-->

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Mistakes, the Creative Process, and the Spirit of Transparency

Sigh...I really debated not sharing this, but then decided it's all part of the process.  The SDC challenge this week is to create without ANY black.  Sounds simple, yes?  It's trickier than you might think.  Like Samantha, our hostess for the challenge, I almost always grab for the black first.  Here's what I came up with and how it went down.


As mentioned in previous posts, I'm doing the ICAD challenge this year.  I have a bunch of backgrounds all ready to go and grabbed a pretty blue and green one.  Sadly, I don't have a picture of what I started with, but trust me when I say it was pretty.  :)  I was hoping I could get it to show through some tissue so stamped my mermaid on the tissue first with the intent of coloring her in with alcohol markers and letting the tissue kind of bleed into the background by ripping it around the image and gluing it on.



Um...yeah.  Kind of blurry and meh.  That's okay.  I decided to stamp the mermaid on the background in a deep teal so the detail would show through the tissue.  After I stamped I dabbed on some mat medium to adhere the tissue to the image and...


Damn!  Dylusions are reactive.  I forgot the background was Dylusions sprays.  And trying to get the tissue to fit perfectly over the stamped image = One Hot Mess.  Time to regroup.

I nixed the whole tissue idea and re-stamped over the background image...imperfectly as it turns out.  I decided to make her stand out with some white pen highlights (well, stand out and camouflage the not-quite matching stamping).  Still meh.  What to do?  I pulled out my trusty ol' metallic blue gel pen (which I haven't used in YEARS).  Hey...pretty... shiny... it works!


My mermaid is funky.  This whole process was certainly funky.  AND I was forced to improvise and just go with the flow.  A good day in the studio after all.  Yay!

8 comments:

Tera Callihan said...

Thanks for sharing your story things like this seem to happen to me all the time (only mine don't end up coming out all pretty like yours!) Black is almost always my go to ink.. So this is a real tough one... I wanted to play in the last to. But been a bit crazy... Hopefully I can play some tonight.. Stay crafty my friend!!

Unknown said...

voyage to the bottom of the sea :) she turned out great ! I did this with black stamp out and she was hard then...much less what you had to contend with :) well done x

Sam & Poppy said...

Ooo this is stunning Julie!
Thanks for joining in with us at Stampotique :)

Kathi said...

Your process might have been funky, but you persevered and achieved a fabulous result. I love the shine from the metallic pen and the way she just seems to be floating in all that lovely sea color.

Thank you for playing along with us at Stampotique Designers Challenges.

Gez Butterworth said...

Great index card. Well done for not giving up, the result is just fabulous. Loving the white outlines, no one would ever know what you went through to create this gorgeous card ♥ Have fun with ICAD. Thank you for joining the Stampotique Designers Challenge. Gez xx

Sue said...

This is fab Julie, such a hard challenge isn't it lol. Thank you so much for sharing with us at Stampotique, and have a fun weekend. Sue xx

Corrie Herriman said...

I think it is beautiful, she looks so serene and because there is no black it looks like she is blending in with the ocean ! Fabulous !
Thanks for joining us over at Stampotique ! Corrie x

*Arwen* said...

Awesome Julie!
Thanks for joining us at Stampotique :)

xx Arwen