Spring Hare

This page was inspired by an image from a magazine of a hare sitting in a lush green meadow and from that sprang the idea of extending the scene so the meadow filled my page – I hope you like it!

As this page was created with spring in mind, I’m pleased to join the Hello Springtime challenge that I’m hosting over at Art Journal Journey too. I’d like to thank all of you for your lovely comments and wonderful creations so far, I hope you are having fun getting creative with this theme as much as I am (grin!).

To start I coloured some white paper with inks to match the colours on the magazine image; first I applied Mowed Lawn, Pine Needles, Twisted Citron and Forest Moss Distress Ink to a blending mat, spritzed with water and pressed the matt onto the white paper to create a green mottled effect.

I repeated the process using Fozzilized Amber, Mustard Seed and Scattered Straw Distress Ink, then Old Paper, Rusty Hinge and Vintage Photo Distress Ink and finally Elderberry Memento Ink, Milled Lavender and Seedless Grape Distress Ink. When the papers were dry, I used the green mottled effect paper to cover the background by ripping the paper on the diagonal and layering it onto the page so the white edges formed part of the design to look more like fabric; it is stuck down using a glue stick and Liquitex matte gel medium. Then I ripped the magazine image and stuck it on the left-hand side of the page.

Next I die cut some flowers using a Wildflower thinlet from Tim Holtz from the yellow and purple paper I had made. I intensified the colour of the yellow flowers using Fossilized Amber and then arranged them with foliage that I created using some brown string, embroidery silk thread and pieces of green and rusty-brown baby wipe that had been used to mop up inks and paints from previous projects. They are all stuck into place using Liquitex matte gel medium and once dry, I coloured the green pieces of baby wipe further with Mowed Lawn Distress Ink so they looked like blades of grass. I also added some white thread, die cut purple pieces and purple/blue used baby wipe to the top of the page to match the image design. To finish, I added the word “Spring” which is a rub-on transfer from Royal & Langnickel and then splattered the page with black and white DecoArt acrylic paints.

One springtime walk around Glasson Dock we were lucky enough to see hares in the fields; if you look very closely you can just see a hare in profile sitting on the bottom left-hand side of the picture.

The hares were fun to watch although they didn’t really stay still very long to get a good shot of them (grin!).

Challenges

I’m glad I found out about Challenge Blogs, like Art Journal Journey, as I enjoy taking part, they provide me with inspiration for my pages and are a wonderful way to meet like-minded arty people. So here are the challenges I’m joining today:

As my page captures nature at springtime, I’m joining the Close To Nature challenge over at Moo Mania & More.

I’m also happy to join in the fun over at Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge and their Create A Scene challenge with my Spring Hare scene.

I’m pleased to join in the fun over at Mix It Up Challenge Blog and their theme Anything + optional twist of inked background with my inked background mixed media page.

As I used more than three mediums (inks, paints, paper, baby wipes, string, etc) to create my page, I’m also joining the Creative Artisite Challenge #47 – Anything Mixed Media Goes challenge over at Creative Artiste Challenge Blog.

I’m also pleased to join the Green & Gold challenge over at Simon Says Stamp Work it Wednesday as I used these colours on my page.

Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Here is a list of all the materials used to create this art journal page:

• Tim Holtz Distress Ink (Mowed Lawn, Pine Needles, Twisted Citron, Forest Moss, Fozzilized Amber, Mustard Seed, Scattered Straw, Old Paper, Rusty Hinge, Vintage Photo, Milled Lavender, Seedless Grape)
• Tsukineko Memento Ink (Elderberry)
• DecoArt Crafter’s Acrylic (Black, White)
• Sizzix Thinkets Tim Holtz Alterations (Wildflowers 661190)
• Recycled white paper
• Old magazine
• Recycled used baby wipes
• Brown String
• Embroidery Silk Houline Stranded (0369)
• Recycled cotton thread
• Royal & Langnickel Rub-on Sentiments (Spring #ROY-506)
• Liquitex Matte Gel Medium
• Pritt Stick