Hello Colour!!!!!

Wow!!  Hello everyone!  So good to have you here! Welcome to the Colour Room's First Annual Blog Hop.. continued!! 

I hope you had fun over at Julie's place !!  I have no doubt she would have completely blown your socks off!  If you have just entered this hop at my place, you'll need to go back to the start for the full experience... :))

As you are no doubt aware by now, we are celebrating our 50th Colour Palette this week!!  How amazing is that?  You are in for such a treat from our Design Team.... as always, I am in awe of their work.

[Part One] of this post is the introduction to Palette No 50.... and my sample layout. 

If you haven't seen it yet, pop here for a look at this week's palette.  This is what I came up with for this Whitewashed Boys Room palette:

{storm chasers}

I was lucky enough to have that photo on hand as it was just perfect for the palette.  It was taken while we were holidaying after Christmas a couple of years ago now.  All the kids LOVE storms and have never been frightened of them.  They could stand and watch the rolling black clouds and lightening for as long as I let them... which isn't long!  I bascially built the layout around the photo.  I did however have to go through a process of elimination before deciding on the oval shape!  lol ...

None of the others seemed to work.... not even the strip photos in progressive exposures unfortunately, which addressed every colour in the palette perfectly!

Now for [Part Two] of this post:

You are now Up Close and Personal with me: JulieWinks :))) 

...  and here are a few little snippets about me that you may not already know...

   
I am currently designing for:

TCR 

The Scrapboxx

Kraft It Up, and

Stuck?! Sketches

I live with DH, DD x 2 and DS x 2... and the overindulged staffie 'gus'... the 7 of us live in relative harmony in Central Queensland, Australia!   :))

On my desk now, you will find:

1. A tonne of Basic Grey Curio chippies I am putting together for a current Scrapboxx Dt layout,
2. Heaps of December Daily stuff I am unsuccesfully ignoring {it just continues to stare at me!!}...I really need to finish it!
3. Heaps of stickers I am trying to catalogue for my new Ikea storage unit that is yet to arrive! {so very excited} ... prima, basic grey, tim holtz, hambly..... you name it, its in the pile!

My favourite colours to work with at the moment are blue and orange... I can't believe how many layouts have those two colours in them lately....  I don't even know I'm doing it until I'm finished.  Even I didn't realise the extent of my obsession until I put this mosaic together:

Yep... there is blue and orange, in some form, in every one of them! lol

... and I just realised what colours are on my desk right now in the previous pic too!!

What types of themes do I scrap?  Every now and then I scrap about my husband or myself... but it is quite rare!  I almost always scrap about one or all of the kids and the relationships between them.  I love depicting them in everyday moments, preferrably completely unaware that i am capturing them... but I have to admit that it is becoming more and more about the 'art' for me... telling a story more through visual impact than with words.  Sometimes I think the picture is more than enough on it's own and other times I have more of the story that i need to tell.

Where do I scrap?  I am in the most unfortunate position of having to scrap at the dining room table.... lucky for me it is a BIG square table! :))  With 4 kids and a 4 bedroom home, i just don't have a dedicated room for all my 'stuff'.  I am right now waiting for my Ikea Expedit furniture, so that I can at least have everything stored away neatly and, I'm hoping, make it much quicker for me to scrap as I won't have to spend the first hour of 'my time' looking for what I want. 

yeah, ok that was cheating....

this photo was taken before all my scrapping supplies took up permanent

residence along the back wall under the window!!  hehe

I promise to post an update as soon as all my Ikea furniture

is installed and packed full of supplies!

Funnily enough, I invariably end up migrating to the kitchen bench with my layout anyway, so I can stand up and get a better perspective of my page!  For that reason, I'm big on baskets.  My portable 'go to' supplies that can come with me as I migrate and are also easy to move off the table for something as mundane as eating! lol. 

oh, and I always paint at the kitchen bench too... far more practical for the clean up afterwards.

My scrapping 'process' can sometimes vary quite drastically from layout to layout.  Sometimes I've got a certain product or products that i just can't wait to use and i start with that, fiddling and moving things around, before i've even given a thought to the photo or the story.  Other times I'm completely driven by the photo and the story that I need to tell.  Usually though, I get the overall design planned before i decide on the size or number of photos I want to use.  I make the photo fit the design, rather than the other way around.  I'm also quite partial to using multiples of the same photo, often in a photostrip effect.

My favourite food is fruit!  Seriously!  I'm a bit of a sweet tooth.. and it gives me the sugar hit i love without the calories... :))  If we are talking naughty.... bacon is my weakness!  Breakfast, lunch, dinner!  it's so versatile, and so yummy... :)

My three favourite tools are:

my sewing machine first and foremost - no layout is ever complete without stitching... ever!

sandpaper/emery board - everything must be distressed and 'roughed up'

my stapler - i love that it's so immediate...  bang and it's done.

Where do I find my inspiration?  Like most people, I get so much inspiration from blogs, online forums, challenge sites and magazines.  The amount of online fodder is quite astronomical!  I have my favourites but tend to gravitate toward the more 'art' inspired scrappers.  I am always drawn to colour inspired artwork and for this reason I am really colour driven when I start to create myself.  I don't tend to stay within the boundaries of one product release or 'kit', but rather just grab elements on the basis of their colour and texture.  As a student of Interior Design in a previous life, this probably stands to reason... :)  I see potential colour combinations and design inspirations in just about everything.. television adds, food packaging, shop front displays, junk mail.... everything!

A technique I use a lot... {in almost every layout in fact} is paint splatter.  I love that it adds extra depth to your layering process and extra interest to your page, without taking away from my much coveted white space.  In addition to random misting with glimmermist and the like, i also tend to slightly dilute a little acrylic paint and use a straw to blow it onto the page.  It takes a little bit of experimentation to get the desired effect, but with practice, you can actually have quite a lot of control over what looks like random splatter. For larger spots, i just let the diluted paint drip out of the straw or off the paintbrush.

I'd love to see a gallery full of paint splatter this week... so get out your straws and start experimenting ladies!!  lol.  Just visit The Colour Room here to upload your work.

I'd like to thank you all so much for stopping by playing along with us and remind you that to be in the running for The Colour Room 50th Palette Prize, you need to add a comment to this post and tell me what my absolute favourite scrapbooking tool is.  :)

Your next stop is the lovely Karola's blog here.  I know you will leave her place super inspired!

Thanks again and happy travels...

jules

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