Riding the fun times - and two ideas to share

Did the September schools hols just fly by in the blink of an eye? All too soon it is back to school again.  The little one and I did manage to catch some fun times in a little corner of Singapore where, to her delight and mine, she could sit on vintage carousel horses and I feast my eyes on these nostalgic eye-candy:

Here's the layout that I did to capture that idyllic afternoon.  There are two specific ideas that I want to highlight and I hope they will inspire you to look at scrapbooking tools and products in new way.

First, a twist on a favourite product - the washi tape. I got my inspiration for the background from the many pictures and products (if you're on Pinterest or something similar, you would have seen lots too) of anything OMBRE. My take on it is using washi tapes in varying shades of turquoise, four different patterns in fact, and laying them horizontally from dark to light tones.

Then pulling the colours from the carousel horses, I used a sheet of Prima Zephyr 6x6 paper and cut the oval out so that it forms a frame for my photo. To add some sparkle across the page, I glued down rhinestones in varying sizes randomly.  There really is no rule to the placement - I literally scattered the rhinestones from above the paper and glued them down exactly where they happened to land.

Now let me share a technique that might motivate you to use your embossing folders in new ways.  The oval mat which I coloured in Glimmer Glam Tide Pool and Organic Garden is actually embossed with TWO different embossing folders - Sizzix Elegant Wreath (657086) and Flower Clusters (657255). You just need the very innovative Embossing Diffuser (I used Oval #1 in 657945).

If you are choosing folders to use, it helps if one is more "open" if the other is relatively "busy" as, in my case, the "busy" pattern of Flower Clusters is superimposed on the "open" area of the Elegant Wreath.

But really, any two embossing folders will do. Here I paired the same Flower Clusters with Rays (656650).

The picture below shows the placement of the oval plates on each embossing folder before you run the cardstock and embossing folders through the machine.

I hope you have a chance to try this technique. Do share your creations in the MWL gallery! Have a great week!