The Paper Mixing Bowl: Challenge #4

This month at the Paper Mixing Bowl, we are grilling up Shish Kebab's! Here is the delicious recipe:

And here's my take on it:

SOURCES:  Cardstock: Core’dinations-Tim Holtz Distress Paper, Bazzil Basics Paper, Vellum. Patterned Paper: BoBunny – Back to Backs> Xtreme Texting, Newspaper. Font: Punch Label, Stamp Act. Embellishments: Maya Road-Gear Coaster Album, Floral Wire, Black Raffia, Scotch Tape, Metal Brad.

This month's recipe is all about "a special man in your life." I had yet to do a layout about my amazing husband and partner in crime, Derrick, so I was excited to get the chance to devote this entire layout to him. I knew right off the bat that I wanted to incorporate gears into this page as my husband has always had a thing for them. I also knew that I wanted to scrapbook a picture of him from our wedding day. With those two things in mind I set off to my local scrapbook store in search of some inspiration.

The main ingredient for the recipe is charcoal briquettes so I found a background paper by BoBunny that's main colour is greyish-black with accent colours of red and lighter grey tones.   My most exciting find for this page was a chipboard album by Maya Road shaped like gears.  The first gear in this album was comprised of about 7 nested gears that could all be pulled apart and separated. It was perfect!

I started this layout by adding a grunge border in photoshop to a wedding photo of my handsome groom. Next I took one of the large chipboard gears, covered it in newspaper and inked the edges to give it a distressed look. I then broke apart the nested gears, covered each of them in coordinating papers, then distressed them in a variety of ways including black ink, black chalk, sand paper and a texturizer. These gears became the base of my design.

I really loved the idea of using song lyrics for my journalling so I began scouring the internet for the perfect verse.  I started by going through a few of the songs that had special memories for the two of us, then thought of using a song from our wedding, which lead me to the artist Steven Curtis Chapman. A friend of ours sang one of his songs "I Will Be Here" during the signing of our registry while his wife accompanied him on the piano. I decided to check out a few of his other songs and stumbled upon the perfect lyrics in the first few verses of his song "Echoes of Eden."

Once I found my journalling, I wasn't sure how I was going to make it hidden. This is where my brilliant husband came into play. This layout was supposed to be a surprise for Derrick but I have such a hard time keeping any secrets from him so within the first few days after starting I showed him my design. After telling him my dilemma regarding the hidden journalling, he suggested placing the lyrics on one of the large gears and placing another large gear over top to hide them.  Simply slide open the top gear and the journalling underneath is revealled! Didn't I tell you he was clever!

I loved the idea and used a brad embellished with the smallest chipboard gear to join the two large gears together. I printed the lyrics on vellum and attached them to the underside of the largest nested gear which created a frame for the journalling. Instead of printing the lyrics on paper, I used vellum because it was just sheer enough to allow sections of a few of the gears beneath to show through.

I used the title "So This Is Love" which I designed in photoshop using the font Punch Label. I printed it on white cardstock and then cut it out leaving a tiny border of white. After checking my recipe card again, I noticed that tape was one of the utensils. At first glance, I didn't think I would be using this as it's not really my cup of tea. But then I thought, "I have scotch tape right here, why not just experiment a little and see what I can come up with." I'm glad I tried it because I love the effect it gave to the title. I ended up just adding a thin border of scotch tape to the word "Love" and then used a bit of black ink to distress it. I have definately changed my mind about tape and look forward to experimenting some more with it in the future (thanks Paper Mixing Bowl!).

For the metal utensil, I orginally planned on using metal washers around the gears, but I didn't love how this looked. Instead I found some floral wire that I've had sitting around since my wedding, and bent it in half, creating a border on the page similar to the recipe.  I didn't have any twine, so I fibbed a bit on this utensil and instead wound black raffia around one of the floral wires.  All in all, I ended up using every utensil except the bracket which surprised me because I love brackets. I tried to incorporate them in a few places but found it took away from how much I loved the layout so I dumped them. Sorry brackets! Maybe next month ;)

I think that about covers all of the details. Thanks for stopping by!