My story is a simple one

This month's prompt at Point Blank Period was to

tell your story, use three photos, and put them in a grid or photo mosaic.

I've had this Basic Grey paper in my stash for over a year now. With three boys, I rarely get to play with pink. But the PBP challenges are all about me (or you, if you play along, too). That's what I love about them. This month, I haven't been able to make too many LO's, but I didn't want to miss the PBP challenge--it's a small way to create for myself and tell my story.

I've decided that every page I do in this album will contain a butterfly.

Title: my story is a simple one

Journaling reads: girl is born. girl grows up happy. girl meets boy. girl falls in love. girl marries boy. girl has babies. girl creates life. girl makes dreams come true.

So what's your story? Write it down. Make a LO. And post it at PBP.

Charmed Life

This month, the challenge over at Point Blank Period involves letting go of your worries. I'm not a big worrier, perhaps because I don't really have too much to worry about. Perhaps that is my biggest worry.

Here's the prompt in their words:
RULES:Use something in your layout, photo or journal that is RED. Add your take of felt or string and wrap it around your way. 3 photos or a representation of the number 3. TWISTS:Make something large and make something small .. add ORANGE and a bonus color of your choice.
And here's my take:

I placed this page on the flip side of my first layout, so I can bind these prompt pages into an album (thanks, Beth for this idea!). I enlarged the photo and reduced the opacity to create the background {something large and something small}. Some swipes with the paint brush over letter stickers creates the masked effect (and fulfills this challenge at The Creative Type). There's three punched butterflies {representation of 3}, and plenty of {orange} with a splash of {bonus color} teal. And of course I had to include a fabric butterfly {red}. I have a feeling that we'll be seeing a lot of these in the stUdio--so grateful to Lolly! The only thing I'm missing is felt or string, but I'm sticking with my record of breaking the rules at least once in a challenge!
You have all month to complete the Point.Blank.Period prompt, so hop on over and get your mojo on!
Forgot to add that I listened to this song while creating this page. Hubby woke up this morning and asked why I kept playing that song over and over again last night. It fed my mojo, it spoke to me, esp. the "not to worry, 'cause worry is wasteful and useless in times like these" part, I don't know, I needed it for this piece.

The Journey

Right now, I am feeling so influenced and empowered by many people's work. I've been reading through this book, looking at this woman's work, being challenged by this new blog, and working towards this goal. This piece is a sort of culmination of all these influences with a bit of me thrown in. I listened to this song while I worked--love this song (I know I'm dating myself here!)

Anyway, here's how I did it. I started with a piece of duck cloth and applied gesso to the front and back. Apparently when you do this, the cloth shrinks (I think the fibers condense making the piece harder). I had originally cut my pieces to 8x8 to make an album when I found this out. So if you have a certain finished size in mind, be sure to cut extra to allow for shrinkage. You can trim when it's dry.

So, next, I painted the entire piece with some watercolor paints. I used plain old Crayola's for this (my own pack that I don't allow the kiddos to use--I know, mean mommy!). I used lots of water to mute the tones. I didn't even wait for this to dry before proceeding to the next part--I have no patience for that stuff. I took out my Hot Marks tool; had to dust it off quite a bit. Now comes the fun part. I dug out a hot shade of pink from the boys' crayon box (they won't miss it, it's pink!) and melted it onto the canvas. The drips made lots of cool splatters, and I found that if you shake the tool at the canvas you can get a mist of smaller splatters. Be sure to protect your work surface (but if you didn't like me, the wax does cool and peel right off the laminate, thank goodness!) Truth be told, I got a little carried away with this part, and when I stood back to look at my piece, it looked like a wad of bubble gum had just exploded. Well, it was straight to the laundry room with paper towels and the iron (which also needed dusting off). I simply lay a PT over the wax spots and swiped the iron over it. The wax melted and was absorbed into the PT leaving behind a soft bit of color. Oooh, me likey!

For the next part I tried out a little technique from Claudine's book noted above: packing tape transfer. I wasn't sure that this would work (I tried the heat transfer technique first and it flopped). But, ooh-la-la! it worked amazingly! Here's what you do: Find the image you want to transfer; for me it's the JOURNEY clip art that I downloaded from Rhonna's blog above. Print it with a laser printer, or make a copy at a print shop (inkjet won't work here--the inks will run). Burnish a piece of packing tape over the top of the image, then flip it over, mist with a water bottle--give it a good soak--and then rub the paper off. This was like magic to me. You will be left with the image on your piece of packing tape--so cool!

A bit of typing in word to create the journal strips, a die cut butterfly (SU! Sizzix) that I had already made for a prior project, and a stamped flourish blinged with sticky rhinetsones and Stickles. The dangle on the butterfly is an old earring that I was missing the match to (knew I was saving that for something!).

My challenge to you: pull out your paints, crayons, and old jewelry and create something beautiful. Add a photo of you, and some words of meaning and hang it where you can see it everyday.

Enjoy!!