Thursday, February 24, 2011

Guest Designing for Gauche Alchemy!!

Hello Lovely Gauchites!!

I'm here with you with my last project as Guest Designer for the month of February!!  I want to thank all of the fabulous designers at GA for being so supportive and encouraging.

As my last project with the theme "Things I Love", I decided to use my hands.  I've always loved my hands.  Whether I'm rockin' my short, artist nails or long acrylic nails (back in the day!) I love them.  I love them because they are my best tool when creating, I love them because they fit perfectly into my Husband's hands, I love them because they care for and nurture our two darling children, I love them because they help me express myself, and I love them because they are my Mother's hands.  It's been five years since she passed and just about every time I look at my hands, I see my Mom's hands.  And I smile.

So with all of that said, here is my GA creation for today!!

One night while I was creating, my Husband took some shots of me.  My markers, my pencils, and my hands.  I printed out a few of my hands, finding this one to have the most visual interest.  (Since this picture was taken I have had the infinity symbol tattooed on my wedding ring finger - it looks pretty cool!)..but I digress.  I matted this photo and then decided to alter the photo using my Copic, Prismacolor and Pantone markers and my Deco Art paint pens.

I free hand doodled over the entire photo except on my hands.  I love the way the ink takes to the photo paper.  It really stands out!

After finishing my photo, I started on my layout.  Using all of my fabulous vintage papers from my GA Acme Kit, as well as my Green Envy kit, I went to work!  
My layout measures 8x8" on Kraft cardstock from SU!.  My matting paper with the swirly background is actually wallpaper!!  The swirls are actually microbeads!!  SO cool!!  I loved how the swirls mimicked the doodling that I had done!  (I didn't know I was using the wallpaper ahead of time so the swirls were a total coincidence).  I used some other vintage book pages to cut up and create my title "My Hands" in ransom  note fashion!  (LOL!)
For my GA embellishments, starting on the left hand side of my layout, I have a ticket strip that I turned into a strip of scallop edging, the gorgeous gold, lace ribbon that I've used in my other two projects, the green flower and gold coin, the green pom pom trim on the right hand side as well as the green mesh on the top right.

The gold shimmery cardstock that my title is displayed on is actually the back side of a GA business card!!  Gorgeous color, huh?  Love it.  The blue flowery bracket was cut using my Cricut.  

I used a strip of SU! 5/8" Grosgrain ribbon in Early Espresso and a snippet of ivory, crocheted ribbon to compliment the green pom poms.  

I do hope you have enjoyed my creations over the last 3 weeks and have been inspired to rock it out with all of the fantastic goodies that GA offers!!!