Four Year Old Princess

Happy Monday Everyone! I am so excited to show this layout to you. Like all of the layout I show you on Mondays this was inspired by a sketch from Liz over at The Scrappiest Blog. This weeks sketch was so much fun to create from. Though as I have said before I usually am not inspired by geometric shapes. I found this block style paper and got completely inspired. I was influenced by challenge from an online cyber crop over at Scrapparie.com. This challenge was to make your own patterned paper.
This is a photo of my sweet daughter licking the bottom of her candle from her birthday cake. Though the lighting in this photo is a bit off I love the photo itself. My daughter has been asking me to make her a pink page so I decided to do it monochromatic style with some influence from an Scrapbook News and Review publication call for May.

Journaling: (done in a pink Stampin' Up! marker)

Trinity is four years old. You call everything and everyone "Poppy" and you always have a "NooN" idea. You love to dance to Hawaiian music and practice rhythmic gymnastics. When in trouble you always give big hugs and kisses to get out of it. You are very expressive and have an explosive personality. You love to sing your own little made up songs. You zoom everywhere, my little social butterfly.

Ok so lets get rock'n on this description... it is going to be a long one!

Background: I started off with a white piece of 11 1/2" x 11 1/2" cardstock. Now I know it might be hard to believe but I did not have a light piece of pink patterned paper for this. So I created one. I know I said this was a monochromatic pink layout but ... hang in there here is what I did to create a pink bubble texture on this white cardstock. Note: Protect your counter and table by placing down a craft sheet or a protective table cloth.

1. I took a medium sized flat kitchen container about 9"x 7" and about 2" deep.
2. I added one cup of warm water
3. I added 1/2 a cup of liquid dish soap.

Yes yes I know ... you are thinking I am crazy on this one... stick with me here. I got this idea from a Crop Suey video. So you now have a dish with water so soapy you can wash dishes for a week. I then added several drops of red food dye.

4. Gently mix this in together.
5. I took a straw and blew into the water throughout the dish till they are about to over flow.

This created massive amounts of bubbles. Word of caution. Please ware eye protection...the bubbles pop and can get in your eyes. Once you have an almost overflowing dish of bubbles...

6. Take a paper towel and wipe it over the bubbles without touching the water at the bottom of the dish. This is to test the color of your water.
7. Let it dry. It will not take long and this will show you the true color of the water. Do not pop the bubbles on the paper towel either. Let them sit and pop on their own.
8. Add more color if you need too. Or water to lighten it. If you need to do this step test it again.

Once satisfied with the color then you will want to repeat steps 5 and 6 over and over (with the cardstock not the paper towel) till the paper is covered with the bubble texture. Try to add another color if you want to. Play around with this I loved it. I felt like my Mother was about to scold me not to blow bubbles in my soda, like when I was a kid. I even let my children play with this when I was done.

Taking a dark pink polka dot paper from Cosmo Cricket's Girl Friday line. I cut it into 4 - 1 1/2 " strips and punched one of the long sides with a Martha Stewart scalloped edge punch. I then adhered them to the back of my white bubble splattered cardstock. Making my finished edge 12" x 12". This also left me over 1/2 a sheet of the polka dot paper to use else where on the layout.

The next three layers were two DCWV (Die Cuts With a View) papers and one more of the bubble sheet. The back square layer (a medium pink) was cut at 9 1/2". The bubble square was cut at 9" both were then punched with a Martha Stewart edge punch. The block print patterned paper was cut at 7 3/4" and then gently inked with a pink. Center each layer on top of the other an place it off center and closer to the bottom of the large bubble background.

The Photo: This was printed as a 5"x7" and I cut it down to be a 5" square. I backed it with a square of the dark pink polka dot paper. Here is a tip. Knowing I wanted a punched edge only on one side I cut the height of the paper first. I had a piece 5 1/2" high by 12". I punched one of the 5 1/2" sides with my edge punch I used around the background paper. Then I measured and cut it square so I was left with a 5 1/2" square with one side punched. I did it this way because the edge punches cut off about 1/4" - 3/8". Punching first let me cut the width of this piece exactly the way I wanted it.

I embellished this photo with some glitter rub-ons on the corner. For one reason. My wonderful daughter had already stained her shirt and you could see it... so a rub on here and a rub on there. Tada! no more stain.

Embellishments: I used some glitter and bling pink flowers to be the main embellishment focus. I backed them with excess papers and cut them out. Then I also used a couple of Prima flowers to do back them also. I added some Prima bling and a some glitter rub-ons. As I was layering them up in the corner I decided to save a few of the small glitter flowers and one of the large ones to embellish the title.

The Title: The "FouR" was created with Colorbok chipboard covered with DCWV paper. I then glitter glued the different shades of pink in the patterned paper with pink and iridescent glitter glues by Studio G. I sanded the edges and colored it with a pink Stampin' Up! marker.
I stamped the "Year Old" in black on the excess bubble paper and colored it in with a Stampin' Up! marker and added iridescent glitter glue. I popped these up with pop dots.
I added the rub-ons thorough out the page and doodled on the flowers with my black fine point marker to tie in the black in the rub-ons and title a bit better.

I am all about making my own stuff I love how unique it makes my pages... either when I am making paper or creating my own embellishments.

Well thanks for hanging in there with me... phew! That was a long one. I hope you have the time to play with this extremely fun bubble technique! Let me know how it turns out!

I would love to know, in the spirit of creating my patterned paper it made me wonder if any of you have you ever created your own and if so how?