/* */ Beulah Bee

August 06, 2014

Cultivate


I've made a lot of nature-inspired tags lately so why stop now? Prompted by this week's SSS Monday blog challenge "family" theme, I found this excellent photo from my great aunt's collection.

I don't know their names but my relatives lived on a farm in Nebraska and I think it's fun that all the boys are barefoot and wearing bib overalls. In the original photo they were standing on a front porch.

With stalks of corn and advice taken from a gardening manual, this tag was made by creating a background with distress inks, cutting and pasting a copy of the photo, drawing and painting the plants, and hand-lettering the text.

August 03, 2014

Mariquinha

The image of this lovely lady, Mariquinha Junqueira, was found here and was my inspiration for creating a tag to link-up to the Tim Holtz blog.

His monthly tag for August has challenged participants to create something that showcases our own personal muse and reminds us that each of our artistic voices is unique and we must embrace it.

He also shared some great techniques including a personal favorite which is taking advantage of the resist quality of his tissue tape to retain white space.


My technique was similar to his--I used tissue tape, distress stains and Tim's burlap stencil with texture medium. The house (LaBlanche) was stamped on to deli paper which also has a resist quality. A bit of colored pencil was used to create a shadow under Mariquinha's dress to ground her to the page (keeps the image from looking like she's floating).

I love finding images that inspire me and then trying to place them in a composition using stamps and other collage elements. I created this tag for the pure joy of it and give thanks to Tim for a great suggestion and for time well spent.

Jewelweed


A late entry to Simon's Monday blog challenge, this "J" inspired tag pays tribute to another medicinal plant called Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) whose clear liquid, found in the stems, is a useful tonic for mosquito bites, bee stings and exposure to poison ivy.

There are lots of layers in this tag and it has everything to do with changing my mind (a lot) trying many different effects and essentially just making it up as I went along.

Click to Enlarge
The leaves and bee with shield were gel medium transfers. There's washi tape in both corners on the left side and I also used a Heidi Swapp script stamp.

Distress inks, gesso, gel pens and acrylic paint also played a substantial role in the process along with plenty of sand paper and gel hand-sanitizer which make great erasers! And it all started on a base of text from a book.

I really enjoy working in mixed-media and collage because mistakes are easily remedied and experimentation is such a big part of the fun. Sometimes, I'll create an effect and have no idea how it happened and could never repeat it again, now matter how hard I tried.

I can't help but thank Tim Holtz (and others) for the distress revolution because intentional imperfection is a great fall-back when things don't go just right.