First "Artists in Blogland" Quote

What a fun place that is! They have just started a new challenge Color this Quote where the artist of the month (I guess, I'm kind of new here) gives you a quote and you get to interpret it. The first quote was about friends and quilting and I had just picked up some tiny little canvases which reminded me of quilt blocks and I already had lunch plans with one of my oldest friends tomorrow so I went to work.

I had been wanting to work more on canvas and had just picked up a bunch at Michael's on sale. I started off with Dylusions sprays in totally different colors than the final product...but I've been drawn to red-orange and blue-green lately so that's what I ended up with. 

Once the whole thing was so ugly that I just pulled out the ivory paint and covered most of the canvas. I just chalked it up to creating layers...I think it was Dina Wakely who said, if you want layers, you have to paint layers. One of my paint stencil layers got a little messy so I just did another layer on top in a slightly brighter color (those being ivory and light yellow - lol). 

Once I got the background to a good place, I started working on the small "blocks". I loved the way the  Graphic 45 butterfly came out. Mostly mountain rose and snow cap alcohol inks....colored the body.

In the middle of the body there was a hole - don't know why - I used one of Tim Holtz's flower findings embossed with some pink distress embossing powder and a little "pearl". The flower was a new Prima flower with lots of paint dabs to make it blend a bit better than the lime green it started life as...

Since we were talking about age - I thought a softer way to address that would be a depicting of time...Paint helped tone down the darker elements...and I used some new sprays on the spinners...just happen to have the right colors (back to my new fav colors!!)

I struggled and thought about how to add the quote and thought I had it. I printed it out on vellum which was laced with natural components...little sticks, leaves, etc. Cut it down, and went to adhere it with multi-medium. One problem. I printed on an ink-jet printer and the words started to smudge. So I did it again and then sprayed it with fixative. Even waited the appropriate time. And then affixed it. Only to get the darn *(#&$_#(*& air bubbles. Well...that's how we know it was made by a real live artist....

I think lunch will be fun tomorrow.