Lesley's favorite work for 2013

Hi to all, this is Lesley with a few of my favourite layouts for 2013.  I don't have a set style but rather prefer to follow trends that I like and be open in my interpretation of what is scrapbooking in my own mind, in other words,  I scrap the way I personally want my work to look without following a trend just because it is done a certain way if it doesn't suit me.  Living in a small Island State of Australia my friend and I travel to mainland Australia whenever we can to gain experience, and have been lucky enough to do so with some really amazing teachers from Australia and Overseas.

This was my first ever attempt at a canvas and was such fun to do.  Loved playing with the mixed media background, stencils and stamps and then finishing off with some die cuts and flowers.  I used the Julie Nutting doll stamps 1st edition for my girl.  It brought back my memories of playing cut out dolls when a child.

Another layout where I've used different mediums to give an 'outside boy play' type of effect to the page.  Distressed the Kaisercraft paper, used a bit of cardboard which I dampened down to make it easier to remove the top plain layer and reveal the ridges.  Cog wheel and 'saying's' chippies are from Scrapmatts.

This became my favourite paper line for 2013, the Tilda lines, love it and will be using it quite a bit in 2014 so pretty and girlie.  Used Pan Pastels on the background, stencil with Gesso, and then cut the blinds from a sheet of paper to create the 'through the window' illusion, then lots of layering with the Tilda embellishments and fussy cutting.

I am very fortunate to receive a lot of photos of my grandchildren who live in the USA, and my daughter captured this delightful range of Sofia's 'personality faces', I wanted to use them all and as I love the square photo's I thought I would go back to a basic design and just keep a couple of squares for layering embellishments, very happy with how it came out and smile every time I look at all her different faces, this one ended up in a frame.

Another favourite paper line of mine from 2013 was the Marion Smith range, whilst only a few papers I had to have them and this picture was taken in a very old heritage building in Virginia and I thought it suited the 'cup of tea' style that I have created.  Fussy cut the clock and flowers, used a Memory Box die for the lacework around the white clock and the leaves.  The smaller clock is from Prima.

Again used a lot of mixed media with stencils and inks to create this 'boy' layout, the sticks chippy and cog wheels are from Imaginerium, doors are Prima and papers are mixed.  Chequer board chippy is also from Prima.  The background circle cut out was made using a Martha Stewart circle punch.

This layout is using a technique learnt from Janine Koczwara but I did the layout myself with leftover supplies from our day with her.  Actually there are two techniques, the first is how to use stencils, inks/paints/texture paste/gesso to create your own patterned paper, in this case it was the blue shape at tope of page where I used gesso with powdered mineral paint mixed in to create the little square shapes using a Prima chequer board stencil, drying, then using the Tim Holtz tool I applied Distress Ink over it in the lighter background shade.  The second technique is creating a tag and using the layering technique to create embellishment which are then easily added to a page, love using this method.

This is one of the layouts done with Janine Koczwara where you can see the technique explained in the previous layout which is the yellow circle on right, below that is the same technique used to create the pink patterned paper using a different stencil, and the yellow/white circle behind photo was created by using a stencil again and distress ink on a piece of white card stock then cutting around the edge of it.

Hope you've enjoyed my different styles, which are some of my favourites for 2013.