Songbird Scraps April Challenge

The first lyrics for this month's challenge over at Songbird Scraps are up, go check it out, the girls of the design team have done their best to inspire you, and hopefully some of you will give this challenge a try... The April prize for the winner hasn't been revealed yet, but I'll keep you posted on that one!

April lyrics:

Pete Murray – Opportunity…
Don't be scared of what you cannot see
Your only fear is possibility
Never wonder what the hell went wrong
Your second chance may never come along
Hold on now your exits here
It's waiting just for you
Don't pause too long
It's fading nowIt's ending all too soon you'll see

Hunters and Collectors - Throw Your Arms Around Me...
I dreamed of you at night time
And I watched you in your sleep
I met you in high places
I touched your head and touched your feet
So if you disappear out of view
You know I will never say goodbye
And though I try to forget it
You will make me call your name
And I'll shout it to the blue summer sky

When I read the lyrics of this first song, it's first two sentences immediately made me think of this awesome quote by Marianne Williamson. I first heard this quote in the movie "Coach Carter" with Samuel L. Jackson, and I remember being so struck by this I just had to write it down in my little quote book. I definitely wanted to use this in my LO, and at first I intended to make a journaling tag, but later on decided to make it the main part of the LO and use it as a background. If you click on the pic, you should be able to read it.


Though it doesn't look like anything I've made before, I'm so happy with the way this LO turned out. I probably shouldn't say this about my own work, but I just love this one!

How to:

For the background, I started out with really ugly (and really cheap) pp featuring some kind of landscape and a huge blue skye. I really didn't like it and thought I'd never use it. To my own surprise, it was the first paper I reached out for, and though I didn't have a clear view of what I was going to do beforehand, when I saw this paper, inspiration hit me. I first layered some parts of the paper with a slight layer of gesso, just to make sure my paints would stick, but leaving some of the background visible. I then started masking the butterflies, first with blue, later on adding different colours. I was actually very surprised how easy it is to mask with paints, there's even no need to attach the mask to the page. I simply put it on and started painting, taking it away and putting it back on if I wanted to add another colour. I added some blues to the rest of the sky, just light touches, to give it some more depth.
I knew I wanted to use chipboard frames for the smaller pics, so I painted them in the same colours I had used for masking the butterflies. This presented the problem that the smaller pics had a beautiful frame, which left the big picture kind of lost on the LO, which is why I painted some sort of red "frame" on the background paper. It still looked a bit unbalanced, but a quick white doodled frame solved that problem.
There was still too much blue, overwhelming the LO, so I added some reds and yellows on top.
I was now ready to write down the quote, a pretty scary moment, so much can go wrong there! I decided to make straight lines and was pretty surprised to find that you can simply erase pencil lines off of the paint.
I had expected this pretty lengthy quote to go all the way down, but was left with a huge open space at the bottom. I thought about adding some flowers to give the LO some more texture (it's a pretty flat LO), but decided to stick with painting... I painted some green stripes, added some red and yellow dots and voila, my flowers were created. I actually felt proud that my childlike dabbering could turn out so perfect (in my eyes anyway LOL).

Now though I wanted this LO to be messy and chaotic, I just can't help myself, I need structure!!!!! Without some sort of frame around the LO, it just doesn't look finished in my eyes, so I started painting some of the edges in the corners and added some stamped swirls.

It's not so visible here, but on the large photo I added the first two lines of the lyrics. I deliberately used white because I wanted the lines to be in the LO, but I still wanted the main focus to be on the quote I used.

To finish it of, I wrote the title down on a cereals' box, cut it out and painted it, easy peasy.

Wow, quite a lengthy post, I think by now I've bored you long enough ... that can happen when you wake up at 5 in the morning and decide against going back to bed LOL, blame it on my insomnia!! Well, time to officially start my day and get some work done...

Love xxx Peggy