Field of flowers tutorial

Hi and welcome! Happy Easter! Today I am happy to be a guest designer over at Berry71Bleu. Here you can see their gorgeous March mood board.

Isn't it gorgeous? I love the colours, perfect for spring and the sentiment is wonderful. It's been a while since I worked with a mood board and it was lots of fun.

It's been quite a while since I made a layout with one of my childhood photos, since most of my layouts these days are about the boys. When looking though my photos, searching for a good story, I came up on this school photo from when I was about ten years old. At the time, I really disliked this photo, so much that I could hardly even look at it. Now, I can't remember why and for that reason, I thought this photo worked well together with the sentiment from the mood board. I added some additional journaling at the back of the layout. I took some step photos.

I did a simple, but always fun, background technique. Smear Distress Ink on a Sizzix Cutting Pad (one without lots of marks), mist heavily with water and press on the page. You can see the same technique, but using more than one colour on my Just Keep Smiling, Remember This, and Sheltering Flowers art journal pages. 

When the background was dry, I stamped it with Tim Holtz new lovely Wildflowers stamps. Ink them with Distress Inks, mist about four times with water and stamp. The grey stamping was done with Watering Can ink and I also added some tissue tape. 

For more texture, I white embossed my favourite alphabet background stamp (I used it on my canvas a few days ago too) and a flourish stamp. Did you notice that the tissue tape is gone from this photo, I removed it before doing the embossing, and then added it back again.

I love using butterflies on my projects, and you can do them in just about any colour. For this layout, I enjoyed using Yupo paper for the first time. I used the translucent one, there is also a white variety. This paper is non-porous and, thus, works great with alcohol inks. I really like the feel of the paper. With a felt applicator tool, apply alcohol inks to the Yupo and repeat until you are happy. I also dripped a few drops of Alcohol Blending Solution on the paper. 

Die cut butterflies from the inked paper. I wish you could see the translucent quality of these butterflies, it was impossible to capture on photo. I also die cut butterflies from plain Yupo, to layer behind the coloured ones.

White emboss doilies on vellum. I ended up not using the bird you see here. At first, I thought the grey stamped bird was too dark, and was going to place the white one over it, but I changed my mind.

Some of the butterflies were glued and others were stapled to the background.

Here you can see the effect of the white embossing better.

I dyed a piece of cheese cloth with Antique Linen Distress Ink, and also add two strips of Deco Tape.

The Wildflowers look wonderful stamped with a watercolour technique.

The doilies were layered under the photo.

There are some additional close-ups over at the Berry71Bleu blog, if you want to have a look. There is still time to join this month's challenge, and don't miss all the inspiration that has been posted during March using this mood board.

Thank you so much for visiting today! Enjoy the rest of the Easter weekend!

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

Supplies:

Tim Holtz Sizzix MINI BUTTERFLIES	Tim Holtz Sizzix TINY SHAPES	Tim Holtz Sizzix CHIP BLOCK ALPHABET	Tim Holtz WILDFLOWERS	Tim Holtz ARTFUL FLIGHT Bird Cage
Tim Holtz TYPOGRAPHY	Tim Holtz SCHOOL DESK Stampers Anonymous	Tim Holtz Adirondack TRANSLUCENT ALCOHOL INK YUPO PAPER	Ranger WATERCOLOR PAPER	Worldwin Papers 48 LB VELLUM 8.5 x 11
Tim Holtz Distress Ink BUNDLED SAGE	Tim Holtz DISTRESS INK PEELED PAINT	Tim Holtz Distress Ink TATTERED ROSE	Tim Holtz Distress Ink VICTORIAN VELVET	Tim Holtz DISTRESS INK PAD ANTIQUE LINEN
Ranger Wendy Vecchi Archival WATERING CAN	Ranger Embossing Powder WHITE	Tim Holtz Ranger ALCOHOL BLENDING SOLUTION	Tim Holtz Alcohol Ink LAKE MIST Adirondack	Tim Holtz Alcohol Ink WILLOW Adirondack
Tim Holtz Alcohol Ink SALMON	Tim Holtz Alcohol Ink MOUNTAIN ROSE	Tim Holtz Alcohol Ink MUSHROOM	Tim Holtz Ranger ALCOHOL INK APPLICATOR Tool	Tim Holtz Idea-ology DECO TAPE
Tim Holtz Idea-ology LABORATORIE Tissue Tape	Ranger Inkssentials Non Stick CRAFT SHEET	Ranger Inkssentials GLOSSY ACCENTS	Sizzix BIG SHOT MACHINE Gray And White	Tim Holtz Sizzix BASE TRAY
Sizzix MINT Standard Cutting Pads	Tim Holtz Tonic PAPER DISTRESSER	3M Scotch PINK ATG ADVANCED TAPE GLIDER 1/4	Tim Holtz TINY ATTACHER Stapler	Ranger Inkssentials EUROPEAN HEAT IT CRAFT TOOL
Ranger Inkssentials US HEAT IT CRAFT TOOL	Tim Holtz DISTRESS SPRAYER Ranger

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