Freestyle Mini Album with Kasia

Hi! It's Kasia here today to share with you a new mini album made with just one of October kits! To build this mini I worked with the "Pretty Pieces" add on. The kit is so full of amazing goodies that I didn't have any problems to make my album and there are still so many pieces left for me to use!
I was inspired by all the beautiful colors and wanted to repeat them through the book so I grabbed some of my acrylic paints and had mixed media fun! I ended up with rather messy, freestyle mini book for you this month! Have a look:


















Did you like this freestyle mini album? If so you can try some of the below tricks while working on your own!

1. Mix some big photos into your mini albums design- they will balance the colorful and busy pages and bring more attention to the story you want to share;
2. Don't be afraid to stamp/stitch/glue things on your pictures- make them pop by adding things or techniques directly on the photos;
3. Recycle (or upcycle!)- as you can see on the pages of my mini I included some pictures of the embelishments which came from the package as well as the bag the embellies were packed in- don't be afraid to recycle;
4. Go bold with your paint- I love soft watercolor look but if you are starting with paint try acrylics- they are much easier on paper (it doesn't wave so much), they give strong, staurated color and they do mix in the most beautiful ways;
5. Have fun- try to make messy, art journal inspired, free style mini and have fun with it! Experiment, make your hands dirty, try new colors and techniques- free your creativity!





If you create some mini books this month make sure to share them in our gallery and on Citrus Twist Kits fanpage! We would love to see what you came up with while working with October kits!

Tuesday Tutorial with Michelle

Hello!  Today is Tutorial Day on the Citrus Twist blog and I want to walk you through the process of using a non-scrapbooking related image as inspiration for a scrapbook layout.

To start the process off, I browsed through my board titled "Scrappy Inspiration" which is where I file away images of the non-scrapbooking kind.  For the most part, it's a blend of various graphic designs, cool title work, and magazine-type images.  This is the image that I chose to work with:

Source

 



 

I really liked the mix of colors and placement of the squares and rectangles, so I set about cutting my own from the various papers and the envelope included in the October Pretty Pieces Add-On Kit. 
 

 

Next, I played around with the placement of the shapes while keeping the inspiration piece in mind.
 

 

Using my pin as a jumpstart really took the guess work out of figuring out where I wanted my papers to go and left me with lots of time to play around with the fun embellishments in the October Add-On Kit.  This is what I ended up with:

 

 

 

 

You can definitely see the resemblence between the inspiration piece and the layout, but you can tell that I made it my own. I took the simple composition and ran with it.  More and more I find myself going to non-scrapbooking related images when collecting ideas for future layouts.  What inspires your papercrafting? I would love to hear from you :).