"stART With A Photo" ART Challenge #3

Hello! Welcome to our weekly art challenge. Hope you had a restful weekend and are ready to get back in your craft room and make something!

Every Monday, you can stop by the blog for a little creative prompt, so you can stART your week with a challenge.

So, without further ado, here is this week's-

stART with a Photo Challenge #3

This week's challenge is inspired by the remaining blooms in my garden. You may have guessed by now, that purple is my favorite color, so these caught my eye. I hope this inspires you to create!

This week I was inspired to try something new. I have never made a collage before, and I had some Citra-Solv papers that I made a while ago.

To make these, you just need an old Nat Geo magazine, gloves, a brush, and Citra-Solv.  Apply it liberally, close the magazine and leave it for a while to soak. Then lay the pages out and let them finish drying. More details are available on their website. This was the first time I tried it and got some great results, but the pages have been laying on a shelf for a long time waiting to be used. 

I decided to try a collage this week. I have never done one before, and thought it could be fun, which is the #1 rule for this challenge, so I knew I was on to something!

I cut the pages into various size strips, and glued them down with the Mod Podge.

This dried very fast with the window opened. I used coarse paste with a rubber spatula and brick stencil to add texture.

I let the paste dry for a few minutes, and then sprayed it with the Glimmer Mist, and set the whole thing aside.

Next, I tore some pieces of the Citra-Solv papers to make flowers and stems, and glued them to scrap paper for a firm backing.

I glued those to the background, and set it in front of the window again to dry. I grabbed my floral wire, and of course, made a flower with it! I used some new sheets of my Citra-Solv papers to make a background for the wire flower.

I used the tacky glue to attach the wire flower to the chipboard, and held it down with books for several hours to let it thoroughly dry. I used the sharpies to "doodle" an outline around all the flowers to give them some definition. I used the hot glue gun to make dots in the center of the flowers, because I wanted to see how it would look, and this was a fun project with lots of new techniques to try, so why not? Lastly, I glued some torn book pages to the top of the collage and finished it off with the reminder to "Bloom where He has planted you." Some times it is easy for me to feel isolated and think that I have nothing to offer. I need to remember that even if I can't do the things I used to, I can still be useful right where God has planted me. Sometimes that looks much different than I would have hoped for, or chosen, but it is right where I need to BLOOM and grow.

Here is my finished project for this week's challenge-

Enjoy yourself. Be creative. Share your link in the comments. Please visit some of the other participant's blogs and leave them some love too!

Thanks for playing along!

Until Next Time-

~Shari