Sunday Challenge

Amanda's challenge will bring a smile to your face if nothing else!! Ready??

"Right people, no cheating with this one!

Step 1: First of all, go and pick the 2 ugliest, most mismatched papers in your collection, that you honestly can't ever see yourself using. Take a photo of them.
Step 2: Yes, you saw this coming, didn't you?! Make a page using those papers. You can add any other embellishments you like, but those 2 papers must play a prominent role in your design! Take a photo of it.
Step 3: Upload your layout AND your horrendous papers 'before' photo.

The papers must be obviously ugly to begin with - no choosing something you secretly like! Good luck!"

Amanda:
OK, nothing personal Basic Grey or Pink Paislee, (I *heart* you, really) but are these papers supposed to be use-able? I don't hate them, but the number of times I've skipped past them in my stash is countless. They had to go!

I have a big pile of photos in my scrap space that I've printed and not used as I can't find the 'right' paper. What better time to use one of them? This is the resulting page:

I decided to just go for it and let the patterns speak for themselves ;) - I actually quite like how it turned out. Just goes to show that sometimes you need a challenge to kick start those creative juices!

Andrea:

So I found my ugliest papers . . . I think . . . I don't even remember where I got these?! I think I recieved them in a pack of goodies from a crop or something like that! The orange is BRIGHT and ridiculous . . . sorry if you are a giant fan of orange!! The other paper is just so busy and the complete opposite of the orange. I just couldn't resist using them together! I misted the paisley print paper with a sapphire blue glimmer mist to create clouds. The bright orange I used as the title background and for butterflies. My inspiration came from an article in the latest Vanity Fair magazine! Can't wait to see your beautiful creations with your ugly papers!

Anna:

These were the horrible papers! I found quite a few dull and boring papers! I was dreading doing this challenge but once I got into it I enjoyed making something nice out of horrible!

I cut out the swirls from the first paper and punched flowers for the second paper. I didn't like the colour of one of the papers so i rubbed a different colour ink over it to make it blend in a bit more!

Fabi:

Here the details

To me this was the most challenging layout to do since Ive joined the Studio. Come one? uggly papers? No way Amanda lol. The other challenge is that all my stach is in Brazil...and Im in US, buying like crazy lol. So Ive went to a store and looked for 2 papers that doesnt look like me,colors, styles, etc...It took me one full week staring them to come up with something! Now we wanna see what you'd come up with!!!

Lisa:
So, ugly papers.
I had a look through all my old papers and found these. I do love Crate but just not these. I don't really like the colours and they just are far too busy for my liking.

But I created this that I'm actually really pleased with. Just goes to show eh?!!

Nic:
So, I sorted through my stash and found two very old 'ugly' papers, one's which I bought in a sale and have never used as upon reflection, they were not really to my taste and bought because they were in a sale - know what I mean? I've tried to be true to the challenge and pick two papers which I consider to be mismatched, even if it it made me grimace a lot whilst doing so lol! Here they are:

and this is the LO I created with them:

I wanted to create a LO which could store some precious letters received many years ago from my Grandad and created a pocket from a plastic page insert for this purpose. I recently saw a LO in scrapbook inspirations magazine by Piradee Talvanna, which had a gorgeous heart embellishment made from blooms. This inspired me to use the flowers which I hand cut from my 'ugly' papers to create the heart for this LO. I cut and layered the circles from my other paper around my pocket to finish.

Rebekah:
I was sent this Dr Seuss paper by mistake when I placed an order and the seller told me to keep it. I never thought I'd use it. And when I was in America about 5 years ago I bought the geometric paper in multi colour. It's awful; what was I thinking???!!! I punched the butterflies out of the geometric paper and made flowers from them too. I decided to use the Dr Seuss paper because Connor is really really in to rhyming at the moment. There's a rhyme in practically every sentence he says. He even greeted my neightbour with 'Morning Fred, red, bread'. LOL.

Sue:
And the layout itself :)

Tessa:

I'm going to be diplomatic and say that I don't believe that "ugly" paper exists, only papers that may not work for my style, mood, or project. I've been hiding this paper for years in the bottom of a drawer. I knew that I really liked the flocking on the blue paper and the foil on the yellow-green paper, just not the design. My solution? To use small portions of the paper for the effect of the textures without the dragon imagery.

We are really looking forward to seeing that you get up to as a result of this challenge so please add a link to your layout by 4th September 2010 to be in with a chance of winning this months prize. Don't forget to show us the paper you start off with too!

Valerie:
The challenge this week did just that, challenge me! Luckily, I just had a class where we learned to alter paper with paint and ink. It was an art journaling class but I used the techniques I learned to make a few necessary changes to on of my 'uglies' - so here's what I started with:

Forgive me American Crafts, forgive me Elsie, but wow, these were ugly. I figured I could work with the dots but the leafy paper wasn't going to work with the photos I had. I started by adding some red to the leaves to tie into the pops of red in the photos. Then I painted some black scallops to use as a border, then stamped onto the leaf paper with black archival ink & a flower stamp to make some embellishments. Here's my end result:

Here's a detail of one of the flowers:

Supplies: cardstock, chipboard letters: Stampin Up; patterned paper: KI Memories (dots), American Crafts (leaves); paint: Liquitex; stamp: Close To My Heart; ink: Tsukineko; letter stickers: Basic Grey, Sassafras Lass; journal spot: Autumn Leaves.