Dots or spots?

Well I'm finally beginning to feel normal (I know it's subjective but I base it on the fact that I feel healthier, not completely healthy in a I'm ready to run a marathon but healthy enough to feel able to do something apart from sit on the sofa like a consumptive Austen heroine).

So back to work, back to the battles over my malfunctioning car (I'm at the garage so often I have my own parking space) and back to the creativity.

I do like reading the challenge bogs and on occasion take part if I can meet the deadline or am inspired enough by the theme.  I was going to enter this one, but guess what - missed the deadline as I spent too long faffing.

Colour scheme was based around sand, pomegranate and lilac paints.

Again an IKEA frame covered in tissue tape and painted in sand, pomegranate was lightly sponged over some sequin waste along with a  bit of inka gloop in old silver to give some dots.

Inside the frame I embossed some cream card in a polka dot folder and rubbed over with some Old Paper DI. Some purple metal was cut with a PaperArtsy die and embossed in a Tim Holtz folder to give a different spot effect. Then lightly sanded, black paint swiped on and then off to age a bit.  I then cut in half, well three quarters to be exact and glued on top of the polka dot card.

Fun bit - embellishments. 

A Wendy Vecchi heart heat embossed in purple on some Grungepaper painted in sand. Spare bit of purple metal to create a smaller heart, some Tim Swirls die cut in Grunge paper and a hole host of Wendy Vecchi flowers on some old stash paper painted in lilac, stamped in coffee archival and sprayed with rum and raisin and denim blue glimmer mists.

I then spent hours (it flt like hours it may not have been but I'd gone through the Archers omnibus and was onto Desert Island Discs) moving all the elements around trying to decide on arrangement. 

You know the drill,place it one way, stand up, move away a bit, look at it, put head on one side, tut, go back move it around a bit more and do the whole stare and tut routine until you get so fed up you attack it with the heat gun and stick it all down (including yourself).

Usually I make hanging frames, but because I put the flowers sort of hanging off the edge I needed to come up with a solution if I was going to let it sit on the shelf rather than hang on the wall. My little ingenious light bulb moment was sticking two clear map pins in the bottom of the frame for it to stand on so the flowers on the bottom don't get squashed.

I really enjoyed making this and looking at this one and last week's I think my work is getting cleaner and more refined which shows progress and hopefully a more defined honed eye for detail and construction.

Happy crafting!

jo

xx