Spring Flowers

YAY!  It's Spring and I AM READY!  I'm so sick of cold and snow.  I want some spring flowers blooming! But we may see snow flurries on Friday!  Boo!

Have you joined the Unruly PaperArts Facebook Page?  Here's one reason to join.  We're having a March 2015 Share Your Art challenge for National Craft Month.  This is a closed group but you are welcome to join and share your art. The FaceBook link is HERE.  Currently we have 614members. (FYI, I'm a creative contributor to Unruly PaperArts blogozine.)  

To enter you must create a piece of art inspired by one of the following upcoming National Holidays.
March 12 - Plant a Flower Day
March 13 - Learn about Butterflies Day
March 19 - Let's Laugh Day
March 21 - National Quilting Day
March 30 - National Pencil Day
It's also Caffeine Awareness Month so you can use this as a prompt also.

You can enter as many times as you like, but you must indicate which prompt you have used to inspire your art and place a photo of your work in our March 2015 Share Your Art for National Craft Month Folder. We will do a random prize draw at the end of March for a Mystery Prize (full of crafty goodness) for one lucky winner.

I thought I'd work on that Plant a Flower national holiday in order to meet a few challenges.

I'm behind on my altered playing cards deck, so I thought I'd dig up Week 18 and make some flowers.  The APC challenge is at Claudine's Art Corner blog and prompts for Week 18 are HERE. Claudine asked us to focus on beauty and quotes.

Our gesso covered playing cards are getting a coat of paint this week.  She placed different colors of paint onto the mat and then dabbed the card into the paint rather than swiping.  hmmm....this means I must strategically place my paint colors for optimum effect.

Claudine then stamped flowers onto white, colored with copics, and fussy cut them.

Thank you to Rubber Dance Stamps Design Team for selecting me as their February DT Pick!

Their March colour challenge has a pastel color scheme with the optional theme SPRING.  The link up is HERE  This challenge drove my color selections for my cards.



I used my brand new Tim Holtz distress paints in cracked pistachio and abandoned coral.  I swiped the paints onto the craft sheet, spritzed with water and then blotted the card.  Not happy, I ran the card through for more color.  Still not happy because the gesso acts as a resist, I used the dabber to put paint directly onto the card in some places.  This helped with coverage since I had applied the gesso with a brush and had grooves to work with.


Card One

Rubber Dance Stamps - flower (Antique Botannicals) and sentiment (Something Wonderful)
I stamped onto white card with Archival jet black ink.   I colored in the flower petals with a lighter yellow for that pop of color.  This again was trial by error.  Is it possible for Copic markers to lose color and just exude alcohol?  That seemed to be what was happening to mine.  I've had them for several years and never refilled them.  So I switched to watercolor paints--with a pearlescent sheen!!!



Card Two

Rubber Dance Stamps - weeds on card (Weed Love), yellow flowers on word strip (Bold and Beautiful) and sentiment (Sarcastic Superpower)
I stamped directly onto the card the botannicals with Archival jet black ink.  I stamped the flowers with Memento dandelion ink onto white card.  I overdstamped the sentiment with black ink .  Then I cut this into word strips.

This card appears sarcastic but there's some truth to this. I'm allergic to grasses and tree pollen.  The fuzzy fly-abouts (look like whispy cottonballs) from the cottonwood trees make me sneeze.  I've had allergy tests to confirm this, hence the sentiment!  This card is a reminder to laugh to get me through spring!

I'll post these on Claudine's Altered Playing Cards Facebook page.
I'm also entering these challenges:

both cards:  Rubber Dance Stamps March color challenge
card 1:  UPA March 2015 Share Your Art on the UPA FaceBook page:  Plant a Flower
card 2:  UPA March 2015 Share Your Art on the UPA FaceBook page:  Let's Laugh Day