A Closer Look - His Vs Hers

studio calico bluegrass farm kits have started to ship! many of you will be receiving the kits very soon, so i would like to share a quick tutorial of how this layout came together. i made this layout using the main scrapbook kit.

i started the layout by grabbing this semi circle stamp from the kit and created a scallop banner design in various colors on white cardstock. i used color theory ink pads in deja blue, yes peas, sunny day, orange country and well red here. to create a ombre effect, I stamped the ink once and press it down on the paper 2 or 3 times. the inks are really juicy and the colors can be seen quite clearly even on the lightest tone. i have always stamp in black before i got these color theory inks. i did try stamping in color previously but the colors didm't turn out as well and looks botched so i thought maybe stamping isn't for me. so i'm glad i tried these new inks from studio calico. i'm very happy with the stamped images and thought they look quite good for an amateur! it also helps a lot that i’m using the  compact stamp press from fiskars. it has these grids that helps me make sure that my scallop banner is relatively straight!

this is how it looks like after the stamping is done.

to add more interest to the scallop banner, i punched little hearts and stars from the patterned papers in the kit. then i adhered the hearts and stars around base on the colors of the banner. i also arrange my photos on the layout to see how it looks. love these 2 photos of ethan when he was about 7 months old.  a photo of him smiling sweetly and the other of him crying. i took these 2 photo in the span of a few minutes! that’s how babies are, one minute they are happy and the next -crying! ok, getting back to my tutorial! :P at this point, the page still seems a bit plain and i thought it could do with more color and some mess.

 so i decided to add some ink splatters using mister huey mist and i started with the first color on my rainbow banner – blue. i didn’t want the blue color ink splatters to mess up the other colors. hence, i used a piece of rough paper and covered the rest of the layout before i added splatters with navy blue mist.

after the blue inks are dry, i worked on the green portion of the layout. as you can see, i covered the blues and the rest of the colors before applying the green ink splatters in mistletoe.

i repeat the same until i added ink splatters to the rest of the colors. this is how it looks.  i used double yellow for the yellow portion and mary mary for the red portion. i don’t have a mist for orange so i skipped that and thought it looks fine.

once all the inks are dry, i added my photos. since the background is already quite busy, i didn’t layer my photos with any patterned paper. instead i used vellum for that extra layer and it helps my photos stand out from the background. to finish off the page, i form my title with the cute mini badges and woodgrain ghost alpha from the kit. i also added my journaling using the sticker labels included in the kit as well. and the layout is complete!

i hope you enjoyed this tutorial and feel inspired to use your   ink pads!