Happy Spring Birthday – Creative Artiste April Challenge #114 Guest Designer

Hello friends and Happy Friday!

While you are reading this, I will be off to another physio appointment for the dreaded knee problem.  I am really hoping for good news as it’s been way too long to be hobbling around like an old lady, when I’m not an old lady!

So today I am Guest Designer over on the Creative Artiste Challenge blog where it is all mixed media all the time.  I obtained my GD spot by winning challenge #108 with this cute cat project.

today’s art. . .

I’m very happy to share this much-larger-than-intended card with you today as my Guest Designer project for Creative Artiste’s Challenge #114 this month.  This card was made with my friend’s birthday in mind, as both she and I have a birthday in the Spring (northern hemisphere) though it used to be Autumn when I lived down under!

I wanted to used a few Tim Holtz Sizzix dies to make a Spring themed card and so I went with this set of cute bunnies with carrots.  I used various Distress inks, oxides and Pitt artist pens to do all the colouring.  I also used an embossing folder and some brown cardboard to cut out something that I would make into a basket.  At this stage I was thinking about bunnies popping out of baskets, but the idea was still vague.
While I was still pondering that, I made my background.  Whatever else it was going to look like, I knew I wanted a nice blue sky background like you would see on a crisp Spring day.  To change it up a bit, I used crackle glaze and with some different coloured paints underneath – two browns and a white.  I ended up choosing the white and blue background.

It was probably around this time that I realised that everything I wanted to fit on a card, wasn’t going to fit on a regular sized card, so this card ended up being around about A5 size, maybe a bit taller – approx 9″ high by 7″ wide.  I started playing around with all of the elements and started to see the scene come together.  I needed a fence and some flowers.  The flowers were cut using another (older) Tim Holtz Sizzix die and then coloured with Distress Inks. The fence was made from white card run through a woodgrain embossing folder and then cut into fence palings.  I tried different options for the bunnies holding up the Happy Birthday sign – another reason I needed a bigger card!

At one point I had the basket suspended at the top of the card, with balloons tied to each side.  I really liked that idea but I just couldn’t make it fit on the card, so the hot air balloon basket became a regular basket on the ground – or maybe they just landed!  Some things on the card are removable – the bunny and the carrots in the basket, the bunnies holding the “Birthday” at the bottom of the card, and the “Happy” carrot sign at the top.  I added some splattery paints and edged the card with some brown acrylic paint.  I had to attach my “card front” to part of an Amazon envelope and write on the back, instead of making a card that opens up.  So now it can be used as Spring decor and my friend could remove the “Happy Birthday” if she wanted to and just leave “Spring” or “Happy Spring” instead.

Creative Artiste is a Mixed Media challenge blog so I made sure to use lots of different mediums on my page.  The full list of what is used is at the bottom of the post along with the link to the challenge.

Hope you feel inspired to join in the challenge this month.

Let me know what you think in the comments.   As always, thanks for reading!Ingredients
mixed media paper, brown cardstock, distress paints, crackle glaze, paperartsy fresco paint, distress inks, archival inks, pitt artist pens, sizzix dies, sizzix embossing folders, black glaze pen, hessian twine, collage medium, glue,
In the end, I used more Sizzix dies that I planned, here are the names: Flower Field 665369 , Carrot Bunny 665213 , Alphanumeric Stretch Lower 665207, Side order Celebrate 666861, Treat Bag 663096, Bigz XL Letterboard. Embossing folders: Intertwine 664759, Lumber 662718,

Challenges

Creative Artiste – Challenge #114