Piggin Out – ARTastic DT Scrapbook Layout |

This month’s challenge and inspiration at the ARTastic challenge blog was completely out of my comfort zone- a rural theme and muted colours including brown. The painting is Spring Frost Study by Elioth Gruner:

I am so not a country girl. If you look closely at the pics in this layout, you can see that I’m wearing heels- in a pig pen! I had also gotten a couple sets of those chipboard pennants and buttons from my aunt in Russia, that went perfectly with this theme, so I knew I wanted to use them somehow. I also used the splotchy cows as an excuse to use mixed media and make a lot of splotches. So I started out by applying gesso to the bottom of my page. I wanted a lot of horizontal elements in my layout, inspired by the fences and the cows being all in a row. I used watercolours- regular as well as metallic liquid ones in bronze and copper and gold to make a lot of splotches all over the page. I also used the packaging technique to create a muddy “pig pen” to go behind my photo. I used brown watercolours, and layered other colours and metallics over it. I then used my sewing machine to sew messy wavy lines across the page going all the way up.

I wanted this layout to stay true to me and my style, so I added purple and pink and blue, as well as adding those fussy cut roses and butterflies for a pretty, girly touch. Keeping this on white cardstock to make it airy and bright also helped keep it “me”.

So I had recently bought these tiny cloth-pins and I had this idea to make a line of pennants between two cloth-pins. I cut a couple lengths of twine (I considered doing three lines, but it looked too busy, much better with two). My cat helped with this part- stringing the pennants on the twine. The packs of chipboard pennants also contained real and chipboard buttons, as well as big wooden buttons, so I scattered a bunch of those all over the page.

I used embroidery floss to tie a couple of bows in some of the buttons, and thread to nest under other buttons. I also used a bunch of buttons from my stash.

After I had everything the way I liked it, I glued it all down. The final finishing touch was taking gold liquid watercolour and spreading it over some of the chipboard pieces and buttons as an accent.

I also had a difficult time coming up with the title. At first I was thinking of doing something long and using lots of different alphas, but once everything else was on the page, it felt like too much. I wanted to keep it short and sweet and small. And it also -had- to involve a pig pun. So I used some of my MME Necessities Wood mini alphas, as well as a couple word stickers that came in that set. They are so versatile and they go with everything! What I can’t believe is that I didn’t use my Silhouette on this project. I had this idea to make custom mini alphas, but since deciding on a shorter title, I didn’t end up making any. Well, it’s a project for another time.

Hope you are inspired to step out of your comfort zone, and take something you wouldn’t normally do and make it “you”. If you do a rural theme, don’t forget to link up over at ARTastic for a chance to win one of three prize packs!

xoxo