Sunday, January 5, 2014

My Other Creations: January Blues Collage

Welcome back to our active challenges for the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge blog!  And what better theme to start off with than "January Blues"?  LOVE the color blue in all of its variations, but the post-holiday sense of blah-ness that sometimes comes can be quite a downer.  So I thought, why not explore a true "blue" feeling with this week's piece?  So here it is, expressing a sentiment that is true of me all too often:


I started this piece with an 8x8 white canvas which I painted with black gesso.  This was my first time using black gesso and I found it perfect for this project!  After I'd gessoed it, I covered it with horizontal swipes of blue acrylic paint.  Then I went to those fantastic go-to inks from Dylusions: Black Marble, London Blue and Calypso Teal.  I sprayed them across the top of the canvas and let them drip and get messy.  Note!  Be sure to put your canvas on top of something that will absorb the dripping ink.  I used an old rag that I put on top of aluminum foil.  While the canvas was still a bit wet, I wiped some of the acrylic paint away to reveal black gesso smudges underneath.  Here's a close-up of some of those delicious drips:


When everything was dry, I added some black raindrops with black ink and a stencil.  I stuck on some white alphabet stickers to spell out my sentiment, but they looked a bit stark against the dark background.  I rubbed over the edges of the letters with a little Black Soot distress ink that I applied with a sponge so they'd blend a bit better.  To finish it off, I added a scraggly piece of black yarn to the left side that hung down to resemble more rain.


For me, it's easy to memorialize light and whimsical things to keep me edified.  And that is good!  But it's also nice to just put the truth out there sometimes, too.  And this is one truth that I will look at often to try to help me improve on it.

I made this piece with these dandy supplies from Simon Says Stamp:




So what will you come up with for this week's theme?  I can't wait to see your geniusness in action, so be sure to enter the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge for your chance to win fifty big bucks to spend any way you want at Simon Says Stamp!50dollar_voucher_600px