Our challenge today at Crafty Cardmakers is to create your own background. As usual you can enter anything you like as long as it follows this theme.
My piece is for my Art Journal and it’s a little glimpse into my brain during these difficult times!
I created the background by first smooshing some distress oxides in squeezed lemonade and dried marigold onto my page. When that was dry I dotted on some areas of contrast colour using bleeding art tissue paper. In this particular case I scrunched it up and made it wet and then pounced it onto the background. You can also tear it in random strips and lay it on your background before wetting, diecut it and lay those down before wetting. Well anything you can think of really!
I used various stamps to add even more mess in the background.
The hands are from Woodware which I stamped onto white stamping card and cut out then just stuck in place. The various statements are in my own terrible handwriting and you can see why I don’t normally use it. But it added to the messiness of the background!
I wanted the whole piece to represent the muddle in my head right now, as here in the UK, we are constantly getting conflicting advice from the Powers That Be. One minute we’re following the science and the next the Scientists are telling us they disagree with what decisions have been made. So my head is all of a muddle and I don’t know which way to turn which is what the hands all pointing in different directions represent. And the general messiness of the background is what it’s like to be in my thoughts!
Because it’s quite messy, the joined up writing (doesn’t that sound odd) says, Round and round and round we go, where the virus stops nobody knows. All the other block capital words are words that have been flung at us these last few months.
Anyhow enough of my confuddled thinking……… I am entering this into:-
613 Avenue Create – #234 Anything Goes, OT Blended Background
Arty Divas – #24 Anything Goes
Creative Fingers – #189 Anything Goes
Simon Says Stamp – Wednesday Chall Anything Goes
Southern Girls – June Team Trace Anything Goes
Sweet Stampers – #45 Something Beginning with B – Background
Sweet Stampin’ – Create Your Own Background
The Corrosive Challenge – #6 Anything Goes
Tuesday Throwdown – #460 Anything Goes
We Love 2 Create – #7 Anything Mixed Media Goes
I created this with a cdrom of Morgan’s Artworld that I have had for ages. It has some lovely toppers, which I printed out, along with the backing papers. I matted all three layers onto black cardstock to create the card and added a sentiment using again a very old die from Tattered Lace. The final touch was to draw some glue lines in her hair and glitter it with glamour dust. I love glamour dust because it takes on the colour beneath it but still sparkles beautifully.
I coloured her with copics, and the dots on her dress and stripes on her hair ribbon are stabilo 0.3 pens. They have a lovely range of colours and are super fine for adding detail like the dots. I die cut the image out with one of my Sue Wilson octagon dies, along with an orange polka dotted background. The rainbow striped paper is from the same pad that the polka dot orange came from, Studio Light PPSL129. 
