Let’s Blend Challenge – Blended Notebooks

I browse Pinterest and many online sites to try and come up with our monthly Let’s Blend Challenge. A page using a sprial notebook was all I needed to get my creativity moving in the right direction. I remembered there were papers in the store with a sprial binding, and that’s how it began.

I was going for an old travel notebook sketch kind of look. For both pages, I used Katie’s Bound Papers (included in the freebie packet) and resized it to fit in the center of the page. Duplicate it once you are happy with the size. Activating the duplicated layer, go to Filter Gallery/Artistic/Rough Pastels. See settings of the filter in the screen shot below. Change the opacity of this layer to 50%.

Link the two layers together and then clip them to a mask (included in freebie). Resize the mask as needed. Activating the MASK layer only, click on Layer/Layer Style/Bevel and Emboss, set to Emboss/Smooth. Apply the Multiply blend mode to the mask. You may have to play with the mask to fit your notebook by resizing or blending it out. Your notebook should look something like this:

Now you can blend your photo into the notebook. I ran my photos through Topaz Studio to give them a painted/sketch type of look and clipped them to another mask to blend them in. The possibilities are endless once you get your notebook set up. The finished layout below.

Products used in addition to the freebie: Loosely Scripted Brushes and Stamps No. 5, Atlantic Element Pack, Junk Journal Printable Collage Sheet No. 5, Stamped Blocks Brushes and Stamps No. 35

For this page, I resized the notebook to better fit my photo, added a texture and an overlay to the background paper.

Additional products used on this page: Grunge Overlays No. 5, Layered Bookshelf Overlays No. 2, Ancestry Blendable Layers

Alright, so that’s all there is to it! 😉  Katie has generously provided the key products in a freebie pack, which will get you started. Also, remember to post your pages in the Let’s Blend Challenge Gallery, and add your page to the February 2021 Challenges Sign-in Thread in the forums to earn great shopping rewards.

I have read this over a few times. Sometimes what is in my brain, doesn’t always come out clearly on paper. Hah! Please message me if you have any questions or need clarification on any of the instructions. I hope you enjoy the challenge and I can’t wait to see your layouts in the Gallery.