Sunday, March 11, 2018

3 Monas for Spring

A good Sunday to you all! I'm happy you stopped by to see me. I have this wall hanging to share with you today. You can click on it to make it bigger.

Remember seeing the 3 Mona coasters HERE ? This is what I did with them. For a couple of weeks now I've been slowly but methodically Spring-cleaning, and I wanted some art for our family room that was fresh and new, like how I think of Spring. I'm a bit different in that I don't automatically go to the birds or flowers when I want to create or decorate for Spring. I'm more into lighter or pastel colors or just NEW. While I'm sure I'll create some Spring makes with birds and flowers, that is not what I wanted for our family room. It has a bit of a 40's postmodern art deco masculine look.

I stamped the 4x4 chipboard coasters with very old rubber from Ma Vinci Reliquary using Memento inks in the dew drop pads. Their small size and shape made it easy to use different colors on one stamp. Each coaster is a different stamp in the set. Then I adhered them to some of my mom's gross grain ribbon she'd gifted me.

I adhered coasters to the backs that I'd collaged with tissue squares and layered some stamped and crinkled tissue paper on top, then dry-painted it kiwi green in spots. This gives a more finished look when the backs are decorated, yet those little squares give it a look complementary to the fronts, I think. There's a lot of geometric shapes in the stamps on the front of the piece, so adding the squares complemented that.

I attached 2 yellow chunky metal flower brads (ok, I did use some flowers, ya got me haha) to the top and bottom of the ribbon. Here is a look at the back after shoring up the ribbon with card stock. The blue dots are hiding the brad prongs of the metal flowers.


I added black Victorian scrap bordering to each coaster, and then painted a mini popsicle stick hole-punched with my Cropadile to hold some braided fiber trim to hang my piece.

I love how it turned out, in part because I did it without consulting anything or anyone else. It was my first coaster wall hanging, too. Completely organic - just thought it out what step to take next. I've learned a lot in my almost 15 years in online art play, so I just trusted myself. This was good for me, and kind of representative of this new season in my life with my plans for change and renewal. A self-confidence builder / reinforce.

Honey loves it. He says Leonardo is smiling, isn't that sweet? And it actually looks fresh and crisp in our space and dresses it up a bit. With the pastel colors of the inks I used, it's a perfect addition to my other Spring decorations. And every bit of it was stamped using my inkpads like a brush to get the variegated colors on each stamp.


I'm linking this project up to the following challenges:



I also want to link up to A Vintage Journey's March Challenge - Treasure and send a great big Happy Birthday #4 to them. This challenge is about sharing one of our treasure troves and/or creating with some of it. The reason I chose coasters to work with is because they are one of my art supply treasure troves.

This is my storage drawer of just my 4"x4" coasters. There's about 100 there! At least they were on sale, right? I've had them several years and have treated them like I put them in a safety deposit box, lol. Well, I'm gonna use them more because they are very cool to work on. This challenge kind of struck a nerve with me because I have many troves to choose from. Buttons, ribbon, lace, paper, charms, bottle caps, hardware, stamps -- but just to be clear I am a collector...not a hoarder. Haha - riiiiight! 

That's it for me today. Thanks for stopping by and have a fab week!

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