Happy New Year my friends! A New Year is always a clean slate. Many use it to mark the beginning of new endeavors or a reset for other endeavors. Since it is a New Year, we are going to start the Mixed Media Challenges off with a different approach.
Here's an overview of the NEW approach to the 2024 Mixed Media Challenges:
Each month through 2024 a broad theme will be provided for the challenge and you can interpret these themes as literally or as loosely and abstractly as you wish.
Please feel inspired and relaxed to experiment and personalize these challenges this year to your advantage. Our goal for 2024 is for you to get pages scrapped, use your stash of digital art, and if you’d like, and have time, practice some fun techniques to build confidence in your mixed media scrapbooking.
If you’d like to learn something specific please inbox Rachel with your suggestion.
For January 2024, we will be checking in with ourselves and our challenge will be themed around creating an 'emotional weather report'. This is an opportunity for you to focus on yourself and how you are feeling and create a scrapbook page that represents your emotional "weather" at this time or one you have felt recently.
As noted above, this is a casual challenge and you can interpret these themes as literally or as loosely and abstractly as you wish and put your own spin on it.
If you need a helping hand and some suggestions to spark an idea or tackle this months challenge here are some prompts:
Tips/Technique/Tutorial:
With each challenge, a tip/technique/tutorial will be included. There is no pressure to incorporate the tip/technique/tutorial into your challenge page, the choice is entirely yours.
For this layout, I created a custom background paper. I wanted to use a collage paper with the keyhole as both papers offered a symbolism to my "current weather report. The collage paper to represent chaos and the keyhole to represent new things behind the "door".
I used these 2 papers (from In a Land Far Away Collection) x2 to create my look and I'm going to show you how I did that:
I started my background mash up with this paper:
I wanted the collage portion to be more to the right of my layout so I went ahead and placed it where I wanted it. Which as you can see, that created an area that is not covered on my canvas.
I did a partial fix to this "uncovered" area by duplicating that background paper, layering it under my first layer and covering the top of my canvas so that it now looked like this:
I added my second paper to my canvas.
I actually pulled this paper to the left quite as I wanted the keyhole design to NOT interfere with the collage portion of my background.
As you can see, this paper now obscures part of the collage design. To fix this, I applied a blend mode, specifically, the "darker color" blend mode. I use PSCC so I can get to blend modes by right clicking on my layer.
Or if you are like me, I keep my "layer" tab open in PSCC and I just select my layer and select the "blend mode" of choice from the drop down list.
After I apply the blend mode "darker color" my background now looks like this:
If you notice, the collage portion of our first paper now shows. But if you notice, there is a strip on the left that is a little lighter than the rest of the background. To fix this, I duplicated my original background and layered it under the keyhole paper and drug it all the way over the left until the edge of that paper aligned with this "Line" on the keyhole paper.
Here's what the background now looks like once we add that original paper in and move it to the left to fill in the "area" that is lighter.
Here's my layout:
My layout is representing the mess that my life has been with a challenging house build and move, BUT there are brighter days ahead as we are actually now moved in (still getting everything in it's proper place, but the big stuff is done). I'm getting to see "my dreams come true!"
Example(s) from the Team:
from @Annsofie
Challenge Requirements:
If you have any questions just tag me and I will get back to you as soon as I can. As always, I look forward to your creations!
Here's an overview of the NEW approach to the 2024 Mixed Media Challenges:
Each month through 2024 a broad theme will be provided for the challenge and you can interpret these themes as literally or as loosely and abstractly as you wish.
Please feel inspired and relaxed to experiment and personalize these challenges this year to your advantage. Our goal for 2024 is for you to get pages scrapped, use your stash of digital art, and if you’d like, and have time, practice some fun techniques to build confidence in your mixed media scrapbooking.
If you’d like to learn something specific please inbox Rachel with your suggestion.
For January 2024, we will be checking in with ourselves and our challenge will be themed around creating an 'emotional weather report'. This is an opportunity for you to focus on yourself and how you are feeling and create a scrapbook page that represents your emotional "weather" at this time or one you have felt recently.
As noted above, this is a casual challenge and you can interpret these themes as literally or as loosely and abstractly as you wish and put your own spin on it.
If you need a helping hand and some suggestions to spark an idea or tackle this months challenge here are some prompts:
- Use colors associated with the type of weather that best depicts your mood
- You could use the general season or climate of your part of the world that you are in to help portray and symbolize your mood
- You could visualize your emotional weather by using the earths elements, earth, air, fire and water
- The earths elements could represent a different aspect of your emotions. For example, earth could symbolize stability, air for lightness, fire for passion, and water for depth.
- What visualizes your mood: stormy and rainy themes? Blue skies ahead? Joyous and Sunshiny? Messy, Mucky and Muddy?
- If you have a storm brewing you could create a Mixed Media Storm using torn paper, splatters, and various textures to represent emotional turbulence.
- Symbols like clouds, sunbursts, or raindrops to convey different emotional states.
- You could theme your page around 'Forecast for the Day' or if you like to do weekly roundups or pocket pages you could do a 'Weekly Outlook' weather report to help document happenings and emotions for a specific week.
- You don't have to use lots of themed elements on your page if you don't want to, your design composition and colors alone could work really well for this challenge. A Messy Mixed Media page with bolder or darker colors and strong use of textures could portray a storm brewing or emotional struggles whereas use of white space, lighter colors and other clever choices could portray calm and blue skies ahead.
Tips/Technique/Tutorial:
With each challenge, a tip/technique/tutorial will be included. There is no pressure to incorporate the tip/technique/tutorial into your challenge page, the choice is entirely yours.
For this layout, I created a custom background paper. I wanted to use a collage paper with the keyhole as both papers offered a symbolism to my "current weather report. The collage paper to represent chaos and the keyhole to represent new things behind the "door".
I used these 2 papers (from In a Land Far Away Collection) x2 to create my look and I'm going to show you how I did that:
I started my background mash up with this paper:
I wanted the collage portion to be more to the right of my layout so I went ahead and placed it where I wanted it. Which as you can see, that created an area that is not covered on my canvas.
I did a partial fix to this "uncovered" area by duplicating that background paper, layering it under my first layer and covering the top of my canvas so that it now looked like this:
I added my second paper to my canvas.
I actually pulled this paper to the left quite as I wanted the keyhole design to NOT interfere with the collage portion of my background.
As you can see, this paper now obscures part of the collage design. To fix this, I applied a blend mode, specifically, the "darker color" blend mode. I use PSCC so I can get to blend modes by right clicking on my layer.
Or if you are like me, I keep my "layer" tab open in PSCC and I just select my layer and select the "blend mode" of choice from the drop down list.
After I apply the blend mode "darker color" my background now looks like this:
If you notice, the collage portion of our first paper now shows. But if you notice, there is a strip on the left that is a little lighter than the rest of the background. To fix this, I duplicated my original background and layered it under the keyhole paper and drug it all the way over the left until the edge of that paper aligned with this "Line" on the keyhole paper.
Here's what the background now looks like once we add that original paper in and move it to the left to fill in the "area" that is lighter.
Here's my layout:
My layout is representing the mess that my life has been with a challenging house build and move, BUT there are brighter days ahead as we are actually now moved in (still getting everything in it's proper place, but the big stuff is done). I'm getting to see "my dreams come true!"
Example(s) from the Team:
from @Annsofie
Challenge Requirements:
- Create a new page around creating an 'emotional weather report'
- Use at least 75% of Rachel's Product currently available in her Oscraps shop.
- Any remaining percentage must be product from another current Oscraps designer. This could also include retired products from Rachel or the other current Oscraps designer.
- Hybrid projects are also welcome and the same product rules apply. Where digital products are used in a hybrid project they must all come from current Oscraps designers, and at least 75% must be Rachel's Product.
- Upload your layout to the Rachel Jefferies Designs Gallery at Oscraps with your product credits.
- For your challenge entry to be counted, you MUST upload your finished layout to this thread. Please link your gallery image to your post in this thread, as it helps us leave love on your layout (and validate your project).
- No double-dipping… your layout must be created for this challenge only, no others.
- You must create a NEW layout for this challenge.
- This challenge will remain open for the monthly coupons through January 31, 2024
- All participants who post their page during the challenge month by the end of month deadline and meet the criteria will be eligible for a coupon of 15% off their next order (from Rachel's shop) of $10 or more.
- ONE lucky random winner who posts their page during the challenge month by the end of month deadline and meets the criteria will receive a $8.00 coupon for Rachel's Shop here at Oscraps!
- By completing ALL twelve of Rachel's Mixed Media Challenges at Oscraps in 2024, this will give you the chance to win a $25 coupon to her shop!
- In order to be eligible for $25 Coupon to Rachel's shop you will need to do the following:
- Complete ALL twelve of Rachel's Mixed Media Challenges at Oscraps in 2024 by December 31, 2024 by 1159 PM PDT.
- Post the challenge layout in the appropriate challenge month thread in Rachel Jefferies Challenge Threads (for example: January Challenge layout must be posted in the January Challenge thread that is linked back to the gallery--even if you complete it in November, it still must be posted in the January Thread).
- Complete your tracker thread with a link to each layout by December 31, 2024 by 1159 PM PDT.
- In order to be eligible for $25 Coupon to Rachel's shop you will need to do the following:
If you have any questions just tag me and I will get back to you as soon as I can. As always, I look forward to your creations!
