ARTastic Challenge Blog ~ May Challenge (Stars)

Emancipation and Freedom

It's nice to be on a roll with my scrapbooking this weekend.  I'm getting through some pages that have, quite honestly, been 'treading water' for quite a while.  When I saw the current inspiration for the ARTastic Challenge Blog ~ May Challenge, I had an inkling of what I wanted to do with it...  The inspiration is a piece of art by Sarah Beetson called The return of the young prince.  (I love how the ARTastic Challenge Blog promotes artists through their challenges!)

That's a pretty funky looking piece of artwork!!!  The criteria for submissions entered into the Challenge this month was to incorporate stars on your layout.  Well, to be honest, 'stars' is just about all that is similar between this artwork and my double layout submission!

When I went to America last year, my girlfriend and I did a bit of a 'road trip' down south.  One of our days was spent at the magnificent Boone Hall Plantation in Mt Pleasant, South Carolina.  I have many amazing photos from that day, but there was one set of images in particular that came to mind when I knew I needed to use stars...

I had taken a series of 8 photographs of a timeline on a wall in one of the original Slave Cabins.  These 8 images, when pieced together, would show me the entire timeline as it was represented on the wall (as long as you don't mind the aspect of each photo being slightly skewiff!)  This timeline (which is superimposed over the 'Stars and Stripes' flag) was on display in Slave Cabin 6, and it details the road to Emancipation and Freedom in the Black History of America. As it was so long, I knew this layout would have to be a double.

I started with two pieces of Kraft cardstock for the base.  I tore of a tiny edge from all four sides of both pieces, and then using 'Walnut Stain' Distress Ink and my ink blending tool, I inked up not only the distressed edges, but also the entire Kraft base to give a smoky feel to the page.  I then layered each of these pieces onto a Vanilla Bazzill base that had been inked around the edges with 'Old Paper' Distress Ink.

I then grabbed a piece of blue cardstock and my 'Stars' stencil from Stampin' Up!, and stencilled Light Molding Paste through the stencil, and put aside to dry.  I then masked up a piece of red cardstock with stripes and then layered Light Molding Paste across the entire sheet, removing the masked strips before it was dry.  Thus, I have my 'Stars and Stripes' representation on my page.

I printed a photo of Cabin 6 in greyscale, and then using 'Tea Dye' Distress Ink and an ink blending tool, I lightly went over the surface of the photo to give a 'sepia' tone.  This was then matted onto a piece of the Vanilla Bazzill (that had been distressed around the edges and then inked with 'Old Paper' Distress Ink).

The final touch before adding my journalling was to create the title.  Initially I was going to hand-create the title, but I didn't want to mess up the striped cardstock.  So I created a document in Word, and printed my title on the back of some Vanilla Bazzill.  This was then inked over with 'Old Paper' Distress Ink and layered up using old chipboard.

As I said, definitely removed from the inspiration artwork, however, it does meet the criteria with stars!  And it is another set of photos completed from my trip to America, so it just doesn't get much better than that!!!

Deb.xx