SWAT Drill #11 – NEON!!

Okay, I admit. When I first read Lanette’s instructions to us I thought “Oh crap, I don’t own anything neon! There goes my no-buying plan right out of the window!”

Let’s be honest, June was sort of the high water mark for that plan. One tax refund and suddenly I find myself the owner of many sheets of new paper. And not just from the deeply discounted section at Two Peas in a Bucket or my local LSS either! Brand new lines!

Sigh.

I’ve let you down. I apologize.

*snort*

I may or may not have had a couple of daiquiri’s tonight so I take no responsibility for the tone of this post!!!

Back to the neon. I popped into Michael’s before work one day and came out the proud owner of 6 new neon acrylic paint containers. They were in the clearance section – in case you’re keeping track of these sorts of things. And  after much thought, this is what I came up with.

I squirted and shook and dropped the different colours of paint all over my white card stock and then waited for it to dry. And waited. And waited!! It took 2 days – see that giant glob of pink in the upper left? That was the slow drying culprit!!

Once the paint was dry the rest of the layout came together quickly – my normal 45 minutes or less time frame to be precise. Earlier in the week I had taken the girls to one of my local scrappy stores (to buy supplies for a class I’m developing for The Art Studio) and while I was there I may have picked up this 6×6 Echo Park paper pad. 🙂

The bright colours and fun patterns worked perfectly for a neon layout. While not neon, the colours were bright enough to coordinate well.

Greg took the girls for a hike in Lynn Headwaters one day while I was at work and took some great shots of them. He said they did really well. Even Christine who he thought he’d end up having to carry on his shoulders. Apparently she RAN most of the way!! Oh to have the energy of a 4 year old!!

Here are some detail shots.

I used some Dear Lizzy vinyl alphabet stickers in a hot pink for my title. I love this set of Thickers and have two sets. One very picked over and one only slightly picked over. They are a pretty old release and I’m not even sure I can get them anymore. 🙁 Someday soon I will have to restock my Thicker supply!!

On that same trip to Michael’s I found these neon(ish) mini buttons, fabric brads and wood veneer speech bubbles reminiscent of ones from Studio Calico or Freckled Fawn. I love the playful feeling they give my layout.

Here’s an even closer, close up of those embellishments.

I have a confession to make about this little grouping. Originally the “amazing” and “hello” stickers were not there but a boo-boo with my date stamp forced me to come up with a creative way to cover things up. Thank goodness for all my sheets of word stickers!!

The last embellishment cluster.

One quick word on my thought process for these clusters. Yes, it is a design principle to have things in groups of threes. Yes, it is a design principle to create visual triangles with your embellishments (among other things). But to be honest, my main driving force behind having 3 speech bubbles (and subsequently 3 clusters grouped in a visual triangle) was the fact that I have 3 daughters and I wanted to have 3 word phrases to represent them.

Sometimes even us “designer types” are not thinking about design and design principles when we create!!This last  detail shot is just of the paint. I am kind of in love with this technique of … well, having no technique! I literally squeezed and sprayed the paint at will! SO freeing!! I highly recommend randomly spraying paint or ink on a piece of blank card stock!

Well that’s it for me. I hope you enjoyed this slightly tipsy post of mine. 🙂 Please be sure to check out the SWAT blog to see what the rest of the design team did. We are seriously rockin’ the neon today and I’m not even sure which of them are old enough to remember neon! I do (gives a little shudder) and must say that it seems to be back in more fashionable ways now. Not that that’s hard!! Anyway, once you’ve seen what we did, we want to see what YOU do with a bit of neon. Link up your projects by the 28th to be in the running for our prize this week which is sponsored by Boys Rule Scrapbooking Kits and is an Elle’s Studio prize pack. I LOVE me some Elle’s Studio, what about you?

Can’t wait to see what you come up with. Have a great weekend everyone!!

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