Buckle up, this is going to be a long one.
Wendy had asked me to choose some challenges for her from her Pinterest boards, and while I was there I found a pin where someone had cut out a spray of leaves out of a dark brown piece of paper and another piece that had been streaked with green and autumn colours before being cut in the exact same way. The streaked leaves were inlaid onto the negative cut in the brown and the result was stunning.
Knowing me and my penchant for using more intricate designs with teeny tiny pieces, I took it upon myself to extend the challenge to using a specific die- a border one from Memory Box that I knew we both had.
When trying to decide which patterned papers to use, I came upon something I had kept with a view to using one day. They were the front sheets from Basic Grey collection packs. They had on them small scaled-down samples of the patterns included in each set. These designs were perfect for cutting into the miniscule size I required!
The first thing I did was to cut down the sample pieces so that they would run through the machine. I will be cutting the dark brown cardstock and the patterned paper with the same die.
Here's the results of cutting the dark brown. These will be the frame into which I will inlay the patterned pieces.
Next was the culling. Due to the layout of the paper I was using for the patterned pieces, some had white borders going through them, so I got rid of the ones on the right. The left-hand ones were the keepers. I repeated this process with every sheet and collected all the keepers into a little plastic storage container. Yes, I also kept the little brown pieces because you never know when they will come in handy!
These leftovers looked interesting too so I kept them. I have since used a few of them on a multimedia canvas. I'll post that one soon!
I worked out very late in the game that I would avoid most of the rejects if I laid out the die this way rather than across many colours at a time. Ah well, a lesson for later...
And the finished product!! I used a pick-up tool and a fine nib glue for this and it came together quite quickly and easily and it was fun too. I will be using this technique again because it was really therapeutic... and also I have a ton of those little patterned bits left!! Waste not, want not.
There's more but the complete design is going to wait until tomorrow, when Wendy, Karen and I will be posting scrapbook pages we made using the same photo. So stay tuned!!
