Tattered Florals

 This is my first time making a blog, with LOTS of help from my son.  It is also the first time anyone other than my family has seen any of my "art".  When I saw Tim Holtz' Tattered Florals challenge, I just had to give it a try.  I'm a gardener, so it didn't take too much to "imagine" what I wanted this to look like, but it took alot of "courage" to take my idea to paper. I'm not a mixed media artist--just make cards.

For the background, I used water color paper (birthday gift from hubby) sprayed with Dylusions Ink Sprays (birthday gift from son), then "ghosted" some flowers using the negative spaces from the Tattered Florals I cut from Shrink Plastic (first attempt at an entry, but didn't like how it turned out, and everyone else was doing that).  Then I took that same negative "stencil" I made, and dabbed the negative space with Picket Fence  paint dabber (several coats), allowed it to dry and painted it with Dylusions using ink filled water brushes (birthday gift from daughter).  Outlined some background flowers with Sharpie pen and one with Liquid Pearls. I stamped leaves with Archival Ink, allowed it to dry and removed color in leaves with a water filled water brush.  I used Dylusions inks to add  back color using the ink filled water brushes. Added butterflies using paint dabber with a stencil I made from a butterfly punch, allowed them to dry and painted with Dylusions ink in a water brush. Stamped sentiment with Archival Ink which is drying up fast, so I had to clean this up with Sharpie pen. Punched 3 butterflies from glossy cardstock which I had painted with alcohol inks, gold mixative and blending solution and "painted" the black part with Sharpie pen to make them look like real butterflies (I hope).  Applied punched butterflies over those on background with glue at the body only and folded back wings so they would appear 3 dimensional (didn't show up well in photos).

Next came the mat.  I sprayed it with Dylusions Ink Spray (can't wait to get my hands on some of the new Distress Paints-sure to be my new love) and "ghosted" a few butterflies using a metal template stencil on the right side (don't know if they show up in the photos).  I extended a few of the flowers I had painted using the dabber on the background and outlined and painted them as I had on the background.  I also did the same with the leaves, same technique as the background.

I used the  flowers I cut using the Tattered Florals die in every way I could imagine.  Spray inked white cardstock with Dylusions Ink Sprays, Distress Inks on sanded Tim Holtz Color Core cardstock,  and alcohol inks, gold mixative and blending solution on glossy cardstock. I die cut several sets of flowers with the die from these papers and outlined some of the petals in Sharpie pen. I must give credit to my husband for the outlining idea.  Stuck them together with some additional white paper flowers from the craft store that I inked with Dylusions (love that stuff) and a spray from the water bottle.  I added a  few tiny flowers punched from inked cardstock.  I applied all these flowers last--you'll see at the end.

I did my best to line up the mat with the background paper, so the flowers and leaves would match up, using red line super tacky tape to secure the mat.  Once that stuff goes down there's no going back, so don't look for a perfect match from this beginner!

Picked out  an estate sale frame with the help of my son and daughter, framed my "artwork" (almost done) and glued on my flowers.  TaDa!  I feel like an artist for the first time in my life!  I hope you like it and hope I didn't miss any steps.  I didn't realize we needed to write it all out and take pics along the way (I didn't--would have really cut into my creativity) until I checked out some of the other blogs when trying to figure out how to upload my picture.