Santino Marella, part one

I still have quite a few photos with my kids and wrestlers to be scrapped (+quite a lot of old LO´s to be posted) but I have not really found any inspiration for the photos I have left. Mostly its wrestlers/Divas who have left the WWE, or even passed away! So what does one do? I either start up with other projects, or fix new wrestlingphotos. I decided on the latter, or at least that was the plan when me and my son once again went to a wrestling-event in Barcelona Spain. This time we saw two shows and luckily enough for my scrapbooking career we met a bunch of the Superstars and one Diva. Now I have quite a few hours with my scissors and knifes in front of me and thats quite a comforting feeling. Here is the first LO I made from this years wrestlers, Santino Marella!

For this one I have only used cardstock because I felt it was just the stuff for my LO-idea. I got the idea from one of Santinos T-shirts, I drew it, changed a bit here and there, cut out templates from my drawing, used the templates on CS and then cut out the different shapes. A little chalk, some 3d-cushions on the letters (that were a bit difficult to cut straight, both the Santino- and the Marella-parts) and the photograph and the LO was ready. I am more than happy with this one and currently working on my next Santino-LO, but this time, I will be on the photo as well!

Cowboy Bob Orton

Its been some time since I made a layout and its not because my motives are running out (I do have a few wrestlers left to scrap) (they wont last forever of course) its just that I have been busy with other things. Me and my son are once again going to a wrestling event so all of the spare time in the scrapbooking-room has been commited to making new signs for us to bring along to the show.

But running out of ideas for the signs I paused and made this LO with Cowboy Bob Orton. I found this paper from Flair Designs (beeing a wrestling fan you cant resist that!) which was called Home on the range and that suited Cowboy Bob perfectly for his background. I then drew up a holster and a belt to fit Cowboy Bob and my kids in, just like a gun. I made a belt buckle from CS and put a photo of Bob and his son, Randy Orton, in, some bullets and some brads to make it look a bit more "real" made the difference. The text I printed on a piece of Basic Grey and then I chalked it to get that burned cowboy feeling (at my age one still remembers the Bonanza-intro). I must say, and of course, I am always full of myself, this one really turned out nice even though its a project between projects!

For this one I used three different CS, 2 x Basic Grey, Crate, Kaiser, Flair Designs, two kinds of brads, chalk and a Rhonna Farrer clear stamp.

Rowdy Roddy Piper

When I first started watching the WWE (WWF at that time) is was full of charasmatic characters and persons. One that stood out was Rowdy Roddy Piper and he instantly became one of my favorites. Beeing from Scotland I just could not resist the bagpipes, the kilt and the outspokenness of the rowdy one. Needless to say I was chuffed to bits when we met him and so were my kids. My first thought was to do something in a similar tartan that Piper wears. That was totally impossible! I could not find any papers with a red based tartan, in fact, I could not find any tartans at all! I was just about to scrap the project, by that I mean give up, when my wife brought a paper home with her that nearly did the trick. I used that as a base and then concentrated on getting the inspiration and ideas from Pipers T-shirt instead. The photo mats got the red collar from Pipers T-shirt + the white and that looked rather nice when it was a double photo mat. The Roddy Piper text I drew myself and cut out + used Adirondack Acrylic Paint Dabber to simulate the text on the shirt. The "Rowdy"-part I used templates for and then cut out a yellow shadow to match the other text. The LO is so so, not good not bad, it will just do. Oh, the papers are from Prima Lucid Collection and Daisy D´s + some CS.

Shawn Michaels HBK

I am not sure what I was thinking when I did this LO with Shawn Michaels, the Heartbreak Kid, The Showstopper, Mr Wrestlemania etc. In retrospect I probably wasn´t. It was the green from HBK´s jacket that I wanted as a base but somehow I chose something in a completely different tone (even thought its closer in real). Breaking hearts, yes, and the text from the bottom photo, yes, and also the ribbon and the name that reminded a bit of HBK´s tattoo. All good ideas really but when put together, no! I see now what I should have done. A different green paper and a much larger broken heart would have done it. Of course I would have to place the other stuff differently, and probably loose the top photo but I actually think that would work. Lots of ideas for one LO is fine but if you cant get the ideas to work together, well, then one should contenplate on doing something else and not as I just go bang on and hope for the best! Papers are nice though, Basic Grey, Crate and something I cant remember the name of. One of these days I will just have to make a new one.

A-Train

There are two ways for me to find inspiration from the photographs I use in my layouts. The first is of course the normal, colours, shapes and the actual motif. The other way is what the persons in the photographs represent. Take this one for instance. The giant person who on the photo is squeezing the daylights out of my son goes under the name of A-Train, or at least he did when he was in the WWE. So instead of going with the white & black colours in the photograph I went more for the character and the name when deciding on how to decorate this one. The A represents his name of course but its also a tunnel where the speeding train comes rushing out. To create a feeling of speed I cut out my own letters and had them connected to the A/tunnel. The tracks are merely there as a decoration and to emphasize the "train"-theme and also to get a balance in the LO with the tracks laid out in a similar fashion as the A. I am not trying to sound like an artist or anything like that, God knows I have created some really useless LO`s, I am merely trying to explain how I think when I "create". Everything on this LO is also originally made and cut out by me and yes, its Basic Grey!

Below you see a close-up of the letters and the track. I used 3D-cushions for the letters to enhance the speed-effect and gluedots for the rails on the track to make them look more real.

And to finish things off, A-Train left my son unhurt even though I wished he had squeezed a bit more sense into him!

Stacey Keibler

This LO is with Stacey Keibler, former WWE-Diva, Dancing with the stars-star and actress, and of course my darling daughter. This one I really enjoyed to do since the colours in the photo were so thankfull to work with. Its usually a lot of dark photos of big wrestlers wearing dark clothes so with this one I could go "all in" to our paper stock. I used papers from Basic Grey of course but also Bohemé and different CS. I really enjoy cutting out swirls and shapes, it takes time but its well worth it in the end. Also laying some of the swirls over the photo and the photo mat creates a very nice effect, or at least I think so. Some bling, some flowers and some stickles as well and one of my better LO´s was ready. The only thing I was not entirely happy with is the namestrap. The colours should have been the other way around to match the photo with Stacys strap and her blonde hair, but still, this is one of the few I am really happy with.

Gregory Helms

Less is more is a saying and on this LO I quite agree. Notmuch has been done on this one which has a paper from My Minds Eye as a base. I then used a tool (you will have to excuse me, I can mention about a thousand wrestling moves like that but remembering what the scrapbooking-stuff is called, totally blank!) from Fiskars to dry emboss the corners of the paper and dabbed some goldcolour on it. The photo of Gregory Helms I cut out by hand and then took some CS to extend the cape and use it as a photo mat. The hardest part of this LO was to talk my wife into writing the name in calligraphy. It was well worth it though. She writes beautifully and after I heat-embossed the name it was more than enough with embellishments, less is more sometimes!