Challenge # 177 Clowning Around!

Did you know that today is the first day of International Clown Week?

Using this picture as inspiration,



my challenge for you is to create a layout using:
* 8 buttons
* 1 flower
* 11 different patterned papers
* one red circle (for the clown's nose)
* Mist or paint

Hope you have fun with this challenge!

We are thrilled to have Tracee Provis as our August guest designer!

Here's a little about Tracee, in her own words: My Name is Tracee and I live in Bristol UK with my DH my 2 youngest children & our very spoiled Doodle doggies. I am also a Grandmum to a beautiful 7 year old (perfect for scrapping) little girl called Star.

I have always crafted in one form or another since I was a small child from stuffed toys to knitted scarves. I was introduced to scrapping in 2004 & I have never looked back with each layout bringing more love for this hobby along with a whole group of friends who share the same love.

My family & dogs are the main focus of my work, I just love how you can turn a memory, that might otherwise be forgotten in time, into something very special indeed.

With an ever changing world scrapping remains my Safe Haven & most days you will find me at some point in my craft room.

And here is what Tracee created for this challenge:

Tracee: I always scrap when we go away in the Uk and I created the background in stripes,to represent the clowns top, using all strips from the papers I had used on my layouts on one of our holidays, plus a picture of us in our favourite spot on that holiday.I just dotted the buttons around in a random fashion like juggling balls in the air. The big bold black title reminded me of the great big shoes the clown in the picture is wearing.I added the flower and the red circle down at the bottom in a cluster with some of the buttons. I whitewashed over the strips and although you cant see it clearly in this picture i did splash some white paint onto the white background and also added some liquid pearls dotted about. Although this layout hasnt got a clowning around theme I always remember the fun we had in our time spent at Challabourough Bay in the UK. While at first this seemed like a daunting challenge once I started it all started to come together quite nicely.

Here's our DT inspirational layouts:

Debbie F - Well, this proved to be a fun challenge for me! The clown inspired my color choices, the youthful theme, as well as a variety of patterns and shapes like dots, stripes, and circles. I chose to make a 2 page layout to incorporate all the challenge requirements. The hardest one for me to meet was the flower. I used a Details dimensional American Crafts sticker. (It had a pink flower layer on it too, which I pulled off.) The layout is of my son a few years ago at a Cub Scout Rocket Launch event. I punched circles of several patterned papers to make my "planets" and fussy cut the stars from another piece. My paint was a Jenni Bowlin dauber on some old Fancy Pants plain chipboard letters. I used a mix of sheer and sparkly buttons. It's a busy layout, but I think it's so fun!



Janet M- Loved this fun challege with all the great colors and ideas for it. I decided to do a picture of my husband . We have a saying in the family about never letting your head get to big. If you think it is put a bucket over it and make sure your heads not to big for it. I thought it was the perfect gift to give Bob after the college honored him all week with him getting his Doctor of Laws degree, honoris causa. He loved the gift and even took it with him when they had the reception for him and used it in his speech.
The jounaling is: So it's really true the bucket does fit. We have a saying in the family about never letting your head get to big. If you think it is put a bucket over it and make sure your heads not to big for it. I thought it was the perfect gift to give Bob after the college honored him all week with getting his Doctor of Laws degree, honoris causa. He loved the gift and even took it with him when they had the reception for him and used it in his speech.
Fi - This was a little daunting when I first read the requirements, especially when I saw the picture of the clown. It got me thinking about fun and I remembered that I had a picture of my Nephew and Brother. They had spent a fun day at the fair which I am sure their would have been a clown lurking around some where. Now I say lurking because there is quite a few people that are quite frightened of them, however I'm not.

I represented the red circle by stitching one around the doily and I have machine stitched lines down my page and stitched the buttons in between, representing the clown heads at the fair that you drop the balls down. I also stitched some scrappy muslin to the side to represent the clowns fluffy hair poking out from his hat. I cut 8 patterned papers into strips then punched decorative edges on each before I layered them together. My background, doily and die cut piece make up the remaining 11. I have 1 flower and I used gesso over muslin, flower and buttons.

Hope this has inspired you this week and if you would like to read please pop over to my blog and check out more details:



Debbi Tehrani - When I saw this challenge, I knew I wanted to make a page for my Book of Silly (an aptly named album that contains silly family photos). As I was going through pictures to scrap, I came across this photo of my nephew with his hair dyed red for school spirit week.

I was having a very time-crunched week, so I combined my HMITM page with my page for CCG, and as it turned out, the colors were perfect to go with this picture. If look close, you can see all the buttons and the 11 papers. The flower was a stretch because I didn't want my page looking girly at all, so I dug through my stash and came up with a flower-shaped brad. This was such a fun challenge, Debbie!

Elizabeth: This was such a fun challenge Debbie! I was certainly inspired by the red colour and also the stripes and polka dots. I finally tried masking with the letters in my title and I LOVE how it turned out! Don't know why it took me so long to try a new technique, maybe because I am scared of using things that make my work space 'messy', like paint and mist. I added stars to my mix of embellishments to emphasis the subject matter of my layout. I like how it looks a little 'chaotic', like a wipe out. Hope you will play along with this challenge!







To play and have a chance at being chosen for our How Awesome is Too Awesome Hall of Fame and becoming a HMITM guest designer, please share your layout via Mr.Linky below. We can't wait to see what you create!