Me being creative: {Life is good at the beach...}

Thursday, January 31, 2019

{Life is good at the beach...}

{Life is good at the beach...} Adri du Preez - January Mood Board and Week 1 Sketch inspiration.

Hello everyone!

I am back with another layout inspired by the beautiful January mood board and week 1 sketch designed by Jennifer Hedger. These are photos of my son and daughter-in-law and sweet little granddaughter during their December 2017 vacation. I love beach layouts and Dusty Attic has the most beautiful beach theme chippies. I used the Set Sail Collection pattern paper from Celebr8. I also used a lot of die cuts and punches.

When I think of vacation, the sea is at the top of my list. The one thing I love most about the sea is the feeling of tranquillity and inner peace when overlooking the vast ocean and the blue sky.

Here are the mood board and the sketch.

Here is my layout.

For the background, I used a bubble stencil and white crackle texture paste. Once the paste was completely dry I dabbed Distress Oxides on plastic packaging. Spitz with water, fold in half, opened and randomly dabbed the plastic to the background until I achieved the desired look. I used the following Distress Oxide colours: Peacock Feathers, Broken China, and Faded Jeans. I then randomly stamped with a background bubble stamp.

Next step was to paint all the chipboard. Here are some close-ups.

To colour the shells, sand dollars, tropical foliage, starfish, seahorses, and coral I used the same Distress Oxides as the background and then dabbed white and silver acrylic paint on with a sponge.

The skeleton fish bone was painted grey and then dabbed with white acrylic paint.

The lighthouse was first covered with coarse gesso which gave the walls a lovely weathered look. Once dried I covered it with white acrylic paint. I then dabbed grey and brown ink on the coarse parts to make it stand out more.

The seagull was painted grey. I dabbed white acrylic paint on the tummy, for a soft feather look. The log was painted the same way as the lighthouse.

The fish was painted navy.

The title was covered with white gesso and then embossed with teal embossing powder. The engraved words were still visible. To make it pop I used a tiny amount of embossing paste and a bit of turquoise magical powder to blend together. With my finger, I filled up the engraved words. I allowed the paste to dry for a couple of seconds and then cleaned the extra paste with a baby wipe to take off the excess paste. (This was a tutorial by Caroline E from Lindy’s. Credit to her for sharing this awesome technique).

When everything was glued down I added some art stones and splatters with white gesso and blue and black ink.

Some more close-ups.