A phoenix is a mythical bird that is a fire spirit with a colorful plumage and a tail of gold and scarlet (or purple, blue, and green according to some legends). It has a 500 to 1000 year life-cycle, near the end of which it builds itself a nest of twigs that then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix or phoenix egg arises, reborn anew to live again.
source: Wikipedia
I was working on a post for this blog, some step-by-step photos of creating a scrapbook page. And let's just say I had to destroy that layout to come up with this one:
Take the journey with me, will you?
I started the layout the same way I do with most -- photos, and a general big idea.
(Notice how my small photos are all printed on a single 4x6 sheet of photo paper. That's how I do most of my small photos.) Lovely paper and I knew I wanted to cover the left side with circles using that awesome *new* soon-to-be-released-at-CHA stencil from The Crafter's Workshop! I haven't seen a lot of CHA sneaks yet, so consider this one of the first! :)
I decided to use gesso to create a little bit of dimension.
This is what it looks like when it's dry.
Next I cut my photos apart...
...and tried some different placement choices.
I decided that I liked the photos aligned on the left side.
I liked this yellow number paper, so I decided to use it to "mat" my photos.
The yellow number paper looked just way too busy. I couldn't see the photos. So I flipped it over and discovered that the other side made the photos pop a lot more!
I cut out a wonky circle just larger than the photo grouping.
But I wasn't ready to glue stuff down. Something about the whiteness of the circles was making me crazy.
I used watercolors to color the background. Very cool look, but too busy.
I cut down the patterned paper and mounted it to a piece of dark cardstock. Better.
Now that my base is done, I'm at the embellishing phase!
I used washi tape to "hold" the photos in place. It's really just decoration.
I added some contrasting embellishments in yellow.
At the bottom I knew that I wanted to add a third flower, but the ones I had were all too big.
I made three new little flowers with punches and a button. I ended up choosing the one on the far right.
I used another brand *new* soon-to-be-released-at-CHA Crafter's Workshop stencil to create my journaling spot. (Don't you love the shapes they've chosen?) I traced it and cut it out...
...and inked the outside edges. And notice that I only used half of the journaling spot. One of my favorite things to do.
Here's what it looks like on the page:
I added my journaling and frankly, I should have just stopped. But the title letters were falling off, so I headed to the sewing machine.
And for some reason along with stitching the letters down I stitched this viney thing. It doesn't have anything to do with the story of the layout, so I'm not 100% sure why I did it. But once it was done I hated it.
I thought that maybe I could "fix" it by painting the design. Wrong. It's totally worse now. But I had one more great fix idea....
I cut the patterned paper away from the right edge of the stitched design. But I had to use Un-Du to get rid of the adhesive from under the paper and it left a huge greasy residue on the cardstock. Ugh. Worse and worse.
So I ended up cutting the circle area (where the photos and embellishments are) out. And I cut the long sewn element out. I sprayed a piece of kraft cardstock with the same circle stencil and tried this:
That sewn element is so weird and something is just not working here.
I rotated the cardstock base 90º to the right and cut apart the long green thing...
...to use as leaves, added a large flower, and a new layout was born from the ashes of the old layout.
I actually really love how the leaves turned out in the end. I may have to make some of those on purpose next time!
I ended up adding that tiny third flower I made to the top of the smallest of the pre-made Sassafras flowers.
I'm in love with this circle stencil! I think it's going to be on so many of my layouts from here on out!
And the famous stitched down letters that started the downfall of the previous layout.
It seems like this is a lesson that I learn over and over, but sometimes you need to stop trying to fix it and just start again.
Thanks for stopping by!
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P.S. Hope your art journaling is rolling along. I'll have an Art Journal Every Day post on Friday! It's not too late to join! Remember, this is a low pressure, easy and fun project. If you do it every day - great! If not - great! The point is to make an effort to take some creative time - even just ten minutes - for yourself every day!
P.P.S. Now that we have more than 270 people signed up to participate in Art Journal Every Day, I thought it might make it easier to have a place to view all that wonderful creativity. This is not to discourage you from visiting people's blogs and facebook pages, rather the intent is to increase the sense of community and, again, make this an easy project!
Here is the link. It's a free flickr group. I've put a quick tutorial on how to upload an image here.
You absolutely do not have to participate in the flickr group to be a part of Art Journal Every Day. But it's there if you want to.
Happy journaling!
