Make the Alphas Work for You

Alphas are one of my favourite products to play with - I see a good title with some great alphas more of an embellishment than just a name on a page, that finishing touch really. Especially when you can use the title to really hit home the memory!

Sometimes though, those alphas need a little extra something-something to make them work for a layout... in the June 2020 Kit, featuring SImple Stories - Great Escape collection, subscribers received these awesome mint coloured, foam Thickers. Such a fun colour that really draws out some of the more subtle green tones of the kit goodies and gives a definite pop of green to those green lovers out there. 

I love the mint but the colour was just not working for me on this particular layout, I felt I really needed a black alpha to bring it all together - so I introduced some black texture paste from my stash, any will do,  to make these great looking alphas work exactly how I needed them on my page. 

I simply used my little spatula tool to spread the texture past across each alpha, tapping the top after with the back of the spatula to make sure the medium dried with some texture. I wanted to get almost an old leather look and it didn't work out too bad. 

While the now black alphas dried, I created the rest of my page. I focused on the pattern paper that features the 2x2 cut-parts. I used half of the paper to pattern block the top half of my page then using some foam tape added a few more of just the cut-apart squares that I loved most as a second, popped-up layer on top of a few of the squares below. I then just went to town adding embellishments to those really, really draw the eye. 

The photo, with loads of layers behind, looked best in almost smack dab in the middle of the cut-apart fun, and I balanced it with a few fun items along the bottom of the page too. 

The background is a tire tread stencil that I had used in greens, reds, and yellows on another layout and what you see on this page is the stencil top pressed down onto a white piece of paper just before I cleaned it off with a paper towel - so sort of the leftover, negative stencil. 

I finished it off with some splatters, of course for this gal, and my now black with mint foam peekaboo alphas. While this page may be titled Sad Face, I was smiling as I finished it off and post it here for you!