Sometimes it Takes a Few Tries

I'm back in town and totally jet lagged!  Can't wait to share some photos -- but I've got hundreds of e-mails!  Eeeek!  Please be patient if you've written recently!  In the meantime, here's a post I hope you'll enjoy....

Sometimes I'm in the zone and I can get the image in my head to translate to the paint and paper in front of me.  Sometimes not.

Today is a not.

The Prima design team gals were challenged to scrap a photo of another girl on the team (randomly assigned).  I drew the lovely and talented Stacy Cohen.

Here is as far as my first attempt got me:

I had a lot of fun putting together the patterned paper "shingles"...

...but then there wasn't anywhere to go from there.  I couldn't figure out how to get flowers and crystals and all that good stuff onto the page.  So I decided to move on.  I printed a smaller version of the photo and ended up with this:

Pretty background, but the photo is just sitting there.  Let's try to integrate it a bit more.

Better.  But something is still off. 

What is it? Something about her black hair is so intense....

Hmmm, let's try changing the border color and adding a few watercolor droplets.

Better.

It's still not quite what I wanted it to be, but much, much better.

What's missing?

Well, journaling is missing. But the assignment was no journaling.  Hmmmm...aha!  I need something on the right to balance the left.

Urgh!  Now it's jut so busy and messy and...sigh.  I mean, the page is full of fun techniques:
 


I painted a few of the felt pieces with gesso and then watercolor.  You can see that the edge of the photo also got a colorful edge.

The flower was created from layers of paper flowers painted and folded.  The tag is a scrap of packaging.

But techniques are not enough.  I poked and prodded and tired lots of little changes, but it just wouldn't work for me.  Check out the evolution:

The little fixes just couldn't get at the bigger problem.  So I decided to just go in a completely different direction.

And now I love it!

I took the single photo I had been given and cropped it interestingly to get the four photos you see on the page.

A splash of watercolor paint mixed with a big Prima crystal an pearl swirl.

I did steal the tag off of the previous failed layout.

And the colorful flowers were leftover from the previous failed attempt as well.  Painted with gesso and watercolor paints.

It took me a few tries.  I had to just throw out my original ideas, but I'm glad to say that I finally got there.  Sometimes it takes a few tries.

See the whole "scrap someone else" post from Prima here.

Thanks for stopping by!