Tutorial // Layering Colored Vellum

One thing that is relatively new to my stash of scrapbook supplies (in the last six months) is colored vellum. I love that the semi-transparency of the material allows for layering and creating different hues. You can layer complementary colors for an unexpected effect, or similar colors for different tones.

For my layout today, I wanted to focus on blue-green colors, so I chose cool colors - vellum chambray, vellum poolside, and regular vellum to soften the colors.

I started out by using my Silhouette Cameo to cut two circles from each sheet of vellum - one 4" circle and one 3.5" circle. I used to have a manual circle cutter but it was pretty iffy at doing its job, so I love using my Cameo for precise shapes. To cut the vellum circles, my Silhouette settings were: blade 3, thickness 30, and speed 5. If I'm cutting more intricate shapes, I'd slow down the speed of the blade.

Here are my six vellum circles. (Not pictured: I also used my Cameo to cut two slightly smaller circles out of scrap paper - 3.75" and 3.25". I'll talk about them later).

Once my circles were cut out, I began arranging them on my layout until I was satisfied with how they look. This is roughly what I decided on.

Adhering vellum can be a problem because of its semi-transparent quality. Some options would be to strategically hide the adhesive under embellishments layered on top, used vellum adhesive, or stitching. I decided to go for the stitching route since I thought white stitching would provide a nice contrast.

I used the slightly smaller 3.75" circle I cut out of scrap paper as my guideline for where to pierce the holes around the 4" circle. Since I don't own a sewing machine, all the sewing I do is by hand. Piercing the holes before stitching helps a lot and makes the stitching look nice and neat. I hand sewed all the circles while I watched some TV :)

Here's what the layered vellum circles look like after I finished all the stitching!

After completing that, it was time to add my photo and embellishments. I used lots of goodies from Studio Calico's Wanderlust and Essentials collections. There are lots of great embellishments that worked perfectly for my layout, like the scrap pads, vellum alpha stickers, enamel dots, and wooden buttons.

I decided to finish my layout off with a strip of my favorite patterned paper from Studio Calico's LemonLush collection and some washi tape. I think it really brings the layout together by mimicking the orange hues in my photograph. Here's my layout!

Supplies: vellum - white, chambray, poolside; buttons- Wanderlust wooden buttons; sticky note - Wanderlust scrap pad; alphas - Wanderlust lowercase alpha stickers; paper clip - Essentials flag clips;  enamel dots - Essentials blue enamel dots, gold enamel dots; roller stamp - Wanderlust phrases stamp; star sequins - sequins; patterned paper - LemonLush Impulsive;  cardstock - American Crafts cardstock; die-cut machine - Silhouette Cameo; washi tape - MT tape; thread - DMC; pens - Uniball Signo white pen, Micron pen 

Hope you enjoyed a peek into my layout process and give colored vellum a try :)