March TIF

The challenge for this month was to notice small things we often overlook. I love the way the raindrop looks in the center of the Lupin leaf, so that is what I did. I made this project 4 x 6", because the call was for small things.

I want to explore new techniques for each months TIF, so this month I did the same.

I started with a 5 x 7 piece of muslin and I traced the lupin leaves on with a marking pencil. Next I dug out the oil pastels I bought years ago, never used, and colored in the leaves with a green and then a brown, and then in some places a light green. I blended the colors with a small stencil brush. I wasn't that happy with the look, but I went ahead and sewed a dark olive border on all the leaves and then used a light olive for the stem and center.

It looked better, but still not right, the muslin was too plain. I picked up some glitter mist at a rubber stamp show last month, opal, so I sprayed that over the entire postcard. It gave the leaves a soft finish and blended the colors all together.

It didn't do much for the muslin though. I decided to give the muslin an olive wash with translucent fabric paint. Turned out a pale yellow-green, but made the muslin look better, you could even see a little of the glitter mist on the fabric. I spread it over the leaves along with the fabric and it made the piece more cohesive. OK, still kind of bland, I thought about using another color of paint and splotching it on the fabric, but I decided that would be too much. Instead I took a blue prisma color pencil and drew some crosshatched lines, very lightly over the background.

That was better, I got out my heat crystals and placed a blue crystal in the center of each leaf, to show the reflected sky in the drop. I looked at it for a while and decided that it needed something else, so I took some flat green crystals and scattered them on the piece and that was the end.

After all is said and done, this turned out almost as I had pictured it. I am pleased with the result. March hasn't been the best month for me, so I still have to put the postcard on the back, and zigzag the edges of the postcard. When the postcard is completed, I spray a light cover of acrylic sealer over the top. It protects the materials that are not water resistant, and keeps the card a little brighter going through the mail. After I do that I will replace one of the pictures with the totally finished piece. It might take me a little while to get that done, so consider me done with this months TIF. Thank you everyone for your comments on my last months TIF, I will be better at answering you comments this month, and I will blog my project more often. I had decided earlier this month what I wanted to to, but I didn't do anything on the project until this weekend.