Tutorial // Tone-on-tone Skyscrapers

When Kelly Purkey announced her upcoming Sketchbook class + the release of coordinating class supplies over at Studio Calico, I immediately knew the skyscraper metal die was a must-have for me. I'm a city girl at heart, and I fell in love with the clean, graphic design of the skyscraper. I've had this die for a few weeks now, but I finally had the time to play with it over the weekend. I thought I'd share with you today how I put it to use and how I made tone-on-tone skyscrapers for a layout :)

I started out with some patterned paper scraps from Studio Calico's Lemonlush collection + my die.

I ran my die + patterned paper through my manual die-cut machine, which in this case, is my Big Shot. Love how sturdy this thing is! (I made sure to sandwich my paper + metal die in between the cutting pads; I just took one off to photograph here).

I ran my die through my Bigshot four times for four different patterned paper skyscrapers :)

I looked through my cardstock stash for colors that would be good matches for my skyscraper die-cuts. I wanted the cardstock colors to be similar, but not identical to my patterned papers.

Using a pencil, I traced my skyscraper die-cut on the matching cardstock, and then I cut it out. I carefully cut little strips of foam adhesive to adhere the die-cut to the cardstock.

I did the above steps with each of my skyscraper die-cuts. I love that the foam adhesive adds a bit of dimension and depth to my skyscrapers :)

Time to put together my layout! I chose a 6x8 layout base so that my page will fit in my Studio Calico handbook, which is the mini album I'm using for my California travel mini. I pulled out some SC acetate sheets (LOVE these!) and washi tape from my stash for this page. I wanted to sort of create a cityscape, so I placed my skyscrapers at the bottom and used some blue + sky washi tape at the top of the page.

I added my instax photo + some simple embellishing with navy blue alphas (from the Guinevere add-on kit) + a SC heart chipboard sticker, and I'm done!

Here's my completed layout. Not sure if you can see the acetate sheet clearly here, but it adds a subtle and pretty white-on-white effect for the background. Of course, the color skyscrapers are the highlight of the page - they are bright and make me so happy :)

A close-up, just for fun!

I haven't decided yet if I'll use this layout as my mini-book's title page or if I'll add some journaling and make this one of the inner pages, but I'll figure that out later. I'm just happy to have another page done in my travel mini...slowly making my way through my book! Hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Have a great Monday!