Neon is one of those fads that I'm happy to play with in small amounts, but not really ready to buy lots of specific products for. Some trends like washi tape tend to stick around (no pun intended!) for a long time, but I think that neon definitely has a much shorter lifespan!
I've already shared one DIY neon project with you in my mist-making post a few weeks ago, and when May Flaum asked if I'd like to join her in some neon + gray project fun, I decided to pull out those same cheap neon paints and try a little watercoloring with them, too! And it turns out that plastic ice cube trays are much more suited for mixing watercolors than the tiny little plastic palette that I tried to use last time!
I was inspired by a piece of neon artwork that I first spotted on Pinterest (original source here), and I started things off by covering three sheets of plain cardstock (the cheap kind from the office supply store) with yellow, orange, and pink neon watercolors.
Making the circles was easy- I just ran the papers through my Big Kick using Lawn Fawn's Stackables Circles dies and had a variety of sizes in all of the colors in just a few minutes.
I played with the arrangement of the circles (adding in a few more cut from vellum scraps to add more neutral tones) on a gray chevron background for a few minutes until I was happy with the look, then added my photo, title, and some strips of washi across the top and bottom.
I don't have lots of pre-made neon embellishments on hand (just a few items from my Heidi Swapp design team days), but it was very easy to make a few pieces using the Hero Arts Neon Inks that I do have to color some mistable camera shapes. The pink neon washi was something that I actually picked up about 4+ years ago at Anthropologie when they had some small packs of MT tape on clearance. I don't think I'd actually used this roll yet!
Since the layout was starting to feel pretty 80's already, I threw in some wood veneer diamonds, circles, and triangles to finish off the embellishment clusters. It doesn't get any more "Saved by the Bell" than that!
Many thanks to May for giving me the idea to try out the fab color combination of neon and gray. It's awesome to have scrappy friends to nudge you to try out a fad once or twice before it passes for good!