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!