Brave and True

Hello all!  I'm absolutely delighted to be a guest over at the Bleeding Art challenge today, thanks to them liking my Need for Neutrals tag enough to make it their winner last month.  (I really wanted to call this post Bleeding Butterflies in their honour, but my better angel intervened!)  They are starting a new theme today and it's everybody's favourite: Anything Goes.  So here's what I created... a pair of butterfly panels.

I've been struggling a bit to get back into the mixed media swing of things at my craft desk since getting back from New York a month and a half ago, so for this I thought I would just grab some things that make me happy and put them all together!

In fact, the backgrounds of my panels come from a failed project which had landed in the rubbish bin.  I mentioned when I shared my Book It notebooks that it had taken me a couple of goes to get there.












One of the book failures was an attempt with the Wrapped Journal die.  I hated the exterior I ended up with, but I did like the inner covers.  So I fished it back out of the bin and cut out the two wide panels to use for this project.

I added some Design Tape and some stamping...











... but then decided I didn't much like the stamping so I covered most of it up with some sponged gesso and some embossing powder.














I was blowed if I was going to throw the panels away again!  And I do really like the resulting additional texture from the Weathered White powder.













I took a pre-cut greyboard clock face and cut it in half, and then played with some crackle.  It was DecoArt crackle paint, with some Antiquing Cream rubbed in to the resulting cracks...












... and later I rubbed on some Quin Gold Fluid Media Acrylic paint for a rusty look in places.














Some screwhead brads, altered with alcohol ink and watery white paint, add a nice metallic touch to the corners, and they make the panels look a bit more substantial too.














I got this lovely tangled "moss" in a sale ages ago...
















... so I thought it was about time it came out to play.















And the silk sari ribbon makes me very happy when I catch sight of it in my stash, so I thought I should start putting that onto a creation or two too. 












I think I've only used it once before now, or perhaps twice.

I love how it looks wrapped around the moss, keeping it in place (along with some glue).













There's some more metal in the form of the skeleton leaves.  I love that you can mould them for a more dimensional look.
















And again the alcohol inks and watery white paint bring a great distressed look to the metal.













Perched on top of it all are a pair of the Tim Holtz Tattered Butterfly diecuts (in the smaller size).















They're smooshed in similar colour Oxides and DIs as the original panel backgrounds.














But since the panels were done on gesso'd design paper and the butterflies are on a standard Manila tag, they do have a slightly different look...















... which hopefully makes them pop against all that busy-ness in the background.














I took a couple of the Idea-ology Quote Chips and gave them a coat of DecoArt One-Step Crackle Glaze.















I love the aged look it gives them - adding a slightly different mixed media twist to a generic product can sometimes make all the difference to a project.














I really enjoy the dimensional collaging of these.















There may not be much left to see of the original backgrounds I was moved to remove from the rubbish bin...














... but they're very pleasing to hold in your hands and twist and turn to catch sight of different angles.









And you can position them so that the clock face is broken apart so that you almost don't register it  (as in the first photo in the post), or you can position them the other way round so that it becomes whole again, and therefore much more present.

I hope you've enjoyed my bleeding butterflies for the Bleeding Art Challenge, and I hope you'll be inspired to play along in their Anything Goes challenge this month.

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

I'd like to join in with the Happy Hour at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge... with the crackled clock measuring the time, this reminded me of how many happy hours it's possible to spend at the craft table, at a time when I really needed reminding!



I'd also like to play along at Frilly and Funkie, where we are allowed to follow our heart's desire in a theme called I love it because...  I love this because it's full of my favourite things, but mostly because it gave me a much-needed nudge back towards the mixed media playfulness I've been missing
And I'm joining in with the Anything Mixed Media Goes theme at the Creative Artiste Challenge Blog too
At the Mix It Up Challenge Blog they are also playing Anything Goes with a Mixed Media twist to use more than two different media - I've got inks, Oxides, paint, crackle, alcohol ink and embossing powder, so I'm in!