Vacation Art

Kenny and I took a week off work with plenty of plans until I sprained my ankle and can't really get around much.  So...what that means is lots of movies, books and some crafting. 

I always remember to take a before photo after I already started the project.  So, unfortunately, you can't see what this looked like prior to my new art work.  Basically, it was a black/white photo of dry soil and an old nail laying on the dirt.  I know, random, but I bought it from the local thrift store because it was so unusual.  I think the photo was called "Desert Nail"...yeah, that creative.  LOL

Anyhow the photo is 16x20 matted in a 24x30" frame.  I kept the white matting but painted some fuchsia strokes around where the artwork will be.  Then, I grabbed my blue scraps and started tearing strips of paper.  The strips were glued to the entire 16x20 piece of paper, covering the original photo.

I put some antique white acrylic paint randomly on it, brown ink and even stamped some music notes and swirls - just randomly all over.

Then, I picked a quote.  I used my Calligraphy and my Plantin Schoolbook cricut cartridges to cut the letters.

After adhering the quote, I grabbed green and pink paints and started doodling.  I don't like the green swirl because it looks too much like a flower stem and that's not what I wanted.  But I tried covering it a little with some torn up dictionary and even with a little paint, but I just couldn't change it enough to make me happy.  Oh well...I still like the way it turned out.

Here it is:

and here

Lesson learned:  Some times random is fine, but in other cases, it helps to plan a little.  I think I should have planned a little more and I probably would be happier with the final result.  But, I still like it :)

Now, where to hang it?  It does not match any color scheme in my house!

Just Be

When all else fails, Just Be You!

Scrappin' in Patterson group had a color challenge (teal, lime green, brown and coral) and this is the layout I came up with.  This paper was bought when Carly and I went to the It's Scrapbook Time crop two weekends ago and I knew it'd be perfect for this color challenge.  The photos are Jori's first day of kindergarten, which I thought the words on the paper were perfect for that too.

Sorry the photo is so dark...

Is this any better?

There wasn't much to this layout.  I got the idea of the cluster from an ad for a scrapbooking kit club.  The spiro-graph looking circles are a stamp set from Stampin' Up.  I cut the pennants from scrap papers, glued down some buttons in the middle of some flowers and viola!  Easy peasy layout!

The "Just Be" stamp is from an old, old set of Stampin' Up.  I was going to do some journaling in the white space and I just happened to look up at my "word" stamps and I saw that and knew it'd be perfect.  I'll leave the journaling to Marlene.

So...be happy, be funny, be original, be true, be simple, be different, be strong, be honest, be joyful...but more importantly, just be.