Amanda Stevens -Designer Technique- Texture, Layering, & Clusters

Today I introduce to you Amanda Stevens as our Designer Technique contributor. I am only this week meeting Amanda myself and taking a peak at her designs. She is a mother of twins and must be very busy!

I understand Amanda is repackaging many of her kits (do to her good friend Kristy leaving designing) and will be getting them back into the store soon, but you can see previews of some of them on her blog. I also understand that NDIS was hacked and lost much of their site and they are recovering, so check back soon!

You can find Amanda's shop here and her blog here. She also has some kits with Theresa here. Here is her DST gallery.

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My favorite style right now, is layering, clusters and lots of texture!! I see this has carried over from scrapbooking, to my designing. I love the look of lots of textures, and many layers.

To get more texture here is what I do.


















Take your layer (paper, etc.), and make a duplicate. On the duplicate, texture it (in PaintShop Pro, go to Effects-Texture Effects- Texture). I use the Striation and Canvas Simple a lot. I put my depth at 5-10 (depending on the color, and the look I am going for). Once it is textured, I lower the opacity to about 50%. This gives the look of “one paper” with a light texture. This gives the feeling of a “real” paper, and it makes you want to run your hands over the depth and feel of the paper.

After I have my texture, I make sure and gather lots of embellishments to layer under and over my picture. I usually keep a small part of “white space” where there is nothing.


Here is one of my favorites from mine and Theresa Hernandez’s Natural Pairs kit~ Flingin’ a Little Spring at NDSB.






Here is another one of my favorites, again using our Flingin’ a Little Spring kit.

















I like to give the feeling of a paper page, made with many layers; and I think to accomplish that one of the most important things is to ask yourself “If I turn this page upside down, is my picture going to fall off? Or do I have everything attached with something?” My good friend Kristy taught me that when I first started scrapping.

Here are some samples of clusters, or layering in my design style





My latest favorite kit of mine, besides Flingin’ a Little Spring is called “Believe”. A song inspired this kit, and I think it turned out great!! Have a peek!