Scrap Our Stash Border Challenge: Take Off Your Guard!

  Recently , I participated in Big Picture Scrapbooking's Big Idea Festival. I loved a lot of the projects, however, many of the supplies are just not available to me where I live. So what's a girl to do? Adapt, that's what. Make the design your own. so that's just what I did. I loved the look of Lisa day's bonus project and set out to use it with a series of photos about Junk-a-noo. What is Junk-a-noo you ask? It's a Bahamian tradition...sort of like Mardi gras or Carnivale. It occurs every year around July 10th (Bahamian Independence day) and around Christmas. Unfortunately, we have never been. It occurs in the middle of the night and literally runs past dawn. While we have never attended, we do see many of the costumes and float decorations around the island. I snapped some photos of my son with those decorations and decided they would make a fun page. I took inspiration from the bold colors of junk-a-noo and from the costumes. I chose the pinks and yellow oranges to draw from the colors in the photos. The turquoise was a nice contrast. I chose the sequins and pearls b/c they reminded me of the all of the shiny glitz of the costumes. The gold paper strip and the glittery Pink Paislee Letters further added to the glitz.

  Lisa's design is pretty evident in mine. I varied it by splashing some tiger lily and patina glimmer mist onto the background cardstock. I used some Crate Paper chipboard elements from the pink plum collection. Pages like these are a great way to slip in some girl colors without making the page look to feminine. I used some fussy cut elements from SEI's jocelyn collection to make the rosette's/round flowers and the border strip on the bottom. I cut strips of PP to make the scalloped border for the rosettes/flowers.

If you are like me, you may not have a lot of border punches. I simply don't have the storage space or the budget for them. In fact, I own only 2: an ancient fiskar's punch and an EK success notebook punch. So how did I make the border scalloped? A while back I saw this tip in creating Keepsakes and decided to try it...I took the guard off of my corner rounder, and then used it to punch down a strip of paper...which created a scalloped border.

Once you have the border punched, you can easily make it fit around a circle. This will work with any punch or strip of paper and is especially handy for heavier papers that are difficult to fold and pleat. Cut small slits in even increments along the strip. In my case, I chose every 2 scallops. Just be careful not to cut too far into the strip, or it may rip.

I chose to use glue dots to adhere the strip to the flower that I had fussycut. As you adhere each section, you can carefully bend and then slide the next section under the other.

                                         

This effectively produces a rounded edge with the strip.

I really enjoy the fun look to this page with the rounded borders. This could easily be done with a straight strip of paper or with most border punch designs.

The borders along the sides of the photos are made with Pink paislee artisan tape. I simply folded it as Lisa had in her design and I hand Stitched over it .

For more inspiration, don't forget to check out Scrap Our Stash. This month's challenge focuses on border punches. Let's see how you use yours!