*Today we are delighted to feature a great tutorial from our wonderful guest designer, Lisa Truesdell!

Sometimes, the journey is as much the story as the destination.  I had some photos from a walk that my family took to a local ice cream shop, and I really wanted to include them on a layout about the night.  I started playing around and came up with the idea of mapping out our walk.  Now, this map isn’t accurate by any means – the photos are out of order and we took a slightly more direct route. ;)  But it definitely conveys the idea that these were things we saw along the way.  This technique would be fun to use for a vacation overview, a favorite walking or running path that you frequent, or even for some of your most visited places in your town or neighborhood.  My path starts at a paper pieced house and ends at the page’s main photo, and has lots of bits and pieces to see along the way.

Here’s how to make your own map:

1.    Lightly draw out a grid on white cardstock.  I made my lines 2.5in apart, and started the grid 1 in from the edge of the cardstock.

2.    Stitch across all of the lines using white thread and erase your pencil lines.

3.    Sketch out your photo placement so that you can figure out what route your path should take.

4.    Mask off your path.  Masking tape was too wide for what I wanted, so I cut it in half.  I found that if I stuck it to the edge of my desk and ran my scissors along the edge, it was easy to get a quick, straight cut.

5.    Spray your mist over the page.  I started with green and then decided it wasn’t dark enough, so I switched to turquoise.

6.    Peel off the tape.

7.    Trim patterned paper to 2×2in and arrange in the grid.

8.    Make a house from a 1.5inx1.5in square and a scrap cut into a triangle.  Stamp the house with the home sweet home stamp.

9.    Add your photos (I printed my small ones at 2inx1.3in, the larger was 3×4.5in).
10.    Journal on strips of kraft cardstock and add to the empty squares.
11.    Use a border punch on some scraps of paper and add alongside the photos.
12.    Border punch 4 strips of paper and add to the edge of the page.

13.    Add ric rac and baker’s twine to some of the squares.  Tie baker’s twine through buttons and add to the trim.
14.    Add journaling block about the main photo.  Spell out “destination:” with stamps, and then add your title in chipboard.
15.    Stitch a border around the page, through the title and through each set of journaling strips.

THANK YOU LISA!!!!!!!

**& don’t forget our Christmas in June – A Color Gallery Challenge…if you would like to enter your project into the challenge, please be sure it is linked up to that challenge post by July 5th, 9pm PST**

happy wednesday!!!

xoxo

gi

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 9:00 am by gigi and is filed under guest designer, tutorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.