It was purple!!

I went to Cropworks retreat a couple of weekends ago. It was fantastic, everyone had a good time and the food was 5 star restaurant standard. If you can only attend 1 or 2 scrapping/stamping retreat a year you need to make sure it's run by Cropworks. It was held at Long Point, NSW Australia.

As we arrived we were given a 'show bag' fully of goodies and asked if we wanted to have a try at the challenge. We could choose from 3 different colours and we received the one of our choice FREE. I decided to take the purple pack. The challenge was to use everything in the pack as least once and we couldn't add anything from our stash. We could however, add colour and glitz by using ink, paint, dimensional magic, Kindyglitz etc.

The kit contained:

• 3 pieces of purple patterned paper
• 1 sheet of white leather grain card stock
• 1 packet of square purple rhinestones
• 1 small length of tape with 'smile' written on it (the writing was purple too).

So, I needed to use the white card as the base but that didn't leave me any for embellishing. My friend Rose-Anne (from Cropworks)  doesn't waste anything and had said to me some time ago about cutting the back of a l/o out and putting the card stock to use in the l/o or another l/o.
Method:

1. I cut the back from the white card stock so I could use it elsewhere in the l/o
2. I chose 1 of the pieces of pp to be the mat for the rest of the l/o. I tore it, rolled the edges with wet fingers and then ink distressed it with a purple versamark cube.
3. I then chose another piece of pp and tore around all edges for a smaller mat. I also turned the edges up with wet fingers and ink distressed it too.
4. I then mounted the photo
5. The stems were cut from the left over white card using a Sizzix die and my Cuttlebug. I then used Tim Holtz Distress ink to give them that green tinge - I did that by just roughly wiping the ink pad over the leaf surface.
6. I made the purple flowers from scraps of the pp by punching 2 different sized circles, roughed up the edges of each circle and ink distressed the edges with the green and purple inks, too. I then scrunched them up and re-flattened them and glued them down the side of the page and used a square purple rhinestone in the centres. When I glued the circles together, I did it so they were off centre.
7. The scalloped flowers were made from punching 3 scalloped circles for each flower. Ink distressed the edges and then really scrunched them up tightly. As I un-scrunched them I glued them together and left the top scallop circle more scrunched than the others in each flower. I used the square purple rhinestones for the centres.
8. The tape was a challenge :). I decided to use a tiny bit of the tape as an experimental piece and covered it in dimensional magic. (When you do this it needs to lay on one of those non-stick mats, flat). When dried it didn't look too bad so I cut the piece with the 5 dots each end and the word SMILE in the centre and used the dimensional magic on the tape. When it dried I ink distressed the edges and adhered it to the page with 3D foam squares
9. It still needed something so I used the left over pp and white card stock and punched out 3 butterflies using the Spellbinders dies. The top and bottom butterflies have the white card stock on top and the middle one has it on the bottom. I used purple Kindyglitz to bling them up and attached to the l/o
10. The journaling I did at home on vellum which I ink distressed as well

The photo is a very old one (must be I'm in it :)). My twin sister is on the left with my paternal Grandmother and I'm on the right with my Dad.
All the products used (except the scallop punch) can be purchased from Cropworks.

Remember, your creativeness is only limited by your imagination. Keep smiling and until next we share ...