Those holiday pictures Part 1 - Perfect Moment

Hello friends, how is everyone?

I'm so glad to be back on blogosphere; the past few weeks have been extremely busy with assignment deadlines plus, we were away for a wonderful holiday!

It was an awesome 6 days in Okinawa and I was the happy photographer snapping away pics of the gramps and grandkids. These guys spend so much time together but I've hardly gotten any decent pictures of them. This one's one of my favourites and I've scrapped it as part of my DT work for Blue Fern Studios. I was inspired by one of my favourite artists Stacey Young, and scrap-lifted one of her layouts.

I must have been living under a rock because until 3 weeks ago, I didn't know there was such a thing as transparent gesso. And boy was I over the moon when I found it! It basically allowed me to achieve the same fluid effects for my paints without the white-washed background that you get with regular gesso, so the patterned paper shows up very nicely. And this technique was what I used for the beautiful Blue Fern Garden papers sitting quietly in a parcel, waiting for my flight to land at the airport. 

Some close-ups:

I spent quite a bit of time on these chippies and it was really fun playing with the Lindy Stamp Gang Magicals. The colors are rich and brilliant, yet soft at the same time. I painted the chippies with them and smeared some Shimmerz Texturez after the paint dried. The paper layers were cut-outs from the paper "Calling Cards" in the Blue Fern Garden collection. Michelle Singh did such a fabulous job with this line and it is just the right kind of design and color I would buy for my shabby mixed media projects. The paper's also heavier, which takes mediums and paints very well in that it doesn't warp. 

For the Petite Window piece, I patted texture paste on it to give a rough look. I did the same for the Country picket fence in the background and for a moment, felt like Tom Sawyer trying to paint his fence, except that I don't think I want to share the job with other people :p

See how nicely the floral designs in the paper shows up under the blue and green paints? For these, I used both the Magicals and the lovely paints from 13@rts.

Painting and stamping and masking on the background. What's not to love about mixed media? The title is cut-out from "Calling Cards" - that paper must have been designed for me because there are just so many beautiful word and card elements to use.

This is what I have to share for now, do drop by again to check out Part 2 of my holiday photos which I've put in a mini album made from more Blue Fern goodies.

Until then, happy scrapping!