Extending the background with Mandy Dodd

My first guest of 2011 is the talented Mandy Dodd of Teacup of Scrapisms. I got to know Mandy through Scrapping The Music and I love her shabby chic style, particularly how she infuses vibrant colours and incredible textures on her projects. She is also the co-founder of the awesome challenge blog Let's Get Shabby. Today, she is sharing a tutorial on how to extend past the photo to create a scene! And there's a challenge with a RAK to be won too! :)

But first, let's have a look at Mandy's stunning gallery...

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Hi, my name is Mandy  (also known as mandysea) and I live in Australia on an island called Tasmania.  I live in a big old house that over looks the sea and pretty much the sea is our way of life here.  I’m inspired by and love nature, and animals and use green and blue a lot in my scrapping.  I spend a lot of time capturing birds and lizards and wildlife with my camera.

My scrapping style is Shabbychic and I love playing with the arty side with it in paints, gesso, tissue paper, and all the lacy bits plus the layering and texture that goes with it.  I love to feel these things in my hands and most of all – I love to see the shadow its casts.

If I had some things that are undeniably me – it would be that I love to match the background of my photo to my background paper…. and extend the photo into the scrapping area, rarely use pattern paper, and usually draw a border around my papers edge and fold it to suggest a frame.  These are not always, but mostly, and I fall not conscious of these habits creating work..… they just kind of evolve as I go along.

My favourite paper to use is Basic Grey background papers – usually they are the plain reverse sides. I’ll pick them up wherever I see them – especially if they are older discontinued lines.

 

  And my fav place to shop are a couple of etsys for my embellishments – Tallulah Belles

  and Tattered Inspirations.

Extending the Background tutorial 

 

STEP 1

Choose a photo that has either horizons or Vertical lines in it that can be extended.

By placing some pointers – you can easily see where the lines in this photo are.

 

STEP 2

Here some tissue paper has been sprayed the same colour as the steps and creased in a way that its been moulded where the dark lines extend outwards on each side of the photo.  At this stage both the tissue and the photo is only just sitting on top as a gauge just to see how its working out.

 

 

STEP 3

Smearing some paint with my finger into an almost transparent film picks up the next set of horizon lines – a pinky cement colour.

STEP 4

Here I wanted to pick up the darker colour of the grass in the top part of the photo – the dark green right on the edge of the pic.  So I measured where the photo was and placed a scrap piece of paper there and sprayed.

 

STEP 5

Embellished and finished.   There are a couple of extra things I did to extend the background more.   I’ve made the brown columns behind Paige in the photo extend upwards more and decorated them a bit – to suggest where she was sitting did have a roof.   And I’ve used green crocheted lace to wrap from underneath the photo  and curved it up the side to suggest the circular shape of the podium she was  sitting on.

  

Now it’s your turn to have  a go creating your own extended scene!

I have a rak here to give away!!

 

I can't wait to see what you can do with this!

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What a fabulous tutorial! And a great way to create a picture perfect project! :) Are you ready to play along? It would be cool to see how you interpret this challenge. You can create any project as long as it includes a photo. Please  link up your creations using InLinkz located at the end of this post by Friday Jan 28 Jan.

As always, please leave a little love for my guest Mandy! :)