Enjoying the Journey

Hi all!  So, we're pretty much straight back in with inspiration piece number two for my Word Play theme over at Country View Challenges this month.

You can find all the challenge details if you click the links, along with a wealth of inspiration from my amazing team-mates.

(There's been a flurry of posts here at Words and Pictures in the last couple of days, so do go for a scroll if you'd like to see what else I've been up to.  All the links are at the end of this post to make life easier!)

And here it is - blues, greens, crackle, and a glossy "enamelled" sentiment with dragonfly to match, just alighting or just taking off...

This was one of those pieces where I set out on the creative journey without a destination in mind.. but I certainly enjoyed myself along the way!

I started with an idea for using the Tim Holtz die of the same name as the challenge: WordPlay.

I cut myself lots of thick card letters and glued them down to a large wooden ticket shape (I think it's intended to be part of a wooden album - I got some of them really cheaply at a craft fair).

I coated the whole thing with matte medium to seal the cardboard so that it wouldn't go soggy and peel.










Next stage was to add lots of Distress Paint colours, marbling as I went.  I started out, in fact, thinking that this would be a much fierier affair - pinks and oranges galore.













But when push came to shove, my blues and greens resurfaced, and I just went over the whole thing with a whole different palette!  I also did a little bit of inking with Mowed Lawn Distress Ink to highlight some of the surfaces.








I next added a coat Rock Candy Distress Paint and left it to get on with crackling while I tried to work out what would go over the background I'd created.  

This is quite often the way with me... I play around and come up with a background I really like, and then have to work out how not to cover it up too much!







My first abortive attempts involved stamping a large sentiment on acetate to go over the top, but it wasn't quite working for me... so that's when I reached for my new Layered Dragonfly die and folder.

I cut and embossed him in plain white card, and then got busy with some powders and the heat tool (and all this in that steamy heatwave we were having)... 










I started with two layers of clear UTEE, and then did one coat of Wow Bright White powder over the top.  

I sprinkled a tiny bit of Ranger's Antiquities Verdigris powder onto that to tie in with the blue greens of my letter texture background.





The UTEE makes it easy to reheat and remould the wings, so I was able to get them dramatically poised for flight...

And the curly antennae were created out of some more notebook bindings, saved and hoarded for just this kind of thing!











Since this challenge is about keeping words at the centre of things, I needed a nice bold phrase or quote to go with all that wordplay in the background...

So I ran some more white card through with the Stacked Artful Words Decorative Strip Die and selected "enjoy the journey" as the one which worked best with my wandering dragonfly.








I gave it the same "enamelling" treatment as the dragonfly himself - two coats of UTEE, one of Bright White and a sprinkling of Verdigris.

I love the dimensional glossy look, and that shimmer of turquoise from the Verdigris powders.

By this time, the crackle was all crackled, and I used some of the new DecoArt Antiquing Cream in Titanium White to highlight the cracks.

It also had the effect of tying in with the fresh bold white of the words and the dragonfly.










I was enjoying the Verdigris so much, that I decided to try it on a couple of white paper roses...

It was pretty tricky getting the embossing ink down into all the crevices.  I used a Perfect Medium Brush Pen in places to help.











But I like the finished effect.  You certainly wouldn't know at first glance that the flowers are made of paper!












The flowers needed something to "root" them a bit - somewhere to rest - so I cut some pieces of Tim Holtz's Garden Greens out of thick white card, and did a bit of text stamping on them with one of my Unity stamps before inking around the edges.

Some strong white paper ribbon will do the job of hanging up my wordy wooden dragonfly ticket.







It definitely needs to hang somewhere in the sunlight to catch the sparkle on all that crackle and the glossy dragonfly wings!

So I hope this will inspire you to indulge in some Word Play of your own and join us this month over at Country View Challenges.  Thanks so much for dropping in.  As I mentioned, it's been a crazy few days here - so in case you want to catch up here are the links.

You'll find my Artistic Stamper art journalling here, and my first Country View Challenges tag here.  Oh, and there's also my farewell piece for Artistic Outpost here.  Not forgetting my Calico Roses yesterday.  See... busy, busy, busy.  At least it's all fun, though - I'm so grateful for a life which lets me play even when I'm working.

And this week I should finally, finally have a bit of breathing space (in between Shakespeare workshops) to catch up with all of you!

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
Ernest Hemingway

I'm entering this in Who's the Boss (looking for dry and/or heat embossing) over at Craft Hoarders Anonymous.  With all that powder, as well as the embossing folder in the Layered Dragonfly, I've got a bit of both!
And I'd like to pop it in over at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where this time my J is for... journey.