Guest Designer at 13@rts, and a double challenge entry!

Good day everyone! If you're checking in for the first time, welcome! If you've been a regular visitor, I hope you like the new facelift! There's a reason for this, and I hope to reveal it soon :)

Today's post is a very busy one because I've packed so much into one. Firstly, I've won first place (together with the super-talented Georgia Heald) over at 13 arts and I've been invited as a guest designer for their March challenge. And here it is: to create something (LO, card, journal whatever) with a mixed media background, but without any patterned paper. Sounds like fun eh? And since I have quite a bit of time on hand, I decided to combine this with the March challenges over at Scrap Around the World and the newly remade The Color Rooms:



That's the mood board from SATW, and as my son would say, "Mummy! Your favourite color!"

And that's the palette for this month. Quite perfectly matched! And this is my take on the three challenges:

I was clearly inspired by the pink and flowers from the SATW moodboard as this LO featured the cherry blossoms I shot ad nauseum while in Okinawa. The paint brush made me decide to work with the lovely matt paints from 13@rts into my background to create a watercolor effect. 

The typewriter.... now, that's a whole story by itself. Typewriters always make me want to do journaling and I was quite filled with emotion during the creation of this layout. Some of you may know, "A dream of spring" is the last book in the "Song of Ice and Fire" series, a fantasy epic I've been following both in print and on screen (it's also known as Game of Thrones). It has yet to be published, but it promises that all the conflicts and war we have seen and read so far will be resolved and at long last, the cold dreary winter will end (as the wise men in the series like to say, "a long summer always meant a long winter to come"). Plus, there was the on-going conflict in Ukraine and the subsequent invasion by Russia. I've never been through war, but I've seen enough documentaries and read enough war stories to not wish it upon anyone. Just like the blooming of the cherry blossoms means that winter is almost over and Spring is near, I pray that the situation will come to a peaceful end. Our world is full of beauty; if only people can stop surrounding themselves with violence and live for what is beautiful and precious. Besides, I'm also quite sure my friends in the USA and Canada experiencing the polar vortex have had way too many dreams of spring!

I've pretty much followed the color palette as well and as for the recycled junk mail, I didn't really have any. But I was inspired by the little pile of letters with stamps on the typewriter in the SATW mood board so I used the Polish stamps that came with my 13@rts parcel. Lovely!

Some closeups:

Gorgeous Blue Fern Studios chippy in the background (Circle Group panel) which I snipped off a small bit. I re-used the in-between circle chippies by painting and stamping them.

Texture fun! Resist canvas, dry-wall tape, texture paste and some tiny beads in the circles. Some stamping and heat-embossing on a piece of product package which I used to mat the photo.

A very meaningful haiku for journalling - "the cure for the raucous world, the late cherry blossoms".

And these are what I used to create my layout:

That's all I have for now. I hope to be back within the week with some exciting news, and also a chance to win something (again!). Until then, I leave you with a poem my 4-yo has been reciting:

春 眠 不 觉 晓,

处 处 闻 啼 鸟。

夜 来 风 雨 声，

花 落 知 多 少。 

love,

ps. see here for translation and meaning.