Childhood Dreams

Today I decided to tackle some pages from Hunkydory's Little Book of Childhood Dreams (LB for short).  I've had trouble figuring out what to do with them for several reasons: 1) The pictures are "loosely" painted - a style I don't prefer, 2) The pictures are large squares - about 5" x 5" which barely fit on my card if I don't cut them up, 3) The pictures are full scenes - which I find more challenging to chop up. 4) Most of the time I have to really hunt through my stash to find papers that I think will go reasonably well with them.

Here's a picture of the little book pages with which I started:

One of the challenges with LB pages is that if you don't learn to cut them up, there are only so many things you can do with them.  Take a minute to look at those pictures and see how you think you might cut them up and what you think you might do with them, before taking a look at what I did.  Here are the four cards that I made:

And here's a closer look at each one individually:

Card #1:

This time I just cut a narrow strip off each side to make the focal more rectangular.  There was a color challenge this month on the Message Board I frequent that I found challenging indeed.  We were to use Yellow, Coral, and Dark Gray.  Yikes - I didn't much care the combination and couldn't envision what to do.  However, when I saw this LB page, I realized it contained all those colors.  I then went looking through my stash and found some patterns that were predominantly each of those colors.  Finally, I looked through some of Kendra's Card Challenge sketches and found one I thought I could modify to use with my patterned papers and my focal.  You see the result above.  The only other thing I added - other than white mats - was the greeting.  That I got as a freebie download from Debbi Moore.  When all was completed, I was amazed - I actually like it! :)

Inside:

Inside I simply used matted strips of the three different papers to form a border.

Card #2:

This time I cut the LB page down to get a smaller square.  And this card is an example of a phenomenon I've seen happen several times.  When I post a picture of my finished product, I see things that I wish I had done differently.  Sometimes there's nothing I can do about it, but this time I could fix it.  When I posted the above, I realized I'd be much happier if I matted my focal with plain colors before matting it on the decorative background I had created for it.  Here's the result:

I like it much better with those narrow mats!  I really like the way this card turned out, and it's an example of finding unexpected ways to use patterned paper, too!  I knew I wanted to use the lacy die cut mat for the focal (Georgette Square die set from Tattered Lace). For the background behind it, I wanted to use a pattern that was mostly teal, but thought it would be great if it had a touch of orange in it.  I found those colors in a piece that came from a pack of papers meant for babies.  If you turn the card 90 degrees and look REALLY closely, you'll see that the little orange bits are pigs and there's some white writing that talks about the 5 little piggies!  Given how little of it shows clearly, because of the lacy mat overlay and the large greeting (from Many Blessings stamp and die set from Divinity Designs), you really don't see what the paper is - just the colors!  

Inside:

Inside, I matted a piece of white card stock with the teal to create a place to write my message.  The piece at the bottom of this is cut from leftovers of the LB page.

Card #3:

As you can see, I used a couple different sized oval dies to cut the main subjects from the LB page.  I did like the way I cut the LB page, but unfortunately, I'm not quite as happy with the overall card as I wish I were.  It's okay, but I sure wish I had a better collection of oval dies so I could use them to create my mats!  (The ones I DID use were from: Make it Pop die set from Stampendous, and Stitched Ovals from Creative Dies Designs.) The background is just a piece of patterned paper, and then I matted the focal & embellishment on some more of that background paper before matting it with black.  The sentiment is another from Debbi Moore - again matted with black.  Finally, I added some narrow washi tape - black with just a hint of gold or copper foiling.  It's a bit hard to see in the picture, but in addition to adding the tape to the corner and the line above the circles in the background paper, I also added it to the inside edge of the black mat for the focal.  Because of how narrow the tape was, and the lack of a specific design in the tape, I was able to get it around those curves!

Card #4:

Again with this LB page, I trimmed the sides to focus on the boys playing leapfrog and give me a rectangular image.  I used 3 different brown patterns to create the backdrop and mats.  The sentiment is one of my Mom's sets with matching die.  I have a bunch of those done ahead so it makes it quick and easy to put a card together.  This time I inked it with a bit of brown dye ink before threading a piece of patterned paper through it to create a narrow border.  I did use a paper crimper on the narrow piece of patterned paper before threading it through.