ARTastic 3T's in January ...

Welcome to our first round of ARTastic 3T's - Tips, Tricks and Techniques where each month one of our creative team will show you are few quick tips and/or techniques to use on your layouts.

I'm starting things off and showing you how I put together the background for my layout this month.  Santa was very kind this Christmas and brought me a couple of packets of Faber and Castell Gelato's which have been on my wish list for quite a while and I have been playing around with them trying a few different methods to create different looks on my pages.

For this layout I started off with a 12x12 Kaisercraft stencil.  I used some repositionable tape runner in a couple of spots on the back of the stencil to hold it in place on the white cardstock while I used the gelatos.

I started off using the blue down the left side - lightly running the stick into a few of the holes.  I then took my blending tool (you could also use a sponge or even a tissue) and in a circular motion blended the gelato.  Moving in a circle helps spread the crayon evenly and it does not then leave obvious lines. 

Once I was happy with the blue I moved onto using the purple and went over a few of the blue slots as well as continuing down and across the page and then blended this in the same way as I had done the blue.

I next used the pink, again covering a few of the purple slots but also extending the design further down the page and to the right.

My finished background.  TIP - it is easy to remove the stencil for a quick look at the result of each stage and then replace over the design to continue your work.