Hosting a Challenge for Victoria Marie's 2017 Virtual Crop

As I've mentioned before,  I'm hosting one of 12 challenges for the Victoria Marie Virtual Crop/Retreat.  These challenges make up the virtual crop portion of the weekend.  The crop will run concurrently with the actual retreat!  Victoria made the elegant graphic below to promote the event.

Victoria is posting snippets from the retreat and it looks like so much fun!

Anyway this is what my challenge is called:

"Your Crafty Name Recipe Challenge Recipe"

You know those name generator “tests” that come up in your social media feed?  The ones where you are asked to use the first letter of your first name and the last letter of your last name or birth month or whatever and you get a new themed named?

Well instead of finding out that you should have been named “Princess Pop Dot” or “Pasty Scissor Face”, your actual name will determine which products you MUST use in your project.  

I’ve listed as many techniques, products, themes or other ideas for each letter of the alphabet, but you only need to pick ONE for each time that letter appears.  The colour suggestions for example don’t all need to be used together (unless you have multiples of the same letter and you really want to!!)

So…in order to see what your name gives you, you need to:
Use the FIRST THREE letters of your first name
 Use the LAST THREE letters of your last name
You can also use your MIDDLE INITIAL for bonus points!

Prompts

A – acrylic paint, acetate, autumn, apples, aqua, angles, ampersand, ampersat motif

B – border strips, buttons, brads, balloon, baby, butterfly or bird motif/photo/story, brown, black, beige, blue, blocks of paper, beach photos/story, bright colours, bunting/banners

C – cardstock, chipboard, chalk or chalk ink, circles, clouds, cat or camera motifs, chevron, cerulean, copper, cars or children photo/story, clips

D – die cut shapes, doilies, date stamp, dimensional embellishment, diagonal lines, dog motif, double page

E – embossing folder, enamel dots/shapes, ephemera, emotional or exciting photo/story

F – flowers, fabric or felt, flair badges, flat alphas, frames, floral motif, fuchsia, fall, family, funny, fussy cutting

G – Gadgets (e.g. Big Shot Silhouette, Minc etc.), Gelatos, glitter, green, gold, grey, glasses, globe/map motif, graduation, growing up/old photo or story, grid layout

H – hand-made embellishment, heat embossing, handwrite your journaling, hidden journaling, hearts, hilarious, house or happy photo/story

I – ink (any sort), Instax print, image stamps, ice cream, informal layout, imaginative or inspiring photo/story, indigo, ivory, illness story

J – journaling card (e.g. Project Life), journaling stamp, joyful or journey story, jade,

K – Kraft cardstock/embellishment, khaki, kisses, kindergarten or kid photos/stories.

L – label stickers/die cuts, lace, lavender, lilac, lemon, lime, leaves, layering, long title, large photo, love story, ledger paper

M – memorabilia, mist, metal trinkets/embellishment, mixed media techniques, magenta, mint, modern

N – new (for you) supplies, neutral colours, nautical, newspaper motif (pattern paper or stamp etc.) navy,

O – old (for you) supplies, ovals, office motifs, orange, olive green, ombre

P – patterned paper, punch, puffy stickers, pearls, polaroid photo or frame, paste (texture, embossing, modelling etc.), polka dots, pastel, pink, purple, pets, pastel colours

Q –  quilt pattern or motif (or photo or story), quote in title or journaling, question mark motif or question for a title

R – ribbon, red, rainbow motif, rain or romantic story, royal blue, rose (colour or motif/pattern), resin flowers/shapes (cabochons), retro, rub-ons

S – stickers, stamps, stitching (hand or machine), six-by-six pad, sequins, stripes, stars, snow, spring, summer, scraps, specialty paper, scarlet, silver, school or sports photos/story, sketch or scraplift, square photo, selfie

T – twine, typewriter motif or for journaling, template/stencil, torn edges, triangles, Thickers/dimensional alphas, tangerine, turquoise, teal, travel photos or story

U – upcycle something (e.g. packaging), umbrella or unicorn motif, ultramarine, ugly paper or story relating to something ugly

V – vellum, vintage, vermillion, vanilla, violet, view master motif, vacation photo/story

W – washi, wood veneer, word stickers, watercolour, winter, wedding, work, woodgrain, white

X – X-Acto knife, x-ray/broken bone story, xoxo or +++ pattern/motif

Y – yellow, “yummy” (cupcakes, coffee, chocolate etc.), yucky/gross story

Z – ZZZ (sleepy), zoo, zebra/animal print, zoom/macro photo

Now let me give an example using my name and how it came together in my layout. 

My first name is Alexandra so my letters are A, L, E

Last name is Trofimov, so then I get M, O, V

My middle initial is S

A - aqua (ink, paper and embellishments0

L - leaves (aqua and navy paper)

E - enamel shapes (aqua, blue and navy small shapes from "Glitter Girl" collection and large enamel shapes from "Zoe" collection by Love, Elsie)

S - sketch (By Laura Whitaker)

M - mixed media techniques (gesso, ink "splodging" and ink drops, fabric "paper")

O – “old” (for you – mid 2000s in my case - Love, Elsie fabric "paper"and enamel shapes)

V – view master (black shapes cut out from patterned paper by Echo Park)

Here's the sketch I used (By Laura Whitaker who runs the Stuck?! Sketches challenge blog)

...and here's how my layout turned out:

I decided to start scrapbooking my class with Ryan Reaveley.  Naturally I loathe how I look in photos,  Stupid steroids make my look like a chipmunk. 🐹  The punny title is practically essential given I live with two boys who come up with them at every possible moment!

Watch the video for the chaotic process:

I had the camera battery running down at the end and I did a booboo!  Do you see what I forgot?  It's not the extra aqua pieces near the top (I felt it needed more aqua in that pink area).

Yeah it's my letter "V". Oops! 😳 I had my vellum leaves ready, but didn't think they were the best fit.  The view masters were better, but the battery on the camera was running down so it was a fairly abrupt ending with a funny feeling something was missing.

Am I happy with how it turned out?  Well I don't hate it, but it definitely didn't turn out quite how I hoped.  I think the pattern choices for the strips were not the best.  I imagined more of that lovely black floral would show, but this is the first of several layouts and I definitely plan to repeat the patterns and include messy, painty mixed media goodness which is what Dyan is all about.

I don't use it on layouts as often as I'd like (more on cards probably) so this series will be a good way to bring more of it into my album.

I also don't want to deviate from using lots of pretty paper which is true to my style so I need to keep that in mind and try to marry the two styles together.  I love it when it works out!

There are some seemingly random embellishments on the layout.  I think I mentioned on the video why I included them like the globe with the map of Australia - OK that one is pretty obvious since Dyan was travelling to Australia to teach. 

The double decker buses from Shimelle's first collection are very cute, but for someone who loves in Australia and tries to avoid public transport where possible, it makes them hard to use!  Dyan doesn't live in London itself (she's actually not far from my frond Joy!) but it's a close enough association of me to use it and it's red.

The colours I chose were also very relevant.  I wanted to save red )for Dyan's hair) for the embellishments.  I got the impression from what she was saying that she likes pink too.  I used pink paint where possible and hope to use some of my work from the class in my layouts.

I'm hoping to be able to play along with some of the other challenges this week and maybe ad to my Dyan story so please keep checking back (and maybe the video will even be ready!)

Many thanks to Victoria for the opportunity and all the hard work she has put onto making the even possible and including those who were not able to physically attend the retreat,

You can find Victoria:
Victoria Marie Blog
YouTube Channel
Facebook Page
Facebook Group