Hi there, if you are a regular visitor to the TLP Blog, you might remember the Monday Mash-up Series from last year, where we looked at strategies to step outside the ‘one kit only’ scrapping box to increase your confidence in mixing and matching and ability to stretch your stash. (And if you didn’t see any of them, you are forgiven LOL and the good news is you can still access them). Anyway, with all those lessons up our sleeves, this year I’m introducing the SOSN Stash Mash!

Every Wednesday when TLP Designers put a selection of goodies on sale at half price (here’s a link to this week’s specials category), I’m reminded of some specific treasures I have in my stash and feel inspired to pull them out from the depths of my harddrive again. And I know now that I can find a few kits among that day’s selection that will work perfectly together to tell my stories and support and enhance my pictures. So welcome to the first SOSN Stash Mash!

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Today, I’m opening up and using Gina Miller’s Chronicles No.3 again, and mashing it with Bella Gypsy’s Life is Great Collection, both heavily discounted for SOSN today 8 March 2023. These are pretty big and have feathers and birds in common (and if you know me by now, you know I hoard all the bird and feather kits). So like I’ve discussed previously, that commonality will help make a cohesive page and the array of colours between the kits means that I am confident I can find a paper (or several, more likely) that suits whatever photos I have ready to scrap.

Also on sale in SOSN today, I spied Fiddle-Dee-Dee’s Delightfully Dotty templates that had a lot of circle pieces in the design that fits with the buttons, flairs and wordarts I’ve seen in the kits. Additionally, with templates that have foliage, I know I can often substitute feathers. (Although some scrappers may feel the opposite, I feel that templates do not have to dictate your element use, they can just be a guide, and a lot of templates like Cheryl’s will label each layer of elements in a way that basically makes me feel like I indeed have her permission to switch them, for instance “flower/element”, so a star or flair or anything really would work in that ‘flower’ spot).

So now I have pulled some photos and here’s my first work in progress screenshot.

I was drawn to those pre-made stitched sequin plastic pockets in the Bella Gypsy collection so I knew I had to use them, and I replaced one photo spot with one and then felt like the more, the merrier. I also thought some of the wordart could help me build a title of ‘happy boy & happy bird’, I’m not 100% sold on that wording yet but instead of overthinking it, I’m just going to keep scrapping and see where it goes before I think about spelling anything out with alphas. (Or really, I’m just procrastinating choosing an alpha because there are so many styles and colours variations included in the Life’s Great Collection”.

Here’s my next work in progress after adding a tone on tone, mellow yellow paper and dark blue paper page matt from Gina’s kit and some extra elements.

And now here’s a few changes but mostly just trialling papers for all the circle paper pieces. There are no hard and fast rules in scrapping but over the years, this is the general method and thought process I’ve found I follow for pages composed of multiple small paper pieces like this:

• I use smaller prints on smaller paper pieces so the pattern is still clear (like on the bottom row of circles, the big one on the left and middle);
• I also repeat papers in different spots to keep it cohesive and it helps show more of the entire pattern (the viewer’s eye and brain will see and register the matching patterns);
• I keep some spots solid, so as not to overwhelm the page, eye and brain with patterns.

After seeing the multi-coloured concentric circles distressed paper in the Bella Gypsy’s, I decided to use that for some of the circle paper pieces and because I wanted to emphasise the pattern more, I swapped it in instead of the dark blue page matt. Hopefully the eye and brain reads the top left papercircle as well as the second last one in the bottom row as coming from the same paper as the page matt. It is a really cool design but would overwhelm my photos if I used it as the main background.

And now here’s the suprise ending!

By accident, I activated and dragged that dark blue backgrd to the main background, over the yellow and decided I kind of liked the contrast, and toggled back and forth and then started switching main background papers again. I went with this subtle floral print that I felt gave some contrast and the eyes a bit of a rest among all the busy details of the page design.

Picking up on the stitched detail of the sequin pockets and also the circle theme of the Fiddle-Dee-Dee template, I pulled a stitched circle frame from Gina’s elements and although I was just going to pop it behind the photo, once it was over the top I was happy with that.

Finally I added an alpha (or 2 technically, I was really spolit for choice with the Life is Great Collection and it is so hard to choose sometimes) to finish the title phrase and moved the bird element to the journal area that I knew I wouldn’t fill with words anyway, this is a pretty regular event in our house. And then, because it felt a bit too clean and a bit disconnected in some ways, I threw some paint splatters from Chronicles no.3 over some of the layers to visually join them, and well, birds can shake like a dog when they’re drying off anyway so the spray of watercolours felt like it had additional meaning with these photos.

So if you stayed with me to the end to see the evolution of this page, thanks and I hope you find a bargain in this week’s SOSN or at least it reminds you of some ‘old’ treasure you already have in your stash and feel inspired to pull it out to play with again!
See you next month for another SOSN Stash Mash.