Beginners Mixed Media: Using Ephemera

For some of us, there is nothing more nerve-wracking than attempting a scrapping style out of your comfort zone or more daunting than a blank canvas with infinite possibilities.
(OK, yes, I’m talking about me personally but I’m sure this applies to others as well!)
So in this blog series, I’m attempting to make Mixed Media less daunting by giving you (and me) some jumping off points. Where to begin with digi – mixed media scrapping? Right here for Mixed Media Beginners!

I’m back for the sixth Mixed Media Beginners -if you haven’t been following this series, all the previous posts are here and I focus on a particular type of mixed media each month and how I can incorporate it into my more traditional, paper style of scrapbook page. This month I’m working ephemera into my page design.

Ephemera is loosely defined as printed material, often for a short-term purpose but it can be considered collectible and hold significance like a handwritten letter, postcard or concert program, and can include memorabilia as well as other everyday paper items (like tickets, tags, envelopes or receipts).Given how much of our printed material like receipts and tickets have been replaced by apps or e-versions, using ephemera can set the scene for a story-centric layout and add an instant sense of nostalgia. In scrapbooking, ephemera is used for everything from framing and matting photos to creating whole collage backgrounds and can give pages a vintage feel as well as adding to the completeness of preserving and documenting a memory.

In the past I’ve taken a photo or scanned any special ephemera from trips, including theme park maps, but there is a huge Ephemera category with many diverse ephemera packs digitised and ready to go in the store. My plan is just to use ephemera pieces today as patterned paper pieces in a throwback page.

So jumping in, you know my first step involves grabbing a template and this month I’m playing along with the August TLP Template challenge and have grabbed the freebie template kindly provided by Sara Gleason. I’m planning to use lots of ephemera paper layers and this template has lots of blocks in different sizes that I think would work for that.

I grabbed an Ephemera pack by Paula Kesselring as well as some kits and wordart by Elif Sahin, Sara Gleason and Lynn Grieveson with a nostalgia vibe and a throwback photo processed to look sepia and amp up the olden days feel.

Here’s a screenshot of my first steps, placing my photo and some of my main ephemera pieces and elements. I had the vellum wordart by Lynn Grieveson (that is beautifully pre-shadowed and stapled), as well as tickets, envelopes and tags as well as a fun viewmaster wheel from Elif’s Throwback elements that I tucked in outside the main cluster in the template that I’m using as a jumping off point.

At this point I started pulling in more ephemera and pieces from Throwback that had some green to them and then pieces from Sara Gleason’s Artifact to add more green to the page. Without thinking, I found myself adding layers that stemmed from the central cluster of the template filling the page more but mainly on the left side to balance out the viewmaster wheel and then at the bottom. The grey background by Elif has a pre-painted style and combined with the splatters on the template work well for a mixed media aesthetic.

And here’s the finished product.

Of course I had to add more paint, splattering it over the viewmaster disc, and duplicated (and rotated) the splatters included in the template,. Then I added a sprinkle of extra elements (I’m not usually one for foliage on pages but that tree branch works for me because it’s both green and the kids are on a park bench in a botanic gardens park).

In terms of ephemera, I have layers of tags, tickets & receipts, as well as the envelope that has a postage stamp on it, peeking through the zig-zag edged vellum wordart, I managed to use them mostly just in place of template paper layers which made incorporating ephemera into the page pretty easy for me and helped me make a page that feels charming and priceless.

See you next month for more Mixed Media Beginners!