Good Morning Sunshine!

(This post is part of my Onwards and Upwards Blog Event)

Hello and good morning to you! I know it’s been a few hours since the sunrise (though perhaps not where you are!), but as this is the first post of today I decided to start with some sunshine.

Sunshine is often associated with positivity and progress. When the sun comes out it lifts our spirits, gets us to go outdoors more (much healthier!), and the warmer weather brings out colourful plants and flowers. So this post is about using sunshine on your projects to bring that happy, looking-up vibe to your papercrafting!

The Sunshine Brings Hope:

It’s been a few years since I got up early to watch this sunrise when I was at St. Ives, Cornwall, on holiday; but I still remember the feeling of peace and the promise of possibility that I felt when watching it. When I’m having a bad day, I try to think about the sun rising the next morning, knowing that tomorrow will be a whole new day, and who knows what will happen then?

I tried to create an ombre effect with the glitter tape, washi tape, and papers at the top of the page – going from a darker shade of yellow at the bottom to lighter at the top – to echo the photo, and give a feeling of rising upwards. The yellow papers are distressed along their top edges, so they are a little bit hazy, and I used a Glitz Chevron roller doodle to make some floaty tone-on-tone chevrons on one of the papers.

As my photo is huge, I wanted to fit the title and the journaling on it. To make the title more interesting I die-cut the word ‘hope’ with my Slice Design Cutter. Then I filled the negative space with washi tape, by taping the various designs diagonally on a piece of white paper, and sticking that behind the word ‘hope’:

There’s some gems clustered above the title and on the bottom left corner of the page, like magical drops of sunshine:

Looking at this page makes me smile so much. The colour yellow always makes me happy too. I got this quote from a Color Psychology website:

‘Being the lightest hue of the spectrum, the color psychology of yellow is uplifting and illuminating, offering hope, happiness, cheerfulness and fun.’

So it was a good hue to do a monochromatic, uplifting page with!

Another way to use a sunrise is to paper-piece a sunburst…

You Light Up The Room:

Here’s how I created this one (most items are from my Onwards and Upwards Counterfeit Kit):

Step 1: Cut two pieces of patterned paper down so there will be 1/8″ left around them when they’re on your card blank. They should be the same size – one for the sky, and one for the sun:

Step 2: Use a 2″ circle punch to cut a semi-circle from the bottom centre of the paper you’re using for the sun:

Step 3: Cut out an arch above this, so there’s a gap between the semi-circle and the rest of the paper:

Step 4: Randomly cut rays from the remaining paper. Keep them narrow near the semi-circle, wider as they go outwards. I didn’t measure these at all, so they aren’t perfect (and I had to snip a couple of the narrow ends off where they are too long), but it’s fast and still looks good:

Step 5: Stick the semi-circle and rays down onto the sky paper, and attach that to your card blank. Decorate on top of the sun and its rays to finish off the card!

Hopefully this will cheer someone up when they are feeling blue!

Be Inspired:

Die-cut, stitch on, or journal on a photo

Use a lot of yellow on one project

Paper-piece a shape together

What do you think? Does sunshine make you happy?

Remember that commenting on this post, and any other over this weekend, will count as an entry into the Grand Giveaway, but only if you’ve registered your interest in winning that prize right HERE!

I’ll see you again in one hour! x