Ariana Rose Mixed Media Canvas - Frosted Designs Challenge-Chipboard

I have been so inspired by all of the beautiful mixed media ART recently, and have put that inspiration togethter will my inspiration to also share the ART I create with others:)  Also, as part of the Design Team over at the Frosted Designs Blog, I was able to use this piece for our August 24 Fabulous Friday challenge...using Chipboard in our project.  What FUN!!!!!  Don't we ALL have chipboard in our stash's?

I don't usually talk about my personal life on my blog, but in order for me to share my latest work of ART, I thought I would share the "story" behind this piece.

For those of you who have known me for a while, you know that I am "emotional" crafter and artist.  I often say "the ART I create needs to "speak" to me"...and hopefully in creating ART this way, my ART will also "speak" to you, too.

Now for the background on this piece...we received some very sad news about 10 weeks ago, as we found out that our newest granddaughter, Ariana Rose would be stillborn.  I was with my DIL and Son through the entire process and was so impressed by their bravery.  Our dear Ariana Rose was delivered on June 3rd and although she had already left us, I felt comfort in the fact that I was able to be there for my DIL and Son.

As time has passed, I knew I wanted to create a piece of ART that my DIL and Son could hang in their home alongside the ART I had previously created showcasing each of their 3 sons.

Now on to this beautiful piece of ART inspired by and for Ariana Rose:

The quote that we all kept coming back to, which gave us comfort during such a difficult time was:

"An angel in the book of life wrote down my baby's birth, then whispered as she closed the book, too beautiful for earth."

Therefore, I knew I wanted to somehow incorporate the appearance of a "book" on my canvas.  I did this by taking a 5 x 7 flat canvas piece, adhering it to the top side of the canvas (after, of course, I applied the background to the piece).  I wanted the "title" of the book to be a bit whimsical, so I used some rub-on letters that I had in my stash for the "title" of the book. 

I also created an image of a little girl, primarily using some of the techniques I learned when I took one of Christy Tomlinson's "She Art" classes.  I made the image a bit shorter and stockier, giving the appearance of a young child or baby and I really like the way it turned out.

Butterflies and dragonflies were also discussed, so I wanted to make sure I added some of them to this piece.  While shopping at a LSS last weekend, I found some Christine Adolph paper with purples, pinks, blues and dragonflies that I knew I just had to also use for inspiration in this piece.

I also worked in a few of my "frugal" style throughout this piece, drawing some scalloped edges around the piece using nothing more than a white-out pen.  Then I painted, and sprayed and painted and glazed (making my own glaze, of course) as I layered and layered this piece until I was happy with the results.

I hope you enjoy this piece of ART.

I appreciate and value your comments:)

Findin' my mojo...

I just want to leave a quick update to yesterday's post so I can show my completed canvas art project.

All I added was the "quote", a few more flowers at the bottom and some metal spinners for the clock.

Other than that, I decided I didn't need anything else.

The letters for my quote are from an alphabet grungeboard pack.  I covered some of the letters with a krylon silver leafing pen, and the other letters are layered as follows:

1. Cover letters with silver metallic paint dabber
2. Cover with Emboss It embossing ink
3. Add WOW embossing powder
4. Heat with Heat It heat tool until the embossing powder melts and the silver paint beneath bubbles through...VERY cool texture!!!!
5. When the bubbles "cool", they get hard and leave a really neat textured effect

Here is a close up of the letters...fyi, I was also "practicing" my in focus/out of focus techniques...I love it when the middle of the picture is in focus and the forefront and background are blurry...

Here is also a close-up of her hair...cool, huh?

Here's to getting our mojo back and having a wonderfully creative day!!!!

enJOY!

Frosted Designs - Fabric

I have to tell you, I'm so bummed to say I've been in a creative funk for a few weeks now...I really WANT to create great ART, but my creativity brain is just not working right now...MAYBE it's because I've been so busy at my day job, huh?  My banker brain has just been squeezing the air out of my creativity brain...{BIG sigh...}

Anyway, I wanted to play around with some of my "new" toys and have been trying to incorporate these new items into my ART, so want to show you what I've come up with so far...

I do have to say, I'm really happy with the way it's turning out, but I know it has room to GROW and is not complete yet...I wanted to share it anyway since I do want to have my Fabulous Friday project available to share...I did have alot of fun incorporating fabric into my project which is our challenge for this week over at the Frosted Designs Blog.

I used a piece of fabric from an old pair of cream colored Docker shorts my husband was going to toss away.  I used some turquoise, green and lime dylusions sprays, some mod podge, some stamps and some rub-on's on it.  It turned into that really cool diagonally placed rectangle shape behind my artsy girl.  Isn't it really cool?

I used a second piece of fabric I've probably had in my stash for about 10 years...NO KIDDING!  I made my artsy girl's skirt out of it.

The mod podge really stiffened the fabric and made it very easy to work with.

I also used some of my new WOW embossing powders...just LOVE those bold colors.  I also added some awesome papers from old books, maps, etc that my dear friend Teresa Jaye sent me a while back to complete the background on this project.  Thank you, Teresa!

Now all I need is to get my mojo back and think of some really schnazzy quote for this piece...I'm trying to tell a story with this piece that says this artsy girl found her voice through her music...I'll post it again once I've decided on what to "say".

Now hop on over to Frosted Designs and get inspired with Fabric:)

And don't forget to give some love to our sponsor this week...!