Friday, December 19, 2008

Into the Woods





I was inspired by the TAIF blog challenge this week - the Woods - so yesterday I printed out some "woods" photos of the Okeefeenokee Swamp and of Asheville NC on Dan's printer. I decided to use one of the Swamp pix as inspiration so I decided to paint a tree background. I used watercolor paper and laid down several pieces of masking tape of different sizes as masks. I painted the background with a watered down version of acrylic greens, blue and brown. then I pulled off the tape unfortunately ripping up some of the paper on the lower part of the page. I then used drybrush brown paint on the trunks and filled in with gray and black colored pencil. I then did the layout including gluing on the photo etc and hated it. I ripped off all the stuff and cut down the paper - Dan actually likes the result of just the trees so I told him he could have it for his study.
So this morning I took a different approach. Still using the Swamp pic as inspiration, I cut a tree from black paper (Scherenschnitte style). Last year at this time, Amy Karol on her http://angrychicken.typepad.com/ blog was into Scherenschnitte and recommended some books, one of which, Scherenschnitte by Susanne Schlapfer-Geiser, I got on ebay. It's an awesome book with great instructions and photos of her work (she also has a blog which is pretty cool). I freehand cut the tree using the folded paper style of work. The layout then just did itself - I thought of the stamp from the DR with the trees and I repeted the color of the little channel marker with the flower. The big button is actually wood. I went online and found that cool line of poetry - you can always depend on poets to have written something cool. I really wanted to use the dark teal of this cardstock but I only had 2 pieces of it that glued together would make 12 inches (this paper is from an old old paper company sampler that a paper saleman gave Dan when he working for a printing company). I didn't like the look of the jointure so I added scraps of vintage fabric and a scrap of black paper.
Now I need to go into the kitchen and bake Christmas cookies. Dan requested both sugar cookie cutouts and shortbread like his Scottish grandmother used to make so...

1 comment:

dani said...

Oh my goodness! I love what you did with this prompt! The painted tree background is just amazing, lovely stuff.
the layout is just... amazing, all the texure and elements are perfect!
xo,
dani (taif)