Poppies Everywhere

With all of my new found free time, I've noticed a few things. Poppies are everywhere. There are a ton of poppy images out there. You see poppies on cards, scrapbook pages and art journals. I'm not complaining. I love poppies. I've also noticed that it's trendy right now to use your old, favorite stamps. So Sunday night, everyone was doing their own thing and I was in my craft studio with the Oscars playing in the background. What a perfect time to pull out an oldie, my favorite poppy stamp.

I started by generously painting both pages with a mixture of dark and light magenta plus orange acrylic paint. After my pages dried, I covered them completely with gesso. Next I pulled out a Martha Stewart Home Decor stencil. While holding it in place, I carefully wiped the stencil openings with a baby wipe. This removed the gesso and gave the flowers a cool gradated look. Using Dove Gray StazOn ink, I randomly stamped the Cling Music Score and Cling Conservatory stamps, both from Stampendous.

Next came the teal paint. During my free time, I have also noticed that teal must be my favorite color. I've been cleaning my studio and I have found 16 various teal ink pads from Memento, Ranger Distress and Archival, ColorBox, and VersaMagic (to name a few). I even have two shades of teal inkpads that were made for a local scrapbook store. I found several tubes of teal paint in all forms - acrylic, foam, fabric, even glass. I've discovered every teal mist/spray that's available on the market, teal stickles and 3D paint and then there are the pencils and markers. Does any one person really need teal alcohol markers from Copic, Mepxy and Spectrum Noir? Did I mention my Martha Stewart stencil is teal-colored?... I digress.

I lightly spread teal paint over my pages using an embossing paste tool and then added some washi tape and rub ons. I stamped the poppies ( from a discontinued Stampendous set called Poppy Bottles) onto Neenah white cardstock, colored them with my Prismacolor Premier pencils, then trimmed and adhered them to my journal with Gel Matte Medium.

This is where it all went astray. Remember I said I was listening to the Oscars? The next thing I knew, I was adding the title of this old Barbara Streisand tune to my page. Seriously? Cheesy, huh? The dimensional flowers were created by cutting several sizes of circles out of satin and tulle and melting the edges over the heat of a candle.

There you have it. My adventure in poppies.
Lesson Learned - Never drink and use rub ons while listening to Barbara Streisand.



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