Leonie's Life: July 2015

Here's my first full Kaisercraft post as it appeared on the Kaisercraft blog last Friday. Thought I'd post the whole thing here as well.
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Hello! Leonie Neal-Dawson here today and I am so very excited and honored to be be posting on the Kaisercraft blog for the very first time as a design team member. I am super excited for the year ahead to be creating and sharing my scrapbooking with lovers of all things Kaisercraft.

I have some projects to share today with each of the new July collections. First up I have this page using the delightful ‘Little One’ collection. I started scrapbooking when my eldest child was about 2 years old so I never really scrapped any of his baby photos until now.

“Sweet Dreams” Layout by Leonie

I love that this collection can be used for both boy and girl pages, it has a variety of pink and blue papers plus a mix of both with some brights thrown in for those that like to mix things up.

I chose the more traditional blues for my baby boy page but added in some modern mixed media techniques in the form of some texture paste stenciling and Kaisermists on the base cardstock.

How cute are these little elephants in the “Little One” collection? so adorable! I layered them here with foam tape for dimension on my page.

Next up I have some wall art using the ‘Fly Free‘ collection. Let me tell you these were so quick and easy to put together, literally less than 30 minutes to create!

Recently my daughter, who is just ten, had a mini makeover in her bedroom. New desk, chair, bed linen etc. We had some black frames yet to be filled with anything, and the Fly Free range came to the rescue! Perfectly pretty papers and elements for a young lady’s room decor.

It was so simple to add some of the quote cards from the collectables pack to the lovely bright patterns of the Fly Free papers.

My daughters’ smile said it all for me. She was so happy with these simple decorations that completed her room makeover.

Fly Free Wall Art by Leonie

Following on with the clean and simple theme I put together this page, also using the Fly Free range. Apart from the lovely bright colours of this range I also love the sketchy/doodled elements on the papers, fun and funky for teenagers and young adults too.

Using some of the wood grain paper from the Fly Free collection and these Decorative Die (DD704) script words I cut my page title and outlined it with white Gel Pen.

My last share for today is using the ‘Botanica’ collection. I wasn’t sure what photos to use with this collection with it’s bright, rich green hues, softened by lavender coloured flowers. Then I remembered photos of my daughter exploring the gardens down by the riverside at a local Hotel.

“Explore” layout by Leonie

The greens of the garden foliage were a perfect match for the Botanica collection. I used the specialty paper PS416 Vine with its punched edge and layered some of the collectables over the printed reedy type flowers on the paper to recreate some of the same foliage in the photos.

I added some of what I like to call ‘messy stamping’ to the background. Using the Botanica clear stamps, basically it’s just spritzing the stamp with a little water after it’s been inked up. It creates a more textural – messy image rather than your traditional crisp stamped image. I felt this helped soften the page as it already had the bold colours and striking images of the Botanica papers.