"It's just a mish mash"

No, GB wasn't referring to the Monster Mash he was referring to my latest LO ..

published in Scrapbook Creations No. 94

At first I agreed with him, it did seem to be kind of a mish mash of 'stuff', but a couple of days later and it's now grown on me. I like it.  :)

Important .. would you prefer the long or short story of this LO? If you would prefer the short LOL, just scroll to the bottom of this post!!!

The long story ..

I haven't been able to create anything for nigh on a month and it has been driving me (and GB as a consequence LOL!) crazy. The hand which was healing oh so nicely, very inconveniently became infected and as a result slowed the recovery period. There is still a long road ahead before my hand is 100% back to normal but I can scrap again!!!!!

So anyways, not having been able to create for a while the above LO did become a bit of a mish mash. I wanted to play. I wanted to scrap this photo of Bear doing what he does best .. sitting back and observing what's going on around him (he's a Kelpie to his core!). I had some clean gauze left over in my dressings kit which I wanted to experiment with. Have I mentioned I wanted to play? Well play I did. After mixing up a watery base of glue and paint to soak the gauze in and force drying it on my cardstock, I kept on building my layers .. the texture gels, the paints, the recycled materials. The photo was on. Everything was looking great. But it needed something to the right of the photo. I had the perfect flourish rub-on. It wasn't a 'solid' rub-on so wouldn't be too heavy. About now is when I should have walked away!!!

Instead I decided to colour in the rub-on flourish with a pink marker. Big mistake .. huge!!! I sulked for a while until GB suggested I re-colour it in black. Brilliant idea GB. Perfect! Except it turned out the black marker wouldn't set. Plus, in the process of seeing just how wet it was, it smudged, badly. The LO was ruined. I was gutted. Seriously gutted. I couldn't sleep that night. Honestly. I woke up at 2am thinking about the LO and wondering how on earth I could fix it. I did not want to go back through all the stages of layering with mixed media all over again. At 4.30am I gave up, and got up. This LO was not going to get the best of me.

I figured out with a generous spray of Charms Creations 'Fabulous Flowers' and other embellishments I could cover the disgusting, smudgy mess for the most part. But what about the enormous (so it seemed LOL) part of the flourish in the clouds??? Finally it came to me. All I had to do was 'sponge' another cloud over the top. It sounds easy enough doesn't it? Wrong! The hideous, smudged flourish kept on shining through. Was I honestly going to have to throw this in the trash? It was at about 7am the answer came to me. Cut out a cloud and stick it on top of the whole bloomin' mess. So I did and it worked. Big sigh! Huge!!!

But then I stepped back and looked at the end result and, I admit, was disappointed. I had created a mish mash. But I was also tired. So very tired. After almost 12 hours (or so it seemed) of playing with this LO I was more than prepared for it to look like a mish mash. Yet I had so wanted the photo to be the focus of attention on this LO, and now it's practically half covered in flowers (as gorgeous as they are). I had really wanted the textures and mixed media to shine through, and now you can scarcely see (and if you can, recognise) the book page and gels. One thing I felt I had got right was the whimsical element. But it was done, and my hand had officially healed sufficiently for me to start scrapping again. I had scrapped .. and I was happy!

The short story .. I scrapped .. and I was happy!!!!!!!!!!

:)