Champion

If you follow my Instagram you have probably worked out that one of my boys is a keen mountain biker, or more specifically a downhiller.  Downhill cycling is a sport where you take yourself to the nearest mountain track and throw yourself over the side in a race to the bottom by the quickest time.  Crazy!  But he loves it with a passion.

I created this layout to celebrate his recent achievement of a podium position for a downhill endurance race.  For this one the aim was to complete as many runs as possible over four hours.  Josh came third!

This month, Darkroom Door is one of the sponsors of CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration, and I used Darkroom Door stamps on my page.  Here’s the case file:

The idea is to use the above image, colour scheme and information for inspiration.  For evidence I used – cogs, metal, bicycle and numbers and for testimony I journaled about something ‘mind-boggling’ but the inspo word ‘move’ was also inspiring.  After all, Josh was on the move for 4 hours!

I started the page with a few swipes of Gelatos and used a wet Faber Castell sponge blender to blend.  I laid my photos on top and marked out rough positioning for the next step.

A few cogs from the Darkroom Door Steampunk set and random partial stampings of the Darkroom Door Grid background stamp added a bit of interest.

I painted a couple of swatches of Distress Crackle to add a bit of texture and once dry rubbed it over with Gelatos – the Gelatos filled in some of the cracks to add an extra dimension of colour.  As it was a mountain bike competition, I only wanted parts of the bicycle wheels sticking out from underneath my pictures so I inked & stamped only a portion of the bicycle. (it’s still the wrong type of wheel but oh well!)

A Tim Holtz number 3 reinforces Josh coming third – a bit of Distress Paint takes away the shiny silver to give a slightly enamel look.  Some strip journaling and a title and it was done.

Supplies used:

• Darkroom Door Enjoy the Ride stamp set
• Darkroom Door Steampunk stamp set
• Darkroom Door Grid background stamp
• Gelatos & sponge blending tool
• Ranger Archival Ink – black, watering can & fern green
• Tim Holtz number
• Ranger Distress Crackle rock candy
• Ranger Distress Paint – picket fence