3-to-Inspire with Shu-Wen Tham

Hi everyone!

It's Shu-Wen here, sharing another interactive spread that I created for my Life Crafted Album! I couldn't resist one last spread using the September "Bungalow Lane" Add-On Kit from the Citrus Twist Kits shop (it's still available in the Citrus Twist Kits store, so it's not too late to snag a kit for yourself!) I had one last idea featuring one of my favorite patterned papers from that kit that I just had to try out!

This week's 3-to-Inspire prompts are:
1. Triangles
2. Interactive element
3. Foam Thickers

Here's a photo of the layout that I created!

I wanted to document some photos of a recent boat tour that we took to visit Spirit Island, and the patterned paper #3 from Paige Evans' Bungalow Lane collection that was included in this Add-On Kit reminded me of the beautiful mountains around Spirit Island, both in terms of the shapes of the triangles and the blues/greens in the paper.

I decided to cut out some triangles of varying sizes from the patterned paper, as well as print out some triangle-shaped photos of the same sizes, to create a background of triangle shapes on my page and imitate a mountain range going across my spread. To create these triangle shaped photos, I used Microsoft Word. That's right, no Photoshop required! I'll leave a link to my process video on YouTube at the end of this post if you're interested in checking it out!

After I had all my triangle pieces, I decided to create an interactive pull-out to allow me to fit even more photos onto this layout! I created a hidden pocket beneath the right side of my layout with some white cardstock and the patterned paper #17 from the Bungalow Lane collection. I printed out a strip of 3 landscape photos and mounted them onto the piece of transparency from the Bungalow Lane Add-On Kit for added stability. Then, I cut out another triangle shape from patterned paper #11 and folded over the bottom edge to create a hinge to attach to the back of my transparency, and this triangle became an oversized tab to allow me to pull out the hidden photo strip! I also printed out some journaling in a triangle shape and adhered that to the top of my triangle pull-out tab. You can see the hidden pull-out in action in the next two photos. The picture below shows what the tab looks like before the photo mat is pulled out. I adhered a triangle shape of the same size to the white cardstock just beneath the triangle with the journaling attached onto it; both these triangles have a hidden magnet in place to ensure the oversized tab lies flat when it's not in use. 

When you flip the triangle down and pull down, that's when the magic happens, and the hidden photo mat on the transparency appears!

And here's a picture of the photo mat itself below. Because the triangle shaped photos on the page itself weren't very big, I liked the fact that I could still include these larger photos without ruining the esthetic of my triangle page. 

I finished off the spread by adding some alphabet stickers from the Add-On Kit to spell the words Spirit Island, as well as some foam Thickers that came in the kit as well! I love the fact that these foam Thickers provide some more interest and dimension to the otherwise flat page, and I love how the yellow of the alphabet stickers matches the yellow on the back of my triangle pull-out tab!

You can check out the full process video for this spread on my YouTube channel.

I love how this spread turned out! If you'd like to give this challenge a shot, feel free to tag me on Instagram or on the Citrus Twist Kits Facebook Fan Page so that I can check it out! And make sure to check out the Citrus Twist Kits shop for all the new goodies this month! Thanks for stopping by! 

Sunday Sketch with Shu-Wen

 

Hi Everyone!

It's Shu-Wen here, sharing a spread that I created in my Life Crafted Album with the new "Bungalow Lane" Add-On Kit available in the Citrus Twist Kits shop! 

Here's the sketch that I used to create my spread:

I love square sketches because they can be used for both 12x12 layouts or Life Crafted Album layouts! 

For the left side of my page, I used a 3x4 landscape oriented photo. Since I knew that it would have to span across both sides of my Life Crafted Album spread, I made sure to pick a photo where it wouldn't matter if I cut the photo in half! I substituted the circle shaped embellishments on the left side of the sketch with some of the smaller floral ephemera pieces from the ephemera pack that came in the add-on kit, substituted the label below those with one of the foam stickers from the Thickers pack that came in the kit, and used some coordinating enamel dots (a Citrus Twist exclusive) to finish off that page. I even added some 3D foam adhesive behind one of these floral ephemera pieces to give my page more dimension!

For the right side of the spread, I used an Instax photo as the focus point for the page. I used one of the butterfly ephemera pieces and one of the larger florals from the ephemera pack to put on opposite corners of my photo and framed them with some leaves that I tore off one of the branch ephemera pieces in the ephemera pack. Since I didn't feel that my page needed any journaling, I decided to substitute that with another Thicker sticker from the add-on kit. Then, I finished off my page with more enamel dots from Citrus Twist Kits!

Here's what my full page looked like in the end! I love how the warm colors of the patterned papers and embellishments in this kit went so well with the warm tones in the photos I took of us hanging out by the fire. 

You can check out the process video that I made for this spread on my YouTube channel!

I love how this spread turned out! If you decide to make a layout using this sketch, feel free to tag me on Instagram or on the Citrus Twist Kits Facebook Fan page so that I can check it out! Make sure to check out the Citrus Twist Kits shop for all the new goodies this month! 

Thanks so much for stopping by!