What's Black & White and Read All Over?

I'm having a bit less time lately to enter challenges, but when I read the current challenge at The Creative Type I was so inspired that I simply had to do something about it! Their challenge is so create something using newspaper. That's it, no other criteria. Can be anything you like. I loved this challenge because I really enjoy incorporating recycled products (or upcycled really) into my projects. After all, isn't scrapping really supposed to be about using 'scraps'? At least, that's what my husband keeps telling me when I suggest that I need to buy more products!

So here's my entry:



Creating the background paper for this out of newspaper was a bit more of a time consuming job than I first planned. It might look at first glance like I've simply slapped some strips of newspaper down, but what I was actually going for was a herringbone appearance. So I only used pieces of newspaper with full text (ie. no pictures or column breaks etc), cut them on the diagonal and then glued them down changing the direction of the text each time.

I've also covered my chipboard alphas with newspaper (a lot quicker job!) before painting and glazing them. I used some home made glimmer mist over home made masks (see, lots of 'scraps' being used!) to complete the background.

I really wanted the embellishments to have a tonne of colour to balance the black and white background so I've painted my "Oodles of Doodles" by Leeann Pearce with bright acrylic paint and glazed them. I applied them with foam dots for extra dimension. And added some felt, stitching it on with bright orange cotton for some extra texture.



Pretty happy really with how this turned out. Oh, and I purposely used a photo of No.1 girl that was oversaturated (I did this in Photoshop) to add an extra punch of colour too.

PS. You can download your own "doodles" by Leeann Pearce from her blog and customise them to suit your own layout. And you'll get a bunch of inspiration for how to use them too. Do it!