Great Outdoors with Maja Design

Hello friends!

Popping in on a Thursday afternoon to share my latest project for Maja Design. My fingers were all purple and white after completing it, but what I really want are green fingers! Let me tell you why.

Firstly, here is the project:

I'm using the Antligen collection from Maja Design, which is really all about Springtime and the earth coming back to life with beautiful flowers after a long cold winter. Well, the photo I chose was one I took of my favourites - Lavender Augustafolia, but that was in autumn. Now, the climate here in Singapore is really not suitable for growing lavender because of the over-bearing humidity which kills off the plant by encouraging root rot. In my last tries, I managed to get the seeds to germinate and sprout, and then suddenly they all died off after a month. Then someone gifted me a pot of blooming ones, but they all never survived more than two months even with full sunlight and careful watering. Bear in mind I'm someone who can actually kill cactus.... So when we booked ourselves into the Lavender and Berry farm on our Perth trip, you can imagine how gaga I went over the gorgeous flowers in bloom. And it was effortless for them. *Green eyes* Now I'm trying to grow some cherry tomatoes but they all seemed to have stopped at the seedling stage. Maybe I should give up and just paint my fingers green instead.

So my long story aside and back to the project. I've kept my paper layering to a minimum and focused a lot more on the background details this time round.

More in the close-ups:

Back to my usual style of tucking in those gorgeous Blue Fern Studios chipboards in between my papers. I have strips of green and purple paper from the Antligen collection, as well as some fussy cut flowers from the collection to fill out the composition nicely. The chipboard I colored with Shimmerz Inklingz, 13@rts Purple Metallic and Lavender Matt paints, and adhered clear Distress Glitter on the edges.

A closer look at what I did for the background - stenciling and doodling around the relief, sprinkling of transparent and black microbeads, splatters of Twinkling H2O and Purple Metallic Paint from 13@rts. And finishing it all off with the Splash! acrylic inks, also from 13@rts.

Hidden details behind the photo with random stamping, a painted metal water fountain with little roses tucked in. It's starting to look like an English garden! My title is "Great Outdoors", also from BFS and it describes so well my love for everything under the sun.

Filling out the bottom part of the composition nicely with another piece of Blue Fern chipboard. I painted with two different shades of green and sprinkled on clear microspheres when the paint is wet. And just in case, I sealed the beads with a thin layer of gel medium. 

 So that's all I have for today. Before you go, I would love to hear some of your gardening wins and woes too!

love,