Friday 13 May 2016

"Together" by Melissa Struhs

Morning everyone! I have been recently working on lots of collage pages, where I am blending together one-off photo's that I have been digging out of my bottom drawer in the scraproom. Traditionally, I am a double page layout girl, but I have sttarted to embrace the art of the single. And I am loving it!!!


This layout started a little differently, than it finished. (So if the photo's don't always look the same, it was because I changed my mind about the background paper and moved across to the charcoal colour you see above).


I wanted to slightly lighten a "Dusty Charcoal" paste and used a heavy white gesso to create a softer look, and added a spritz of water


before mixing well with a palette knife


and then painted and dabbed it over a chipboard flourish/scroll.


The "Dusty Charcoal" paste was smeared over a circular lattice stencil,


(at this stage, I was still working on a light grey background and had this pattern across a diagonal corner)


"Just Blue" Paste was such a stark contrast to the previous colour,


but I love the effect it created with a splatter stencil. This is where I changed my mind about the background and swapped it to a much darker colour. And then added a bold flick of "Steel" shimmer spray over both of the previous colours stencilled.


My placement of the 6 x 6 circular lattice stencil this time was placed in the centre of the background to create a block and the splatters were in roughly the same place. (A girl can change her mind, usually I just keep going and throw caution to the wind, but sometimes you just know it could be better)


Before I knew it the layers continued, and a script stencil with the gesso was added too. This added a crisp element and created some added interest for the embellishments to overlap.


My chipboard "Together" title was double coated in "Just Blue" embossing powder, this colour is divine and the bold mica finish is purely an electric blue colouring.....( I even did some tiny little wood veneer hearts with the same colouring)


Here's some close up's of how the embellishments all came together, the chipboard flourishes were trimmed and tucked under the edge of the raised photo mats on a diagonal angle. I pulled together a little floral element with flowers, leaves, stamens and metal embellishments in a neutral palette and layered it all together.


I hope you find a little inspiration to experiment with colour combinations, with 18 colours to choose from, there's plenty to work with. Check out the entire range at


Have a fabulous weekend.



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