Challenging Myself

This week at Cocoa Daisy, we've been discussing stamps that we would love to own. I love laurel wreaths and found a chalkboard image on Pinterest with several styles and shared it on the forum. Would you believe a couple of days later, Wilna posted a YouTube video creating a layout with a chalkboard laurel wreath?! After watching the video, I decided that I would make my own laurel wreath cut file. I could have used Wilna's file, but I thought it would be fun to have my own.

The number one thing I learned with this personal challenge: If you're using a photo of your own drawing, draw really crisp, tight illustrations, otherwise you'll spend HOURS trying to clean up the image and closing gaps to make a clean cut file. You can thank me later for that little gem. :) The July Cocoa Daisy sketch was the perfect design to give my laurel wreath vision a try.

I started with a simple drawing and converted it to a Silhouette cut file. A sketch pen was used to created the background image. I then used gelatos to softly color the background image. I scaled down the cut file to make it a little bit smaller than the background image and cut it out on the Silhouette. I then painted the cut wreath. I used 3-D Foam Squares to raise the cut wreath, to give dimension to the layout. To get my journaling even around the circle, I lightly traced around my photo and added the journaling.

Wow, sometimes I even amaze myself! lol I love learning new things and pushing myself creatively. Getting involved in an on-line scrap community is such a great way to learn, share, and be inspired. Thanks to everyone that inspires me on a daily basis!