Be pushed out of your comfort zone...

  Papers are a mish-mash of Bella Blvd., My Mind's Eye, Close to My Heart, and others



Over at Chicagoland Scrapbooker, we (the design team) were given the assignment to scrap with a color you find difficult to work with.  Now, I would never say I "hate" orange, after all, I do love my Fiskars/Fiskateers, but I find orange really difficult to infuse into my scrapbooking layouts. 

I find it bright, overpowering, and difficult to coordinate with other colors--I can't even get different shades of orange to complement each other!

Here are my tips for working with orange...

• Use a neutral to tone it down.  In this layout of "the silliest witch", I  have used black to keep the orange from overpowering the layout and the photo.
• Take your cue from the holidays.  Halloween and Autumn photos give you a starting point for orange---use it.
• Play off a bit of orange that is present in your photo.  In the photo on my layout, her orange t-shirt peeking out from under her cape is all I needed to permit the orange layout to happen.  If she was wearing a yellow or green t-shirt, I just don't think I would have chosen an orange background paper for this layout.

 

Now, it's your turn.  What is the color you love to hate?  Create a layout with the color you find difficult to work with and link it in the comments at the Chicagoland Scrapbooker post, found here, or post it on the Chicagoland Scrapbooker Facebook page.  You have until April 5th (noon, CST).  We are pushing you out of your comfort zone...do you accept the challenge?

 

~Kelly

Whatever is orange (and black)...

 

Welcome to the 3rd Annual Fiskateers ORANGE Blog Hop!  If you are hopping along, you should have come from...
Divinity #6688 www.scrap-n-patch.blogspot.com

If you are joining us in the middle, go to www.fiskateers.com to start from the beginning.  Today, we are celebrating Fiskars' signature color, ORANGE.  Almost everyone is familiar with Fiskars' famous orange-handled scissors, but Fiskars makes so many other wonderful products for crafting, sewing, gardening, and more.  Each stop along our Blog Hop will feature different Fiskars' products with a big helping of ORANGE!

 

 

For my ORANGE project, I decided to make something a little scary!  Just a little scary for me too...I had never made a home decor collage project.  Although, all scrapbook pages are sort of a collage, and I'd created banners, this was different for me.  Lots of steps and layers were a bit intimidating, and I placed and re-placed and positioned and re-positioned all of the elements a zillion times before I started gluing.  I started by arranging (and re-arranging) an assortment of Halloween stamps onto my Fiskars stamp press as seen below.

 

 

Then, I stamped randomly on some white tissue paper using black Stazon ink.

 

 

I glued the tissue onto a thick sheet of cardstock.
Next, I started inking with Tim Holtz Distress Inks and Stain...more randomness

I started punching and cutting...I spy with my little eye Fiskars Grandma's Doily, a small cloud (as clouds and ghosts), a small bare tree, and I used my Fiskars Ultra Shape Xpress to cut this tree from the Woodland Tree Template (the checkerboard-like, flocked paper is from My Mind's Eye).

Then the arranging and layer began (that part lasted a long time).  Finally gluing.

Thanks for stopping by...
Now, all fun blog hops have a few sur-prizes thrown in!  Leave a comment below, telling me one thing you want to create but never have yet.  I'll choose a winner on Monday who will receive some "happy mail".


For more information about Fiskars and the Fiskateer program, you can go to http://www.fiskateers.com/join/.

Now, along to my friend Maya #351 at www.mayadahan.blogspot.com,

she's the next blog on the hop.

 

~Kelly

whatever is orange...

                

Yes, I like orange sherbet.  Yes, I have been known to eat a Dreamsicle or two.  I'm a fan of orange juice.  But orange just used to be another color to me.  Something changed in 2009.  I found the Fiskateers.  Fiskateers is an online site full of challenges, inspiration, sneak peaks, leaders, and friends.  We all share an admiration for the Fiskars company (think orange-handled scissors) and all of their crafty tools and stamps.  Once I joined this site, I found "virtual" friends who had a passion for paper and crafting that my "real" friends can't understand.  I have met amazing people through this site and have seen my creativity grow ten-fold.  I've entered a whole new world and learned a lot about myself.  I follow lots of blogs and sites, but Fiskateers has a special place in my heart.  Click here if you'd like to join or learn more about Fiskateers.

Ok, enough gushing.

This week, Lead Fiskateer Tami is hosting a Spring Stamp Out...just another chance to inspire each other and get our fingers inky.

This layout was for a challenge, "Orange goes with Everything".  I discovered that orange DOESN'T go with everything and have declared orange and gray a DUD color combo.

This card was for the "Wallflower" challenge (stamp some spring flowers and use them in a layout or card).  Somewhere along the way, I got lost and this flower (a Close to My Heart stamp) definitely has more of an autumn feel to it.  Oh well.

But, I learned an important tip...Glossy Accents does not dry faster with a heat gun--it just boils.  Hence, the brown embossed dot covering the center of the flower (oh year, I meant to do that).

And these cute chicks below are for the challenge asking us to use "vibrant" colors...I guess I took vibrant to mean "BRIGHT".  These are some cute chicks (a Unity stamp).

So hopefully you have now been distracted enough by all of these projects to ignore the fact that I've been slacking a bit in the blog department.  I knew I was in trouble when I managed to get posts up 4 days in a row back in April...it's been all downhill since then.

~ Kelly