Guest Designer Riikka Kovasin Shares Her Amazing November Magnifique Mixed Media Kit Projects!

Hi there and greetings from Helsinki! My name is Riikka Kovasin and I'm mixed media inspired scrapbooker from Finland. I live in Helsinki, the capital of Finland and have been making pages since 2009. I love to use different mediums in my work and layer them.

I'm really happy to be guesting for C'est Magnifique and created a few projects using November papers and the Mixed Media Kit! I made three scrapbooking layouts and a canvas. I hope you feel inspired by these!

Here's my first page. I tend to use either analogous or even monochromatic color scheme in my pages so the first thing I did when I received the supplies was to divide them into three piles according to color - I was planning on doing three pages. So there was a yellow stash, a pink stash and a turquoise one. 

Fussy cutting isn't something I do often, but the beautiful floral motifs inspired me to cut some of them out and use as an embellishment. I also love to use the beautiful packaging materials scrapbooking supplies usually have and included the top piece of the embellishment box to my page. Underneath you can see a video which shows how this page came into being!

The topic of the page is my first born who's just turning six next spring. Time really flies! The picture is taken from an everyday situation, she's eating a weekend snack there. I used mainly the kit supplies here. Besides basic crafting supplies like adhesives and scissors, I used two ink pads, yellow and dark grey, a yellow and dark grey mist, pencil and a black sharp felt pen from my stash. 

Here's my second page done with the pink supplies in the kit. The photo is an old one - it's me with my parents on their first wedding anniversary after I was born. I'm about six months old. I did the background using white gesso, a pink mist and stamping. I also added the pink ink from the kit through the "fleur de lis" stencil. 

I used pink papers and tags to make the layers behind the photo. Embellishments include a few flowers, the metal clock and some rhinestones. I also used one of the layered stickers to balance the design out. I also made black confetti style pieces using two little circle punches and one of the black packaging pieces in the kit. On the same packaging I also stamped the bow using the pink ink in the kit and then traced the design with a white pen.

I used the Liquid Pearls to add some final touches to the page making three rows of small pearls. Besides the Liquid Pearls and pink ink from the kit I also used white gesso, a pink mist, dark grey ink, two circle punches, some sewing thread, a pencil and a white and black felt pen in my page.

As I mentioned before, I divided the kit into three piles. This page is done with the turquoise stash. Besides the turquoise papers and embellishments I also used the twinkling watercolor and minty gesso in this page. I also recorded a step by step style video while working. You can see that below. 

The pictures are of my younger daughter when she turned three. I had sewn a princess dress for my older one as a three-year-old birthday present so I did the same for her, too. And she adored the dress! It's still her favorite piece of clothing but now that her birthday is again approaching she has requested another one.

The supplies in this page from my own stash include a pencil, a black felt pen, some twine, old buttons and some sewing thread. 

Besides the three pages I also made a canvas using the black and darker materials from the kit. 

First I added pieces of the papers and some of the tags from the kit to a canvas. I also made a dress shape using the papers and adhered that to the canvas using gel medium. Then I painted everything black using black gesso. 

I added a few lilies to the background using embossing ink and brushing the Finnabair Art Sugar to the sticky surface. Then I embellished the dress using the black feathers, the trim and the black flowers, all from the kit. I also added two different pieces of tulle and some metal thread. This canvas will form a pair to a white one I did recently for a Finnabair team blog hop.

Thank you for joining me today! I hope you feel inspired by these projects I did using the November papers and the Mixed Media Kit! If you have any questions, please leave a comment or send me a mail. You can find my email address from my blog - Paperiliitin (link). I would also love for you to visit me there or on my Instagram or Facebook! 

Wishing you a creative day!