Flower Queen

Well it's been a few days since I posted, but that's because I've been busy doing all these wonderfully fun art challenges, I just found out about.

I'm doing three this week, and this Flower Queen picture is the first one to be completed.

I made it for the Inspire Me Thursday challenge. The theme this week was yellow.

I really had fun with this. First of all, I love yellow, because it brightens up everything. Right away I knew I had to use the yellow body. I've been dying to use it in something as it was such a cool picture and this was the perfect opportunity. You may not be able to tell, but the body, is made out of little glass looking squares which I thought were really cool.

Originally I was going to use the head it came with and give it funky facial features, but that idea was canned, when I messed up her red flower hat I was going to use as well. Note to self: Do not glue collage pieces down until absolutely sure!! Unfortunately I glued the flower down right away, when I should have cut it properly and put it over the head for a hat. Oh well live and learn.

Turned out better anyway I think, as I found the Marilyn face lying around that just happened match.

This is the first time I've done a double page, and I really like it. The other thing I did differently was trying a new background technique. Usually I just slop watered down acrylic over the page.

But this time, inspired by a Suzi Blu video I saw, I put down a layer of gesso, then used my Neo 2 crayons to scribble over the pages. I brushed water over them in some places and smeared some yellow and white acrylic paint over it too. I then found some cool powdery stuff (don't know what it was) left over from my stamping days and sprinkled that over the pages as well.

I'm really pleased with the effect. While not as bright as I originally wanted, it definitely gives the pages a more textured look that is more interesting to the eye I think.

One more final note about this page is that I used a lot of embellishments, which I really think make it shine. The necklace was my husband's idea, and I'm so glad he suggested it, cause it's one of my favorite elements. I made that out of the extra beads I have lying around. Finally I'm using them!

I'm really surprised once again, how the pages come together to form a picture. When I first stared, I just had the yellow body and an idea for a flower hat. I spent ages, trying to find the perfect borders and collage pieces, (something I really must learn not to do) and nothing worked.

I finally gave up and put it away for the night. I find this is the best thing to do when you are frustrated with a project. Put it away and look at later. Half the time I come back and find what I had really wasn't so bad after all. The other half, I find I come back to the project with fresh ideas, which is what happened with this piece.

Once I put the mushroom with the rabbit in there, the idea for a garden came about, then a new idea for a flower "hat", and presto the Flower Queen was born!