Hello! It's Heather Doolittle here with you to share a layout that I created using watercolors! I love watercolors so, so much. They're probably my art medium of choice! When thinking up ideas to use with watercolors, I thought that I hadn't hand painted a title in a while! 

I hindsight, I probably would have done the "buddies" in uppercase letters instead of lowercase simply because it would have fit with the thickers part of the title better. I decided to go with my script-y title because hey-- not everything is going to be perfect! :) I also used some watercolors behind my photo using the packaging technique. I used a super bright yellow and I love how it stands out on the white background!

If you know me, you know that I LOVE patterned paper (I think I mention my love for paper in every single post...). I used little strips of paper to make a border around  the edge of the layout. I love how this turned out! I just love all of the beautiful patterned papers in this month's Horizon kit! 

I hope you've enjoyed seeing my hand lettered, watercolored title on this layout! Would you use your handwriting to make a large title on your layout? I think you should try it! :)

Hello everyone, Jasmin here with another Layout using the June Horizon Kit.
​As often as this month, I have never used my watercolors. That was so much fun.

TGIF, am I right?!?! I'm back today sharing a layout focusing on a story using the June Horizon kits. I wanted to tell the story of my husband and I's travels in college and how those travels made us the people we are and built our relationship into what it is today. One of the papers in the main kit from Illustrated Faith's All People All Nations collection had the silhouete of the continents in the world and I figured what better paper to use about our travels! 

I started by cutting out the globe cut file from the February 2017 kits but instead of cutting out the continents that are part of the cut file, I edited it in my Cricut software to just be a big circle where the globe part is. I then used gold acrylic payment from my stash to paint the stand of the globe and some teal acrylic paint also from my stash to paint the oceans on my globe. I then cut out the continents from the paper in the kit and glued them onto the globe cut file as best as I could. It is a little wonky but I like to just think it looks artistic! Once attached, I glued the entire globe shape onto a piece of white card so I could do some hand stitching before cutting it out.

I used the black and white striped pattern paper from Simple Stories included in the kit as my background. I also utilized some inexpensive craft foam to pop the globe up before adhering to my layout. Next, I picked out a lot of the flowers from the Island Escape ephemera pack from Bella Blvd to line up along the left side of my layout in rainbow order to fill the space and balance the layout. Once I cut the extra flowers hanging off of the edge of the paper, I decided to put the very little that remained on the right side of the layout and I love the way that turned out!

Once my picture was added, I used the clear stickers from Amy Tangerine in the TN kit, the Jen Hadfield dimensional butterflies, and the beautiful alphas from Dear Lizzy to add my title and embellish the page. I did add the clear stickers to white card stock and trimmed them out before adding to my page as I wanted them to stick out so I could see the vibrant color they were agains the black and white stripe background. 

Lastly I added my journaling in a white Uni-ball pen to the last black stripe at the bottom of the layout. Here is the final layout!

I hope you have all enjoyed this layout! And if you want to try to tell a story with your own layout, try using a large element like my globe to make the story the focus. I'll be back again next week to share another layout using the June kits focusing on watercolors so be sure to check back to the blog. Until then, have a great week!

Hello lovelies today is all about summer and a day at the beach! The June Horizon kit is stunning with its beautiful bright tropical colours and patterns, flowers!

I have become a little obsessed with mini albums of late. I love that you can document an event and use photos that perhaps wouldn't make it on a layout and still create something super pretty!

I have created a mini album of our family hanging out at our fav beach in Western Australia. 

Firstly I created my cover, I couldn't pass the gorgeous exclusive sequins so I made a sequin shaker cover and created my title using the glitter alphas. I finished off my cover with a tropical die cut flower and leaves.

Once I had created my cover I then chose some of the amazing Bella BLVD Island Escape die cut pack, the smaller one I attached to my page the other I punched a hole and added to my hinged O ring. I added some glitter drop the the centres of both tropical flowers.

I added my first photo and embellished with another tropical flower which I added die cuts leaves to and more glitter drops to centre finished off with a phrase sticker from the kit.

I cut a tropical palm leaf in the gorgeous floral paper (I cut the exact same in white card stock and attached to the patterned one for strength) and again punched a hole and added to my hinged O ring. I used the wonderful summer phrase CK exclusive cut file choosing Tropical Vibes and adhered to another page finished off with a water melon die cut and a spray of sea green color shine.

I then added my second photo and embellished with small tropical photos and another phrase sticker.

I used the amazing glitter alphas to create my subtitle. I then cut another page in the acetate sheet. I fussy cut the pineapple from the exclusive CK cut apart sheet (I added a little glitter to the black part of the pineapple first) and machine stitched to the acetate page. I added another tropical flower and all leaf to the hinged O ring.

I added another photo, circle punched the pink/palm element, cut ALOHA from the CK cut files. The XOXO is from the packaging of the pink phrase stickers from Pretty Little Studio which I added with some machine stitching.

And now to my final page, I cut Sweet Summer Time cut file but removed the sweet word and finished off by adding a pineapple and splatter of sea green color shine. I used the cut apart again by cutting circles from one of the journal cards and attached by machine stitching again.

And there you have it a mini book of a summers day with lots of textures, shapes, colours and just a hint of sparkle! You can add more pages, more photos, journalling! Thank you so much for stopping by today and I hope you are enjoying your June kit as much as I am.

Hello!

It's Story Focus week- one of my favorite weeks here on the Clique Kits blog! I love telling the little stories of our lives. 

I wanted to document the little story about how our dog LOVES to go on walks in my traveler's notebook. I think traveler's notebooks are FANtastic to house all of the little stories of life. To begin, I got out the GORGEOUS floral diecuts in the Horizon kit this month and made a spray of them across both pages. I normally use stickers in my TN's just so everything stays as flat as possible. I made an exception this time-- I just added a LOT of adhesive onto the back of the paper diecuts, hoping that I put enough to make them stay put! These bright colored flowers just make me HAPPY! So summery and beautiful! 

After I adhered the flowers, I wrote my journaling directly onto the page and also added a strip of what tape to the bottom of the pages. I think that black and white pattern looks AMAZING with the colorful flowers! I layered in a couple of the printable circle patterns with my flower spray. I love how they look! I finished off the page with a few of the flat sequins, some doodled hearts, a little word phrase sticker, and my date.

This page was super fun to make-- I hope you're inspired to document those little stories in your life! 

​Hello everyone, Jasmin is here with another easy mixed media Layout. 
​Watercolour Flowers!

As the first I searched for a flower punch and used it as a stencil. I mixed my watercolor with Acrylig Gel Medium and applied it with a brush. It dries pretty fast and I cut out the flowers afterwards.​

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​I hope you enjoy it. 

Happy Friday everyone! Today I'm sharing a colorful layout focusing on mixed media and using the June Horizon Kits. The kits these months are full of color and so I knew I wanted to bring in a lot of color with the mixed media to my layout. I started with a piece of white card stock and a ton of acrylic paint colors from my stash. I was inspired by the paper in the kit called Hand in Hand by Illustrated Faith for the All People All Nations line that looked like paint smears. So I took one color of paint, spread a few lines of it randomly on the paper and then used a pallet knife to smear the paint. I did this with all of the colors I had chosen, all of which matched the colors in the Hand in Hand page, taking breaks here and there to let the layers dry so they wouldn't get too muddy when they mixed. Once I had covered the page with paint smears, I used a stamp set called Happy 2017 from Kesi Art that was in the Clique Kits shop a few months ago to stamp the textured shapes with black archival ink. 

I now had my finished mixed media/home made paper and decided I wanted to do something to showcase all of the color so I made pinwheels. Each pinwheel is made from a square. The two larger ones are 3.5" squares and the 3 smaller ones are 2.5" squares. I wanted to make both sides of the pinwheels colorful so I had to cut 4 - 3.5" squares and 6 - 2.5" squares. I then took two of each size and glued them back to back. Then I cut from each corner of the square in and used a pencil to roll each piece toward the center to create the pinwheel shape. I topped it off by using a slightly large silver brad from my stash to the center to hold the pinwheel together and to the page. 

I wanted to add more mixed media to the page and create the illusion of pinwheels in a yard so I used some Shimmers mists from my stash to spray in the background which I also immediately patted with a napkin to lighten up so as not to distract from the pinwheels. I also used some coarse texture paste and some Dylusions Ink Spray mixed together and then smeared across the bottom of the page to be my grass. 

Since the pinwheels reminded me of summer, I decided to document the first year my husband and I had a garden. We planted some melons and the cantaloupe was the best we had ever had and we haven't had any better since. So I thought Sweet Summer Memories was a great title since the cantaloupe tasted like candy! And it was a great title to use the acrylic piece in the kit from Bella Blvd. The rest of the title was made with the gorgeous Thickers in the kit from Dear Lizzy's newest collection, Stay Colorful. 

I finished the layout by using the clear stickers from Amy Tangerine's Sunshine and Good Times that came in the TN kit. There were watermelon and bumblebee stickers that just went perfect for my summery layout about melons! And of course I had to do a little hand stitching on the page so I stitched little trails behind each of the bees. 

If you care to, you can check out my process video for this layout with a lot more detail on how I made the pinwheels on my YouTube channel at the following link.

I hope you have all enjoyed this layout and are inspired to play with some mixed media yourself! Have a great weekend and I'll see you next week with another layout!

Hello lovelies, it's Theresa here to share a mixed media layout with you! Our product focus for the month of June is watercolors, so I grabbed my Kuretake set and a stencil, plus my June Clique Kit called Horizon and got started!
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My favorite feature of watercolors is how they flow along the page, and when you use them with stencils they make the design of the stencil pop! I began here with plain white card stock and laid down my stencil pattern using ordinary modeling paste. My favorite is Liquitex, but any brand will do beautifully. My stencil is from DecoArt #201606, and I have laid it down in a diagonal direction to lead your eye across the page.
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Once the stencil is laid down, you can add your paint. You may need to gesso your page first, to get the paint to flow. I also like my watercolors to be more on the watery side, so when you turn your paper they flow beautifully around the design of the stencil. This also makes them more translucent and dimensional on your page. I typically start with the lightest colors first, because you can always go darker but you can't go lighter! On this layout I began with the reds and I laid the paint down on the flowers of the stencil, and then misted on more water and turned the page in different directions so the paint would move. You can control it somewhat, but it also layers beautifully when you begin adding other colors. The best way to approach it is to be open to an uncertain outcome and embrace how it turns out - you will be pleasantly surprised with this technique!
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I also wanted a bit of shimmer on my page, so I accentuated the dots from the stencil using these shimmer paints from DecoArt and FolkArt. These are favorites of mine that I highly recommend keeping on hand! Now that my background is set, I can go about adding the photo and the embellishments.
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I decided to place my photo in the center but slightly offset to the right of the layout. This photo is of me and was taken several weeks ago while we were in Savannah, GA at the Children's Museum. The museum is an outdoor museum made from an abandoned building that only has the ruins of the walls left, and the walls are just incredibly beautiful with so much texture and color and layers. I felt so inspired being in this space, and the sun was shining so beautifully, it was a perfect photo opportunity so I gave my husband the camera and asked him to take this. I am so glad I did!
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My title felt right on top of the photo, and I wanted to use the glitter alphabet in the June kit, so I added a touch of patterned paper behind it. I also love the pop of black and white here. Every layout needs a bit of black! I have repeated the black and white using the washi tape, at the bottom of the layout as well.
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Other little touches of black are in the flair and the journaling. Notice I also added a few paint dots and sequins around my page as well! There is so much to look at on this layout.
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The ephemera pack is just divine, so I also used a few of the floral embellishments around the photo. I didn't want a  lot, just a few simple pieces to repeat the colors and add more dimension to the floral stencil I already had in place. Thanks so much for joining me today! How are you using watercolors with your Horizon kit? 
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