Cat Page: Best Friends
We got our cat Winston awhile ago in August actually. I haven't had time to make any new pages that include him though. I decided to use pastel coloured paper because it's winter and I am sick of it. I wanted something that was cheery to lighten up the cold dull of the winter outside. This is why I chose yellow, purple and blue. Plus I had some cat stickers that matched them perfectly.
For the clouds and tag shapes, I used a stencil set that I bought from the dollar store. They are not very durable for using a shape cutter but they work great for tracing the shapes and then cutting them out with scissors the old fashioned way. These shapes I used for labels, the clouds for the cats' names and the tag for some journaling to explain the pictures.
Journaling is a first for me I must say. I just have never really tried or done that before. I thought I would give a go this time to see how it added to the page. I think I like that you can better explain what is going on with the pictures, maybe what you were doing that day etc. I know there are some products, paper wise, out there that are specifically made for journaling purposes.
The pens that I used are from Martha Stewart's collection. I am not a big fan of her products because they are so expensive, but I bought these awhile ago and tried them out on my page tonight. Now I did buy them a while ago and they are still good for using. They haven't dried out or gone chunky in their flow. Martha Stewart Glitter Pens, 6-Pack I am not sure if those are the exact colours that I have but I am sure they are very similar. I really like these pens, they have great colour quality and the glitter in them is awesome. They write nicely. The only thing that I did notice is that they start writing funny if you go over an area more than once. It starts to rub the paper away a little bit. Now they are a little expensive, but they are the best ones that I have tried and they certainly work the best.
For this design I just used regular plain card stock because I was working with shapes and glitter and some stickers. Now if you want you can use some patterned paper. I also didn't really have anything patterned that would have been appropriate for this theme I was working with.
To achieve the diamond shape, I just took a smaller piece of card stock, folded it until I got a square shape and then cut the excess off. I like making a diamond shape when using lots of colour because it gives it a bit more dimension. Also I was trying to incorporate basic shapes to illustrate that you can use simple designs to get a nice end result.
I used a pencil to lightly mark where I was going to put the pictures so that I could work around the pictures before fastening them to the page. This is a good technique to use in case you make a mistake with some aspect of the page so you don't end up ruining your picture by accident.
To fill in some of the blank space on the pictures, instead of cutting it out, I chose to put some stickers directly on the pictures. This is a different way of creating a fun look. You can add dialogue boxes or bubbles like I did, or you can put lettering on like I also did. I chose both to show you how it can still work on the same page without looking like there is too much going on there. Another thing you can do is to put some of the sticker on the paper and some on the picture.
I used some stickers of cats to create a sort of border in the corner. This just helps to draw the page together a bit to pull everything back to the centre focus. I chose cats because it's a cat page. These are just small stickers just to add some dimension to the page to take away some of those pesky big empty spots that can happen too often.
Then you can add fun little stickers like this one:
to fill in the spaces you want filled.
This page was to show you that you don't have to use fancy machines and need to have extreme artistic ability. I am by no means very talented with my artistic skills. I can match colour and have a pretty good spacial sense but I am no artist! I believe that everyone can make professional quality scrapbooking pages with simple shapes and designs. All you have to do is arrange things and add the right dimension with shapes.
I hope you enjoy this tutorial! I can't wait to hear about all your pages that you make!
Bye for now!
*I will post a picture of the whole page when I get a chance*
