BLOG CHALLENGE | FEBRUARY

Hello everyone, Rikki here! Welcome to the February blog challenge!

First let's have a look at the winner of the challenge from January where you all played with Jenn's template. If you want to have a look at all the awesome entries, you can find them HERE.

The lucky winner for this month is Anny-Libelle!!!

Congratulations Anny-Libelle!!! You have a notification on your TLP account.
All other participants also received their 25% discount coupons via their Lilypad accounts. Please make sure you check your messages everyone and if your coupon didn't come through send an e-mail to pinkreptiledesigns at gmail dot com!

Here's Anny-Libelle's great page:

Last month I showed you a page with a cutout shape in the middle of my journaling/text/wordart with a few more paper layout examples of this technique and I thought it would be a great challenge as well. Don't you agree?

So I wrote up a run through of how I made the cut out shape (super easy) for you to play along.

THE CHALLENGE THIS MONTH IS:

Use this technique in any way you like. Write long journaling (obviously not too meaningful as some of it will be cut out), use a favourite text by someone else, use random words, poetry, whatever you like. Use one font or many. Use one colour or many. If you want to go a really easy route use a wordcloud generator ( like Word it Out )with a text and use the output of the generator as the base for the cutout. Anything goes, as long as the writing is broken up by a cutout shape.

OK, so this is the tutorial on how I made my page last month:

First I write out my text in one typeface and then add all the words I want to write in other typefaces randomly on the page.

Then I cut the original words out and add the substitute words in their place, sometimes overlapping a bit, it doesn't matter, it should look a bit random.

I colour some of the words to make them stand out and add some random stamps like dotted lines, wavy lines etc.

As the harbour on my photo is front of a castle I decide to use a castle shape (sort of) and create the shape from rectangles and triangles and merge them into one.

In order to facilitate the cutting out of all those layers I group all type and stamp layers, copy the group (so I have a backup in case I don't like my result), make the original group invisible (either by clicking on the eye icon to the left of the layer in the layer palette or - if you don't have that option - by reducing the opacity or fill to 0%) and merge the group copy into one layer.

I make a selection of my shape and cut it out of the merged group layer (alternatively you can also use a layer mask). I then make the shape invisible.

I add various elements and my photo + frame. To make the writing a bit more random I add a tiny touch of the Wave filter.

Hm, I am not liking this too much as my castle shape is quite undefined. So, to make it more distinctive, I move away from my original plan and create an outline of my shape (>select the (invisible) shape and stroke the selection).

I decrease the size and make it a bit irregular, again with the Wave filter. Then I add a white color overlay and erase some parts of the white line with a layer mask and a dirty brush.

I add a shadow to the frame and the label.

My page lacks a little something so I add a tiny banner in glitter blue (fits the water theme of the story) and call it a day!

My final page

This is what the awesome Pink Ladies made with it (notice how they are all so different, this technique has lots of possibilities):

by marilyn

by rikki

 by michele

 by judy

 by karen

 by cindy

by marijke

Now it's your turn to rock this template! We can't wait to see what you create!

Make sure you use at least 75% of Pink Reptile Design products on your page. Once completed, just upload your page to one or all of your galleries and post a link to your layout in the comments section of this post before the next challenge goes live on March 15th.

ONE favorite page will be chosen as the winner to receive a 10 dollar coupon to the PRD store, but really everyone is a winner, as all other participants receive a 25% discount coupon to the Pink Reptile Designs TLP store. So all the more reason to join in on the fun, right?!

Wishing you tons of fun and Happy Scrappin'!