Ms Pacman

The wonderful Doris came up with a new stash busting game called Ms Pacman. The details/rules are over at the JBS Mercantile forum here. i thrive on these kinds of challenges because they keep me focused. No indecisiveness about which product to use mid way through a project, because it's not allowed! It pushes me to look creatively at the supplies i do have and figure out ways to make them work for me. i really love seeing how i can get different projects from the same collection of product. Here's my Ms Pacman Kit:

Supplies: Paper: Studio Calico, MME, Pebbles inc, Fabric Swatches: Ormolu, Brads: Jenni Bowlin, Washi Tape: Masking Tape, Border Stickers: Basic Grey, Other: Twine, Buttons

Doris challenged us to create a layout and two cards but i ended up doing two layouts and one card. Rules are meant to be broken, right? Here's the first layout i did:

Although i like the finished layout, i'm not happy that your eye isn't immediately drawn to the photograph. The designs of the papers are too busy and the hand cutting i did is distracting. But i can live with it. i still have lots of photos left to complete the telling of this story so i'll add them into my album in divided page protector right next to this layout.

i am not the greatest artist with my craft knife, i am not a very precise scrapper and eyeball everything. But i can mange fairly straight cuts if they're small enough and i like to add interest to my patterned paper with this technique sometimes.  The graph design from Studio Calico is one of my all time favourites and i grab it in every colour they release. i barely have any of this navy left so i wanted to do something different with it. As triangles are so on trend right now and work well with this pattern that's what i went with. i also like that the sharpness of the angles supports my theme of the page (crocodiles).  i left a couple of the triangles blank so you could see the kraft cardstock and backed some with different papers. They really stand out against the navy. i'd like it if the triangle trend stuck around for a while yet. What do you think the next 'trend' will be, maybe diamonds?

Let me talk you through some of the 'techniques' i used on my pages.

i'm not sure if we were allowed to use punches or not for this challenge, but the yellow paper from Pebbles inc that i had included in  my kit already had lot of starbursts punched out of it from a previous project (in this post). So i decide to try & work that into my design. It seemed natural to house buttons and brads in the negative space. i really love how the brads are bumpy like a crocodile!

One of the things we had to include in the kit was 1 yard of trim, but only 11 inches of any one trim. i'm not sure if twine really counts as trim, but we'll go with it as it's one of my all time favourite items. Something i often like to do is add twine along the top of my page. But as we were only allowed 11 inches of any one trim it wouldn't stretch far enough! uh oh! i ended up tying two ends of  different coloured twine together to get around that. i really like the effect and will be doing this again for sure.

The Heidi Swapp Chipboard letters i picked out were glossy so i wasn't sure how it would take to mist or other mediums. i always experiment with the numbers that come in these types of packs as i hardly ever use them anyway. i tried spraying mist on one to see how it would take. As i was expecting, not very well. But i dabbed it with kitchen roll and found that some of it did get absorbed into the edge of the chipboard number, so some of the white still showed through, giving a kind of mottled effect. i quite liked the distressed look so i ended up using this technique on both of my layouts.

Here's layout number two:

The 'it's a fact' banner on this page is actually from the back of the packaging of my Ormolu fabric swatches. When i received my package from Ormolu i tweeted about my delight at the packaging and that it would be working it's way into one of my projects. Kaitlin told me that they had recently redesigned the packaging with that in mind! So very cool. i am a huge fan of their products and it's a real added bonus that they are earth friendly too! i added a little bit of stamping to one of my swatches using StayzOn and i was really please with how it took, no bleeding at all. Although my stamp wasn't in my original kit, i think i can get away with it under the 'unlimited techniques rule' ;)

There's no reason why you can't use washi tape just like patterned paper. On this page i cut it into short strips and stuck it right down. i also cut up one of the border stickers into three to create a repetitive design.

i also got to work on this green herringbone paper from Studio Calico, and made lots of random cuts. i didn't back it with patterned paper as it would have been too busy, but i think it does add some interest to the page.

 i stuck with triangles for my card. i'm hoping i can get a way with using stamps again!

i didn't even end up using the diagonal striped paper from MME, so that's still waiting to be used on another project. But other then that i don't have much else left from my kit left. i'm hoping Doris sets another stash busting challenge soon because it really keeps me motivated!