In my garden - shabby panel

 In My Garden

The Great Outdoors CVC #2 July

Well I'm out and about in my garden for the second challenge for July at Country View Crafts and I've created another shabby panel. I also seem to have gone somewhat French (see later info in the post about this!) - that came about because Tim has some bee images that have been labelled in French, so I clicked with it and brought out a bit of school learnt French, but checked it on Google as well :0)

So in my garden I have bees and that was true when my Olive tree was flowering a few weeks ago - there were bumblebees buzzing away and flitting like mad from flower to flower. It surprised me because the flowers are so, so small! I have lots of flowers and bushes, I have raspberries, blueberries, tomatoes, courgettes, cucumber, runner beans, sweetcorn, roses, dahlias, fuchsias, hydrangeas and more - and I love it. I've also had lots of blackfly and slugs and snails, caterpillars, but very few butterflies and ladybirds sadly. 

Finished Panel

So the time to create this panel took longer than I had anticipated but read on and you'll find out why,

Process steps

Two pieces of paper adhered to card and brayered with white acrylic paint to tone it down.

Texture paste scraped through Tim's stencil for texture and left to dry. Water spritzed over the stencilling and walnut stain distress ink mixed with water on craft mat puddled through using a paint brush. Neat ink then painted over a few of the stencilled shapes to give variations of tones. Any puddled colour was splattered over, but most of it soaked in and can't really be seen.

Pieces for the focal point layers were collected together, much of it in bags as leftovers from previous projects. I keep lots of the bits and pieces to use for collages and toppers. The only things I had to do were stamp the bees (on leftover background) and create the text pieces on the computer. I also gathered a butterfly rub-on and embossed on vellum to add to the specimen slide.

The bees are stamped with an old Tim Holtz stamp mounted on wood. It was fabulous using it again and to give it an outing.

I layered up all the elements and lost the butterfly duh! But found a little one in the field notes snippets I could replace it with. Buuuuutttt .... I wasn't happy with it, there were imbalances - like the left side is so dark whilst the other side is very light, to me that took away from the focus of the bees and garden. So I had to have a play.........

This was what appeared. I got rid of the black flowers, added from the wildflowers dies and also added a ladybird peeking out at the bottom. Although there is a depth imbalance on either side now, I think I can live with that because now the whole piece is lighter and looks more like a garden.

Here you can see the contrasts and differences. I'm happy.

NEXT DAY

Is it a Bee or is it a Wasp?

I hadn't glued anything down before I went to bed and today everything changed!!! (Typically Me!!).

I brayered over the brown stencil texture to lighten it more, 

I didn't like the yellow on the bees (or wasps?).

Because I think this is more likely to be a wasp the French text seemed inappropriate so I made some in English.

I also stamped the panel mount with text from the Entomology set.

I added some snippets.

Now I'm even happier.

xx

Supplies

TH Sizzix dies - Specimen, Entomology, Wildflowers

TH Stampers Anonymous stamp - an old wooden stamp of a bee?, Entomology CMS328

TH Mediums - Collage Medium Matte

Th Distress inks - Walnut Stain, Wild Honey, Scattered Straw

TH Snippets - Field Notes, Curator

TH Small Talk stickers

White acrylic paint, White Gesso

Background papers and text - Tim Holtz and my own