.

I chose a picture of stationary and journaling items as this is something I want to do more of in lockdown – it’s a fantastic stress reliever.  Sometimes using an inspiration picture instead of a memory picture gives more freedom in the way you scrap.  I really love scrapping more for the artistic process than for the memory keeping – but there is no right way to scrapbook or to create art.  This page ended up a lot more artsy than traditionally scrapbooky (made up word ) and I am perfectly okay with that.

There are a lot of greens in the papers this month and Lisa also included a little pot of green paint to use as well.  Green is sometimes a tricky colour to use but this one is so fresh and vibrant it really cheered me up.

I started the layout by adding a wash of peach colours in watercolour paint. I then used the green paint included in the kit, some brown paint and a stencil from my stash to start creating a background.   I let all this dry and then painted some abstract shapes onto the page.  I finished off the mixed media background with splatters in all the stencilling colours and adding some stamping using the heart stamp that was included in the kit.

There were some really interesting bits included in the paper elements of the kit this month – a brown vintage envelope and a book page.  I painted the book page grey to create a layer to go behind my picture and set this to one side to dry while I worked on the rest of my paper layers.

Using the papers from the kit, some of the paper bags that contained the embellishments and the vintage envelope, I created the paper layers to go behind the picture.  I distressed the edges of the papers and stuck them together, adding foam tape to create some depth.  I also attached the 3 luggage tags that came in the kit to the picture cluster and the heart shaped paperclip to the top of the picture.  The book page that I painted was now dry, so I ripped the edges of this paper and added them behind the picture.

To finish off the layout I added the brass key to the side of the picture.  I really enjoyed working with this kit – and creating something a little bit different.  Sometimes a page turns out differently to how you thought it would – that’s the joy of scrapbooking I think.  I really hope that you all love this page too.

Stay safe everyone

Carrie xo