Oct. Album Idea from Bethany

I know you all enjoyed checking out Bethany's creations in the gallery this month since she is our Guest Designer and now Bethany is sharing her album for the October kit.

Here are Bethany's pictures and directions...enjoy!







If you are a mother, aunt, grandmother or friend of children, you are the lucky recipient of beautiful artwork and schoolwork. However, these gifts can quickly become overwhelming. But, what if you were to use them in your scrapbooks as an embellishment? Mixed media artists use various found images in their works, why can’t scrapbookers? The mini-album from this month’s kit was the perfect place for me to experiment with this idea. This is what I did.

1. I removed the rings and painted each page (front and back) with gesso. This is a preparatory paint that can be found at an art supply store. If you don’t want to invest in this product, just use acrylic paint. Then when the gesso was dry, I dry brushed a bit of light blue acrylic paint to give some dimension.
2. I punched out circles from my children’s artwork, schoolwork and old phonetics readers and attached them to the front and back covers using matte (not gloss) decoupage glue.
3. I spelled out CHILDREN using Heidi Swapp’s alpha mask then painted over the circles using orange acrylic paint mixed with matte medium, which makes the paint more translucent.
4. I doodled and added buttons to the front cover.
5. I cut out a quote from a too-well-loved children’s book by Judith Viorst and adhered it to the back cover using decoupage glue.
6. I took some very cool sketches that my daughters did of me and copied them onto a transparency using my ink jet printer. I purchased the transparencies from an office supply store and they are made for home printing.
7. On the first inside page, I adhered (using spray adhesive) the trimmed transparency of my dancing self. And on the second page, I adhered the very thin woman.
8. I cut out a dress using paper from April’s kit. I added an undershirt and the scallop hem. I used a Sharpie paint pen to highlight various lines and acrylic paint with a small brush to add color to my eyes and lips. I dressed the thin me in the same manner. The crown was cut out of thin chipboard using a Heidi Swapp stamp as a guide. The chipboard was part of some packaging.
9. I doodled around and added silly phrases and doodled on some buttons with a paint pen for the crown. The crown is glued on using PVA glue.


Have fun with this idea! I’d love to see what you come up with when using children’s art as a basis for your own embellishments!