Artastic December Challenge

Another month has gone by ... I can't believe it's december already ... Christmas is just a few weeks away. Time sure flies! Another month, another challenge over at the Artastic blog, and this one sure is a challenge!!! I struggled with it a bit at first. We were to draw inspiration from Botticelli painting "The Mystical Nativity".

I know, it's a tough one!!! And if this wasn't hard enough, here are the criteria which you should try to work into your LO:

• A stable (1 point)
• Angel(s) (2 points)
• Gold embossing (3 points)

It took me quite some time to get a clear image in my head of what I wanted to do, but once I did, it came together beautifully (whole page of the sneak peeks I showed you earlier)

The picture shows my 1 month old son (picture taken 11 years ago) and our German Shepherd Jenny, who passed away several years ago. She was extremely protective of my kids, and this picture means a lot to me. It really shows her wonderful and kind nature.

I painted a "brick structure" - which represents the stable - as the background. I first drew the outlines of the wall, covered the inside with gel medium, and put ordinary sand over it. After letting it dry completely, I painted over it with acrylic paints. The sand really gives it a "bricklike" texture. Here's a close up:

I copied the angel from an image by a very talented artist named DJ, you can find her blog here and here's the work I copied the angel from:

Isn't that just gorgeous!???!!! Thank you so much DJ for letting me use your image, I appreciate it.

The texture of the wings (and also the hair) was once again done with mere gel medium and a palette knife. I just smeared a lot of gel medium inside the drawn lines, and used the palette knife to create some distinct lines. Once it was dry, I gave it a ground colour and later on dry brushed over it with white acrylic paint. Because of the "lines", only the top is covered completely with white, still showing the underlying colour. This really is a wonderful technique to add some texture to a page, it looks fantastic, it really does, and it's so easy!!

And I used stamps on my LO!!! Yeah me!!! Those of you who have been reading my blog, know that although I love the look of stamps on a page, I myself am terrified of stamping. And stamping now reminded me of why again. The first stamp I used was the one on the left hand/bottom side of my picture. I placed it too much over the photo and it turned out too dark!! After my heart stopped racing at 200 beats a minute, I frantically began to dry brush gesso over it, to tone it down a bit. Thankfully, it kind of worked, though I'm still not too happy with the result. As if I hadn't done enough damage, I decided to use my new stamp (oh yes, I don't let my fear of stamps stop me from buying them LOL) on the right hand side of the picture. I inked up my stamp, more or less tried to position it where I wanted it to be, and ... it fell out of my hand, ink faced down!!!!!! Hence the smears on the top of my pic. Now my heart stopped beating alltogether!! After settling down from the shock, I gave it another try though, and I'm quite happy with that attempt. Will I be stamping again any time soon ... I think so, I'm kind of a stubborn girl :-)))

All in all, no matter how hard a challenge might seem at first, if you set your mind to it, you might just create something you really love. So why not give it a try??!! We all have some angels to scrap, don't we? I look forward to seeing you try... Be sure to visit the Artastic blog to see my fellow DT members' take on this challenge!

Christina scrapped!!!

I'll leave you with a LO my youngest daughter Christina made. She wanted to document her comfort blanket from when she was a toddler and how she used to be a thumbsucker...

She managed to use just about all of the bling I own on one single page LOL. As is typical for Christina, she asked me what I would do, and then did the entire thing her own way LOL. However, she did it all on her own, didn't ask for help once, and I think it turned out great! Not bad for an 8 year old, right???

Talk to you later
xxx Peggy