Its Karan Gerber here to host the Creative Scrapbooker Magazine blog and today, I am sharing a brick wall inspired layout with you.  This is my first time creating a layout on the blog, normally I do cards.  Today I wanted to share some of my mixed media tips using products from Art Anthology.   I am fortunate to be a member of their design team for this term and I wanted to share some tips with you.  I am also blending in stamps and dies along with some border dies from Heartfelt Creations. One of the things I love about the stamps and dies from Heartfelt Creations is how versatile they are and you can use the flower dies on any project.

On this layout I used a sheet of white cardstock, gave it a coat of gesso.  I then used a brick template from Want 2 Scrap and used texture paste to add a layer of texture to some random areas.  I heat set the texture paste and then gave it a coat of gesso.  I set this aside to dry.  This is what tit looked like after above steps.While the background was drying I did the same to a piece of double wall corrugated cardboard.  This is the same cardboard you can get from any shipping box or box from your grocery store.  Tear off the top layer and leave some on to give the cardboard a distressed look.  Repeat the same steps I did to the cardstock above. Coat of gesso, heat set to dry, texture paste, heat set to dry, coat of gesso, let dry. It should look something like this. So while we are waiting on those to dry lets get started on our flowers and border die cutting.  So stamp the wildwood cottage floral out a few times on canson water color paper using coffee archival ink. Color the centers with cracked pistachio distress ink and just go on the outside edges with vintage photo distress ink.  Cut out three of the classic rose vine three times, on canson water color paper using coffee archival ink, color these with cracked pistachio distress ink.  Pierce the center of the flowers to make way for stamens. Flip these over and lightly mist them from the back, insert into the 3D Basics Mold and run through your big shot machine. Once you are done all your flowers, you will just need to lightly mold in the center, insert your stamen with a bit of dries clear adhesive; and they should look like this. They look a little plain so lets brush with some clear glue gloss and sprinkle with crystal clear.  Let’s get back to the background.  I used peacock feathers colorations mist and sprayed some on my craft mat, took a foam brush and brushed across my background paper, I used water to tone down the color and blended it out near the edges, concentrating the darker color around the brick work to create shadows. I went over the brick work with a small paint brush and brushed on some Decadent Minx and Rust Amber Sorbet. These two colors blended with the colorations spray make a beautiful patina look and my bricks look so realistic don’t they?  I also used the Decadent Minx and placed a small dapper on my craft mat, took my small paint brush and added some platters around the brick work.  I used a mdf quote from ICraft for my title, used white embossing powder on it and heat set it to make it stand out on the cardboard. I used the sweetheart border die  and cut out two borders and used the peacock feathers colorations spray on it and dabbed with some rust amber sorbet.  I also brushed some rust amber sorbet across the raised areas of the cardboard to give it some detail.  I created clusters with my wildwood florals along with the Classic Rose Vine Leaves  cutting them apart to create three smaller vines. Don’t be afraid to make some flowers and add them to your scrapbook layouts, i think they add some awesome detail and dimension to any project.

Thanks for stopping by!

To see more of Karan’s work – Visit her blog! CLICK HERE