Colour of the Month Challenge.

 Hello Everyone

Welcome to our first "Colour of the Month" Challenge.

This month's colour is RED.

 

 Our Photo Collage is made up of my personal photos and photos from our Design Team Ladies.

This months photo's are as follows.
50 red roses from my husband for my birthday.
A little child dancing, taken at my one of my daughters wedding. She is the niece of the groom and is dancing with our daughter Anna.
Lovely red berries from Solange (Brazil).
A London red phone box was taken when three of my girls had a holiday there.
A red fire engine at Disneyland. You can see Josh reflected in the head light. This engine is in the fire station below Walt Disney apartment.

Each month the colour will change.
The idea is for you to come up with a project using our colour of the month, send me some photos and a list of Imaginarium Design chipboard used. We will show it here on our blog during the month. At the end of the month I will choose two winners. Each winner will receive a bundle of our chipboard worth $50.
If you want to take part in  our challenge then I will need your photos by the 23rd of the month at the latest, I will announce the winners on the 25th of the month. Every week the design team will be sharing their projects to inspire you. We will also be giving way 2 small bundles of chipboard each month as well. All you need to do to be in the running to win one of these is leave a comment here and on our facebook page. All winners will be announced on the 25th of the month.

So lets see what three of our Design Team Ladies have come up with.

First up is Natalie May

Nat has designed one of her amazing journal pages to inspire us. I wish you could really see it. There is so much going on in the back ground. The photos here don't really do it justice.  

Here is what Nat has to say about her page.

Red is such a beautiful colour but I always have so much trouble creating with it.... I worry that it might look like I spilt blood or wine on it! lol!
So with that in mind, I opted for an Art Journal page with the boldest part of the image being Red!
I created a collaged background and then hand painted the Poppies using Watercolours and Neocolors. I used my Hand drawn chipboard leaves to add some dimension - I coloured them with Neocolours before using Gel Medium to adhere them to the page!

IDD0045 Nat's hand drawn stemmed leaves (2 in a board)

 Nat is one of our in house designers and the leaves above are hand drawn by her. It is one of the many designs Nat has done for us and is one of  her most popular designs.

Nat has quite a few personal art journals now, she teaches wonderful art journal classes inspiring many ladies to have a go at this mixed media art form.

Thanks Nat for sharing one of your beautiful art journal pages with us today. The red poppies really do "pop" on the page and I love your collage background.

Next up is Wendy Duwakin.

Wendy has been very busy. She has designed two card sets to inspire you.

First up is a cute country set. Here is what Wendy had to say about her cards.

For this month I have done two sets of cards each with a different feel - firstly my country cards. For the chipboard on these I have used Colour Blast Shimmer Dust and actually mixed with glossy accents to create both a matt look and a glossy look.

I love the little details Wendy has done on her card, like the stamping and raffia bow. Also the punched border which looks very effective on the red spot print. The Shiny finish on the chipboard nicely complements the black button embellishment.

I love the way Wendy has incorporated the colour red onto this card. By adding a couple of squares of red prints and a red ribbon, Wendy's card has a real country feel to it. The bee and ladybug is a really nice touch. The glossy look Wendy has done on her chipboard is very effective and contrasts beautifully with her green flowers.  

Wendy has also used some of our chipboard designed by Nat.

 IDFL0018 Sheet of 7 Leaves.

IDD0041 Nat's Pin Wheels.



Next up is Wendy's second set of beautiful cards. This set has a real vintage feel to them.



Here is Wendy's own words to describe her cards.

I decided to drag out some old paper tole kits I had lying around and put them together I really love these retro cards.

Sometimes with the chipboard flourishes I find that I need to cut them down to get the look I want such is the versatility of the product. For the flourish I used Colour Blast colour paste in bling as a base and then to get the look I was after I mixed two embossing powders together being "leather" and "snow white" to give the shipboard a mottled effect.

You can see the mottled effect on her chipboard flourish, and matches perfectly the vintage look of Wendy's cards.

IDFL0014 Jessica Flourish.

  

Just look at all the beautiful flowers Wendy has clustered on her card. The embossed chipboard word is the perfect touch.  In keeping with the vintage feel to her cards, Wendy has tucked some crocheted lace under her flowers.

 A really beautiful card that any one of us would love to receive.

IDW0080 Totally, Adore, Wonderful.

Thank you Wendy for sharing 2 sets of your wonderful cards with us.

Sue Smyth also has created something very different to inspire us.

Sue does very detailed pieces and amazing off the page projects. Today she has done a canvas for us. You can see all the beautiful bits and pieces Sue collects and adds to her work. Again this is another project that you really need to see. Sue has done a lot of work on the foundation of this canvas before she has added all the detail on the top.

Here is what Sue had to say about her project.

Here is a project I created a few years ago using red, it is not a colour I use a lot, though I love it. It can be a strong colour to use with a lot of emotion behind it, it can so easily go all wrong

However for this canvas the feature I decided to use was an old doll face and wooden spoon, along with lots of found objects to create texture, I have used chipboard and trinkets as accents, not sure it worked as well as I would have liked, but it sure taught me a lot about red and mixing it with other colours.

I have double embossed the chipboard brackets with gold embossing powder, (one of my favourite pieces) to give a bold shiny look, this is a great contrast with the red.

IDS0013 Embellishment 4

 IDC0003 Corners with Four Circles.

Sue has used these corners on the foundation of her canvas. You need to look closely to the corners of Sue's canvas to see them. 



IDS0002 Butterfly Large.

The Butterfly has been double embossed with gold embossing powder and Sue has used it as part of the fountain of her canvas. Tucking it under her dolls head. 

IDACU0001 Capital Letters.

With Sue's work you always need to look very closely and carefully or you will miss something.

Thanks Nat, Wendy and Sue for getting our challenge underway. I am hoping lots of you will join in and take part. I look forward to seeing what you all come up with.

Over the next few days, our Design Team Members will be sharing more of their beautiful projects to inspire you.

I will be back in 7 days time to share more of our "Colour of the Month"  projects from our amazing  Design Team. As all the Ladies on our team have different styles, it should be an interesting and enjoyable month of creativity, with something to inspire everyone.

Thanks for looking.

Jane

PS Don't forget to leave a comment here and on face book to go into a draw to win a small bundle of our lovely chipboard. Maybe you can use it to enter next months Colour of the Month Challenge.



Excerpts From The Diary of a Designer 2 ...

No Pressure ...

Monday 2nd of January 2017

Dear Diary...

Cannot believe how beautiful it is at the beach ... heard from a friend in Casino that it hit 152 degrees Celsius yesterday!! Soooo glad we have taken this camping trip despite the ever present sand in my shoes/eyes/underwear.   Still. Worth. It !

Wandered up the 'high' end of the park this morning to try and get 2 bars of reception on my phone... if I stand just so with my tongue in just the right spot I can actually get my mail to download and look at facebook. The second I connected 10,000 mail messages appeared .... I waded through them and to my pure and utter delight I found out I made it onto the Imaginarium Design team .... YES! I did a fist punch to the air and promptly lost connection. .. Bugger. 

After climbing a BBQ block I was able to reconnect and get a good look at my fellow designers .... OMGosh .... I'm not joking these girls are pretty much all spectacular designers.

I'm going to be honest here, I was a tad intimidated at the line up .... Alison Bevis, Leonie Neal-Dawson, Sonia Thompson, Tracey Fowler, Adriana Bolzen, Louise Nelson, Sandi Spink, Solange Marques, Chitose Nakamae, Karyn Schultz, Miriam Hagger, Belinda Spencer, Tanya Palamarchuk and for heavens sake .... Sue Smyth!! Thats Right SUE SMYTH!! 

These guys are ALL AMAZING .... a fact that really struck me while I stalkerishly Goggled them ... I'm feeling a bit worried about my ability to keep up with a group this talented! Not to mention there are certain people in this group who I'm pretty sure have some questionable video footage of me .... you know who you are!!  'Intimidated much Kel?' 

was the very question I was asking myself when I suddenly slipped and fell off the BBQ ... on the upside it was really relaxing in the air conditioned ER room at Taree District Hospital and the staff were all really very lovely :)

Friday 6th of January 2017

Dear Diary….

Am home from holidays …. I have determined that I will not let my awe of fellow designers intimidate me … I will just have to get extra clever in order to keep up with their brilliance :) 

The first chipboards I have to use are these brilliant arrows and chevrons …. 

I’ve decide to jump in with a set of cards … with beach holidays still fresh in my mind I chose some of Kaisercraft’s beautiful beachy 'Island Escape'  papers and made this set of 3 step cards… I kept the chipboards raw as they complimented the beachy feel of the papers perfectly as they were … I love it when embellishments can pull projects together with so little effort :)

then I spent the whole afternoon stressing that

 I just hadn’t put in enough effort!! 

‘Right’ I thought to myself …. 

tomorrow I’m going to do a layout where I actually 

DO SOMETHING TRICKY to the chip board! 

I so hope I dream of said tricky thing some time tonight!!?!

Saturday 7th January 2107.

Dear Diary...

Did not sleep a wink last night  and cannot think of anything Tricky!!!????!!!

Sunday 8th January 2017 

Dear Diary...

Slept like a log but was too overtired to remember dreams 

so if I did dream of something tricky it's long gone now!! :(

Monday 9th January 2017

Dear Diary...

OK so this is just silly now!!!!!!!

I feel like I have massive performance anxiety … 

do you think Sue Smyth has performance anxiety? 

Methinks NOT!! 

I bet if she spit on the ground something unbelievably 
creative and beautiful 

would form before it even landed!!

‘OK’ I thought to myself ‘enough of this nonsense … I’m just going to take my chipboard out and see what happens’ so thats what I did… and I was thrilled with the layout that popped out of my suspiciously uncooperative mind.

I ended up covering this ‘Lazy Days’ title, a round flourish frame and a set of double hearts with Colour Blast heavy white gesso, then using a hessian patterned background stamp and blue ink to stamp a pattern over them all. 

The blue ink helped to tie the chipboard into the blue background of the layout and the blue wisteria pearl vine that I layered around the photo.

getting my hands on the products was all I really needed to do I think because quick as a wink I grabbed some more of this beautiful paper range ( Cherry Tree Lane collection from Kaisercraft) and did a second layout … this time using some glimmer mists to colour butterfly chipboards and black ink and a white gel pen to make the ‘Little Cutie’ title pop. 

I used more of the black ink to create splatters in the background and a sharpie to draw black doodling around the outside that tied the whole layout together. 

   

I just adored those butterfly chippies … and the best bit of all was when I sprayed the chipboard thoroughly with the purple glimmer mist it caused the butterflies wings to arch up slightly … once I stuck their centres down they still had the perfect little natural lift to their wings :) 

I thought this was very tricky!! lol

Tuesday the 10th of January 2017

Dear Diary...

In my house now there are 7 children at home on holidays … for this reason I have decide to abandon the house all together . 

It is a sign of my superior reasoning skills that I can assess and accurately understand the situation as it currently stands … if I clean a surface at this present time it will take roughly 7.5 seconds for someone to dump something on that clean surface ... therefore there is no point in cleaning anything again until the 30th of January when they all return to school where they belong!!

I am not lazy …. 

I am the smartest woman alive!!

So I spent yet another full day out in my workshop creating while my beautiful family continued to spread the school holiday carnage.

I think I’m actually on a roll now …. I have all these beautiful ornate chipboard frames that Imaginarium sent me and I know just what to use them for :)

Kiah wants to redecorate her pigsty of a bedroom in a vintage country theme.

I explained to her that you can decorate a wheelie bin any way you like…

 in the end it’s still just a place for garbage!

She insisted that she would be significantly more inspired to clean her room completely if she had some new decorations to hang in there.

I live in hope….

I am the dumbest woman alive!!

So today I decided to make her a banner in the vintage country theme.

These are the chipboards I used ….

I also used a bunch of flowers and leaves from various companies, white paper doilies and a bunch of gorgeous funky fibers. 

This was soooooo fun to make …. Im overjoyed at how it turned out and really felt like I had succeed in channelling my inner Sue Smyth :)

Kiah  loved it and thought I was extremely tricky :)

With the leftovers from this creative forey I managed to squeeze out one more step card as well 

The extra chipboard I added was this beautiful Imaginarium flourish which anchored the card perfectly.

And so I am done!

I have no more tricks up my sleeve.

It's going to be quite a year trying to keep up with this brilliant new DT

I'm sure this shove in a new direction will do me the world of good :) 

No pressure right?

_____________________________________

Kelly-ann Oosterbeek has been a scrapbook and paper craft designer for the last 17 years and lives in Northern NSW with her super-sized family.

She has her own line of gloss finish butterfly stickers ( featured on the projects in this post), and sells these along with Kaisercraft Collections and layout kits online ...

You can find her and all her links at :

www.kellyanno.com

www.kellyanno.com