Jot Magazine | October Mood Board!

Hello Friends!  I am pretty excited about this month's mood board over at Jot Magazine because I had the pleasure of selecting a few Pinterest images to be brought together to try and inspire! I must of had water colour on the mind particularly as the inspiration pieces, that made it to the board, came together.. *grin*

In truth, it really was the water colour world map that started my journey through the myriad of goodness on Pinterest. I just knew that I had to incorporate the same (or similar) process on a page. Here's what I came up with..

"Happy"

products used: cs - American Crafts; pp - October Afternoon; alpha - American Crafts thickers; other - water colour paint, Heidi Swapp colorshine, black sharpie pen, OA stickers and chipboard; tools - silhouette portrait, typewriter, sewing machine.

I started out by searching for a free downloadable image via Google for a "flat world map". After saving the image and converting it to a .jpg file, I was then able to trace the outside image of the map in my silhouette software.

A lot of the detail was too fine for my cutting machine, so I removed any great lakes or small islands from the image before I sent it to be cut out from sturdy cardstock.

This then left the basic outline to use as a water colour stencil directly onto my background layout cardstock.

From my collection of Heidi Swapp colorshine mist and water colour paint palette, I proceeded to lightly brush over the openings in the stencil - allowing drying time between each colour. Add some water to your mist on a separate palette to achieve a washed out look.  Tip: Use washi tape to secure the stencil/mask to the back ground cardstock to prevent movement between each paint layer. To obtain a softness between the colours, brush the cardstock with water before adding the paint.

After my background technique was completed, I started to take other elements from the moodboard. Especially the hand drawn circles with the "focus on happy" theme.

The remainder of the layout came together very easily by adding a touch of florals (fussy cut from the October Afternoon patterned paper) and grounding all the elements with the black die cut heart shapes.

If you would like to play along with this mood board challenge... (and I'd really love for you to try it out!! *grin*) Please, come and visit the Jot Magazine blog to check out the details.  Happy scrapping and thanks for visiting here today.