two peas nsd layout + background stamp tutorial

Part of the National Scrapbooking Day festivities at Two Peas over the weekend included new layouts every hour by the Garden Girls, and I was up for the 11am slot. I decided to go for another two-pager (I promise I am not converting completely to them- just having some fun with a size that feels new again!), and in honor of it also being Star Wars Day I pulled out lots of costume photos from Celebration VI last fall to scrap.

Supplies:

I'm making an entire album just for CVI, and while I love having photos of all the cosplay going on, I don't really know these people and am just as happy having all of their photos on one two-page spread instead of on lots of single photos layouts. Though when you look at the left side alone, if really looks like it could stand on its own in my album!

I used lots and lots of older supplies for this page, though since Two Peas is clearing out those older items at a pretty fast clip, I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be able to do that!

I was also asked to come up with a use for background stamps on my page, and with May's focus at Two Peas being on photos and sort of a photo-ish theme on my page already I decided to pull out a Hero Arts camera background stamp that I hadn't gotten around to using yet and have a little fun customizing my layout's background.

I tend to use background stamps like you might use the design of a misting mask- to add a bit of interest behind some layers, but not necessarily front and center on a layout. There's a whole little tutorial written up over in the gallery at Two Peas, but basically I start by inking up the middle of a background stamp while leaving the edges a bit rough.

Then I stamp on my page in the area under and also slightly outside of where my paper layers and photos will go. In this case I had already planned out my page and snapped a quick photo of it with my iPhone before making a few small pencil marks as guides and removing everything from the background sheet.

I usually stamp around a few times, and those messy areas of overlap in the middle are totally okay since they'll be covered with other elements, anyway.

And then I layer everything back up on top, and I'm left with just little bits of the design showing underneath it all.

I've been making a few more "geeky" layouts lately and have really enjoyed getting these photos into my albums! I've got another Celebration VI layout coming up soon with the Citrus Twist reveal, and Punk Projects is also hosting a Star Trek blog hop soon that I'll be participating in. It's awesome to have my two favorite pastimes collide!