Branching Out

I am participating in the July Mixed Media Monthly Challenge. This month's challenge is to use household found items in a project. For this project, I decided to go a little outside my comfort zone and try a new style. In particular, I was inspired by the layered, multi-media scrapbooking style of Rikka Kovasin.

Here  is my final product, done in my Dylusions book:

 Obviously, I need some practice with the layering of elements and whatnot, but I have to say that I really enjoyed this process.

My first step was to gather potential objects around the house. I grabbed a stray puzzle piece, a notebook of paper, some piano flash cards, a thank you note from a relative, some sticks, some plumbing tape, a couple old keys, and two Air Force kids' tattoos. Not pictured is some cardboard, a starry cellophane bag from a local gift shop, an old map, and bubble wrap. The truth is that once I got working, I kind of forgot about a lot of these elements. I ended up using a sheet of the stationery, some cardboard that came from a recent Amazon shipment, and the map. I loved that cardboard because the top peeled off nicely to reveal the corrugated part.

 

I then decided it would be fun to gather some old scrapbook supplies. Now this is really why I forgot about the cool keys and sticks in the above picture. It was so much fun layering with items I hadn't used in years that I just got rolling with it.

 The next step was to start the layering process. I began with the scraps of paper and some found items.

I then started layering on the scrapbooking items. Although I often profess brown to not be a color I enjoy working with, I kind of liked the way the soft browns and the teal worked together in this collage, of which the color scheme was not at all planned. Nevertheless, I decided to cover it up, using the color combo as inspiration for the next step.

 

 I then covered the items with a watery gesso, Dylusion sprays in teal and yellow, and a Walnut colored-spray ink from Imagine.

I tweaked and tweaked, mostly trying to soften the colors. I decided the page needed a photo, so I sorted through what I had to find something that would work with the soft colors. It needed some layering on top of it, so I gessoed up another butterfly and glued it on the photo.

Here is the final project again:

One thing I learned about this heavy layering style is that you really need to spend time laying things out before gluing them down. I wish I had the photo chosen first because that would have helped me with the overall layout.

Something learned is always a good thing in my book.

I Have Been Busy, Just Not Posting

Hello. I decided to take time off from both blogs so I could live more in the real world. However, prompted by a mixed media challenge, I decided to return and dust off this blog a bit.

So on to the important stuff. I came across The Mixed Media Monthly Challenge. It's a brand new challenge that I discovered while on vacation. I got home last night and decided I wanted to participate in the first challenge, which gave me this morning to get the page completed and put together. No worries. I made a simple page using sprays - the theme for June. (Apologies in advance for the poor-quality photos. Time is not on my side this morning, so these will have to do.)

Here is the finished page:

I started with these Dylusions sprays:

 Then added some visual texture with some stencils, some bubble wrap and these sprays:

To create this background:

I didn't have a lot of time, so I dug out some pre-cut die cuts lying around I had planned on using for cards. These are die cuts of Twinkling H2Os on watercolor paper and then cut using Papertrey Ink butterfly dies and happy die. I inked the edges using a black distress ink pad.

The final step was adding the quote from Thich Nhat Hahn: The amount of happiness that you have depends on the amount of freedom you have in your heart.

Thus, this page was born: