Read Books / Crafting About Reading YouTube Hop

Hello again, friends!  I'm so honored to be a part of the Crafting About Reading YouTube Hop created by my amazingly talented scrappy friend Becki Adams.  This Hop is in honor of her sweet son, Austin, who passed away unexpectedly a few years ago.  The anniversary of his passing is coming up on July 4th, and a group of designers are joining Becki to commemorate a special reading project that she and her family created.  They started a book donation program to collect books for their local library in Austin's name.  This is the sweetest thing, and if you're interested in purchasing some books to donate, you can find out all about it HERE.

I used the Paige Evans' Pick-Me-Up collection for this, and I began by cutting out a bunch of books from one of the patterned papers.  I decided to do a large title and place the books behind the letters.  I typed READ in a block font and cut it on textured white cardstock on my Silhouette Cameo.  I used smooth thick white cardstock for the base, and I coated it with clear gesso first.  I used a mix of Shimmerz sprays to get that periwinkle blue color on the background (Blue Jeans, Deep Blue Sea & Sweetheart).  Once that was done, I glued down the books.

 

Also on the background I splattered some white acrylic paint as well as some pink, orange and gold splatters using more Shimmerz sprays.  I embellished around the page using stickers from Paige's Sticker Book from a few years ago. 

Before gluing down the READ paper, I hand stitched around all the letters.  I know!  I haven't done that in FOREVER!  I used pink, orange, yellow and blue embroidery floss.  Then I added adhesive foam behind the whole thing to pop it up off the page.  I love the dimension that creates!  I had originally wanted to leave that paper white, but later decided to add some smudgy color.  I went around the edges of each letter with a bit of grey just to add some depth.  I used a grey gelato for that.  Then I used Distress Oxides to add the color around the edges of each letter.

I popped up the photos with adhesive foam, too and then added matching colors of tangled thread.  I layered a few patterned papers behind the photos, also from the Pick-Me-Up collection.

I wanted to add a smaller secondary title down here at the bottom, so I used the white foam alphas from the collection for that.  I also added a few more stickers from the Sticker Book here.

Here are a few more close-ups of all the details.  You can see how I made this whole layout in my process video down below.

Thanks so much for stopping by!  There are several other designers joining in on this Hop, so check out that list in my description box when you click on my video.  

Also, thank you to Becki for inviting me to join her.  She is the sweetest person you'll ever meet, and her work is just incredible.  She's very inspiring in so many ways <3

Have a great day, friends!