What to do with tranparencies?

If you're like me, you love Fancy Pants Designs. I have bought more than a few of their collections over the years. Their kits often come with a transparency and/or transparency cut-out pieces. I always would look at this stuff and wonder: What the heck am I gonna do with this?!

This weekend, I decided to get out of comfort zone and use the transparencies from the It's Your Day collection. I think the results are pretty fantastic, if I do say so myself.

These layouts feature pictures taken at my friend Sherry's birthday party in November 2011. Here is a double-page layout I created using transparencies:

On the first page, I used one of the transparency cut-outs:

Since these pictures were taken during and after we sang Happy Birthday (badly) to Sherry, I thought the musical notes were appropriate. I used a few dots of Glossy Accents to glue it down. It worked really well.

Other supplies and techniques used: Rub-on from the collection as a title; stickers from the collection (border and flower on the left side of the page); Martha Stewart punch to create the border around the journalling box I made; sanding the edges of the two smaller pictures; and, making the fan flower myself (I'll get more into that later).

I used a 12x12 transparency on the second page. To make the design stand out more, I layered it on top of a yellow piece of 12x12 cardstock. I love the pop of colour!

I mentioned earlier that I made my own fan flowers. Tim Holtz has dies for the Big Shot to make them. They are fantastic dies and they work really well. That being said, you don't need the dies and Big Shot to make these flowers. All you need is a ruler and a ball tool. You use the ruler to measure the same space between each use of the ball tool. All the ball tool does is give you a place to fold later on. You can make the spaces as narrow or wide as you want and you can make your flowers narrow or wide by adjusting the width of the piece of paper. You then fold it accordian style and glue the ends togehter...tada! BTW, there are tones of tutorials online to get more detailed instructions on how to make these. Check out this tutorial by Helen for instructions.

On the third page I made using transparencies, I again used a 12x12 transparency from the collection but this time and layered it on top a piece of pattern paper (also from the collection) in a contrasting colour. I love the effect!

I made my own fan flowers again but this time, I decided to use one of my Close to My Heart fabric buttons on the bigger orange flower.

I love that I managed to finally get use out of the transparencies that came with a kit! But even though I used a new technique, I still stayed true to myself. These layouts are still very me: they are about the pictures and the story.


Happy scrappin'!