Guest Designer at ARTastic challenge blog - TUTORIAL for Brother layout

Hi everybody. I'm back from my 3 week vacation to California. I'll do a post about it so you can read about what we did.

Meanwhile, I'm pleased to say I was invited to be Guest Designer at a favourite challenge blog of mine, ARTastic, which is run by Shazza Bishop.

I created the layout for it on 27 August in preparation for going away and am only just now able to put up a post about it. If I had more blogger nous I could have done one ahead and scheduled it but as I've not done that before and was busy I didn't try it with something important like this.

The inspiration painting used for the month of October 2011 is

Dr Jekyll's Hideway by the artist Maryanne Jacobsen

Extra criteria is:
1. A house =  1pt 
2. Trees = 2pts
3. A spooky feel! = 3pts

Above is my layout. I was into using Basic Grey that week. I've created a layout featuring my brother Dean and I on his birthday.

I started with a background of Basic Grey Max and Whiskers/Gannett/max-2455. I liked the varied colours and needed paper with green to make a sort of scene.

I then took a tree mask and glimmer misted 4 trees on to the paper. One blue, one wheat and two white. In the second pic above you can see the white trees. I thought they created a spooky feel and it satisfied the second criteria of trees.

I've cut a strip off Basic Grey laser cut doilies paper and added it along the bottom to create some greenery.

Then I've used a Dusty Attic Main Street chipboard house, just cut one off the strip. I've painted it and tucked it into the doilie paper.

I had an offcut of Making Memories Artisan Toile Greenhouse Paperie paper but it was too bright against what I had already so I've used a black ink pad to darken it up. It then matched really nicely with the clothes we are wearing in the photo. I adhered that to the page.

I mounted my photo on to some Basic Grey Origins/authentic pp. I placed a strip of Darice Oh So Trendy sage ribbon across the page and adhered my photo down.

I took some scrap BG paper, rubbed on a Creative Memories word sticker, cut it to fit behind Making Memories Vintage Findings mini kit nature piece  for my title. It had brads so I used them to attach it to the page.

I've used more scrap of Kaisercraft Hunt and Gather PP to punch a strip and placed it underneath the photo. Then I've just added some sticker strips from BG Olivia and BG Oxford Element stickers and journalled and I was done.

Thanks to Shazza for having me as Guest Designer this month. I have assembled a glitter prize pack to give away and will be choosing the winner. Please have a go and mention that I sent you if you're new to the blog.  Just go to http://artasticchallengeblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/october-inspiration-will-come-from.html to have a look. You'll see the other prizes on offer and what the Designers have created. Make a blog post and link it up. You stand a good chance of winning something. Best of luck.