U Embrace the Weirdness ICAD

Inspired by the Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge of Make Your Own Background and Dina Wakley Media Tribe's July On the Lighter Side challenge, I pulled out my Dina Wakley paints for today's colouring for Kathy Raccosin's Daily Marker 30 Day challenge and added to a 4 x 6 index card that I had started with some leftover paint from a previous project.

I always keep a stack of index cards handy just for this purpose, when I have little bits of remaining product like pastes or paint so as to not go to waste. It makes for some interesting starting points. I already had the bubble wrap stamping in Turquoise, finger swipes of Blackberry Violet, sprayer bottle cap rings in Magenta and little touches of fruit mesh stamping in Lime. As the beginnings of the background were really bright and I wanted to upcycle a previously used baby wipe that was loaded with Dina paints in similar blue-green colours, I added gesso to push the Turquoise back. Then, I brushed on some small marks in Blackberry over the swiped area but decided they looked a bit too leopardy so I added some tiny black Xs over each before adding splatters in Black and Turquoise to bring some cohesion. 

Next, I tore the butterfly from the Dina Collage papers and adhered it in a reversed position with multi medium matte to the old paint stained baby wipe such the the "U" was in a better direction to with the sentiment. While it was drying, I doodled some circles and then added asemic writing all around to ground my butterfly focal point. Then, I fussy cut the butterfly out, deepened the colours as the turquoise and black were a bit too opaque with through the tissue. Once adhered, I gel mediumed the Dina Wakley collage words in place, inked the edges and then decided to take the card to the sewing machine for some finishing stitching.

Starting from scratch and making your own backgrounds is fun and often intuitive as you sometimes just don't know where it will end up. Be sure to stop by Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge blog here for more background inspiration from their DT and challenge participants.

TTFN,