So Artful Challenge - Jan 13th

**GAH! I wasn't supposed to post this until Saturday, so pretend you don't see it yet. ;/ **

Time for another So Artful Challenge! This week we have the following two images to inspire us:

Optionally, we could use the colors turquoise, red, yellow or blues. I had that painted door stuck in my head, and I made this:

And once again, I need to explain. When I was a kid, my Mom used to do faux antique painting on our furniture. That's where you paint the base color you want, then go over it with a brush and a dark paint like brown or black, and it gets all streak-y-like and looks old. In theory. So that's what I wanted to do here. Didn't happen.

I started with a piece of retired SU Sage Shadow (the reason I even heard of SU lo these many years ago) and I painted about half of it with distress crackle paint that didn't crackle. Once that dried, I went over it with my dauber bottle of brown paint to dirty it up a bit. I cut part of it for my bottom layer and part of it with a scallop oval. I cut the oval into fourths, colored the edges with a Memento marker, and stuck them down with spaces between them to mimic the panels in the door photo. (Are you tired yet? I am ...)

Here's a closer-up view of the paints:

The gold-ish stuff is the uncrackled crackle paint and the streaky stuff is the brown. I kinda like how this turned out.

I used some brown Pearl Pen to make the dots between the oval parts, but most of them got covered up with the floofy flower I made out of tissue paper. I edged it with the brown paint to make it not so white:

Lastly, the sentiment. I printed L O V E on Naturals White, cut out the letters, spritzed them with gold smooch, edged the letters with the brown paint, and stuck them down. Done.

I stuck the whole thing on a Bazzil brown card base, and I actually cut out a piece of Vanilla scra ... er, remnant for the inside so someone can write in it without magic ink.

One more time, because this card took a year or two off my life:

But seriously, I never would have tried that paint stuff without the photo of that door, so this was a good exercise for me, right? RIGHT?!?!?

Okay, now it's your turn. Go check out the So Artful blog - the photos, the other DT samples, and then come play!

Thanks for stopping by!

So Artful Challenge

I'm on another DT! Whoot! I'm now part of the So Artful Challenges Design Team! I liked the challenges because they are not company-specific, which means I can mix and match all my stash, like I usually do! Sweet!

The challenge for today is to create a card inspired by the following images, with an optional theme of dragon or New Year:

 Source: http://www.saragilbaneinteriors.com/travelfordesign/2010/03/f-schumacher-chiang-mai-dragon-fabric-for-sale/

 Source: Pinterest

Source: http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/2011/12/subway-art-new-years.html

And here's my card:

  I took the obvious road and used some Japanese paper I have in my stash. I had to buy it (HAD to) when it screamed POPPY at me, and it does totally match that Poppy Parade card stock! I got the dragon image from the Silhouette online store, and cut it out of both gold and black. The black acts as a shadow, and so the gold doesn't disappear into the pretty paper. See:

 Now it's your turn! Come play with us at So Artful and link us up to your creations!

Thanks for stopping by!