The Home Stretch

Well, it's now Week 7 of the Scrappers Island contest and I'm still in it! I'm actually a little surprised as the work by the other participants has been utterly breathtaking, but thankfully I've been voted through each week so far.

This week it's down to eight participants, and I think we'll probably lose at least three people this week... maybe more. I'm not exactly sure. I have no idea how many people will be in the final challenge - it might only be two or three, or it might be five people. But after this challenge, there's just the one final challenge and the winner of that will be declared the winner of Scrappers Island!

This week's challenge was quite a departure from the previous week's. There was NO sketch, and you weren't allowed to use a sketch for inspiration, or scraplift anyone else's ideas (not that any of us would copy a design outright like that).

The basic requirements were:

Requirements:

- We had to use paint or glimmer mist to create our own background, which must be on white cardstock.
- We had to use several layers of paper on the layout including patterns or cardstock
- We had to use the following embellishments: ribbon, brads and buttons
- We had to use chipboard for the title
- We had also were expected to incorporate some edge distressing and distressing with ink

I'd never used Glimmer Mist before, nor was I sure what I wanted to do. I had a few pictures in mind, and an overall image in my head, but I had to find papers that would work with them. I went to Two Scrapbook Friends and looked around, and around and around the entire store trying to find something that matched what I had in my head... poor Joanne (one of the owners) had to watch me circle that store countless times as I considered various options (with Chris and Alex having a small picnic of treats out on the sidewalk in front of the store).

I finally found some papers I liked, picked up some coordinating card stock and also bought three different shades of Glimmer Mist to use with the papers.

Once home, I played around with the Glimmer Mist a fair bit to try out different effects. I decided for this layout, I wanted a more subtle effect, so I only used two colours on the paper (a orangey colour and a nice green), and did a light misting versus a more solid coverage. I also kept the colours to the left of the page so only about 2/3 of the page was covered.



Before actually applying the Glimmer Mist, I created a mask of the title by using three chipboard letters that I glued down lightly with temporary adhesive. I then sprayed the paper - and once I removed the letters, it left a blank spot for the three letters "JOY". I then sprayed another style of chipboard with the green Glimmer Mist and sprayed a chipboard swirl with some purplish Glimmer Mist.

I cut out a bunch of different shapes and sizes of cardstock and played around with layering until I had a layout I thought would work. I inked all of the edges, and also distressed one of the cardstock pieces I used for a photo mat.

I layered the painted chipboard "Joy" over the white mask word, and then used a rub-on for the word "Sheer" so that the title is Sheer Joy. I layered and played around with different flowers, brads and buttons to create a nice effect in the corner and also put some buttons and ribbons in the bottom corner to balance the layout.

I used a favourite photo of my niece when she was a lot younger... just such a cute, happy photo.

Voting takes place on Thursday and for the first time, only members of Exile Island and the Design Team will be able to vote.