Blessings From Above Album for Made With Love Guest DT Assignment

Aida has requested a mini album for my Guest DT stint over at Made With Love and she has generously prepared a DCVW 8 x8 Mariposa paper kit for me, along with a Maya Road chipboard album. I had seen many other scrappers' works using the Mariposa range but strangely, I never had a chance to see the whole range of papers. Perhaps I was still in Shanghai back then and hardly had a chance to be so updated about scrapbooking porducts. But as I was looking through the papers, I was totally blown away by this range. It's timeless and classic. Butterflies and flowers are definitely here to stay. So I decided to make an album for a girly- girl galfriend of mine. Someone I had known for 20 years! Time really flies by and the memories of us cheering, 'sloggin' for our extra- curricular activities are still fresh in my mind.Lol...


There are 6 chipboard shapes in this album altogether, comprising of different lengths ending with scalloped and bracket edges. Thankfully, the first page did not pose much problems for me as I could use my Crop-a-dile for punching the little holes at the edge after I covered it with paper. Even as I chose out the album, I knew I wasn't going to cover the scalloped edges with paper and then painstakingly cut out the circles. This was too much work for a lazy and hassled stay home mum scrapper. So I painted Pages 3 and 5 with a turqoise color from Ranger Dabber Paint (Stream).

Almost immediately, I sprinkled my UTEE powder on the chipboard randomly and heated it over my cooker hob. (I was just too impatient to bring out my heat gun, and the length was good enough for me to hold over the small fire). To my delight, the UTEE powder took on a light lime green color as it was melting. After a while, I stopped the heating (Do not let the UTEE bubble over) and allowed it some time to cool. Still unsatisfied with the single color tone taken on by the UTEE, I brought out my distress inks in Broken China, Crushed Olive and Tattered Rose and randomly stamped over the entire embossed area and voila, nice marble-ly look. It doesn't look pretty at this stage withut embellishments but since I was adopting a Butterfly-Bird- Flower Theme, it will form part of the fauna background later on.


The rest of the pages as seen in the collage above are embellished with Prima flowers and butterflies, rub-ons, stamps and stickers, cut-outs from the papers and ribbons. Some of the flowers and embellishments were distressed with stickles for more dimension. I also painted on the chipboard bird, then covered it in clear cackle paint after it has dried and applied on some Tattered Angels glaze to emphasize the cracks. Pretty!

I had lots of fun creating this album and was able to experiment with my paints and distress inks and UTEE...a rare luxury as I rarely had time to scrap since I am a stay-home-mum and I got to do the cleaning on my own, I rarely did anything that might create a mess that I had to clean up after. Also it doesn't help when you have two curious monkeys watching you, preparing to imitate your work later on. But paints, inks and powder do add a different dimension to your projects and the textures are lovely. Do try it out! As for me, I have figured out a way. I kept a tall carton box where I do my painting and misting and embossing all my 'mess' is contained in there now! For sure, there will be more 'mess' in my future projects...