Red, White and Indigo Blu!

Thanks Barbara for the cool tag for our challenge!

Hello Monday! It's time for another challenge at Simon Says Stamp Monday challenge, and this week we are celebrating the beautiful stamps of Indigo Blu! We are also working in red, white and blue, which ties in beautifully with our holiday here in the USA - Happy Fourth of July to all who celebrate it! 

Please join me in welcoming our guest designer for July, Aida Haron! I know we will all love to see her creative takes on our challenges this month! Welcome Aida!

I've been thinking about freedom here at home and in the world, and the challenges we all face to find and keep our freedoms. One of my freedoms that I treasure is free speech, whether it is spoken or written, and I know that was on my mind while creating this page. The Indigo Blu Plume stamp set works beautifully for my theme.

Today, I worked in my big Dylusions Art Journal so I could spread lots of paint around.

I started off adding red and blue Dylusions paint on top of a gessoed surface, then laying the stencil down (I used the 12x12 stencil for this) and taking some of the paint off with a baby wipe.

Not content to just leave that as my background, I went in with more paints, this time Paper Artsy and white and stenciled with distress ink, and stamped around the edges.

As I looked at this, I really didn't think my stamped images would stand out, so I went back in with a lot more white and red and even used my finger to mark around the edges with red. The stenciling faded out, so I went in again and this time used the Archival Jet Black ink to get more contrast.

I inked behind the area for my feathers to give it some depth, stamped on the Tim Holtz French Industrial paper and Terminology Tissue Wrap and adhered to my page. then misted with black.  Next I went in and added white dots with a fine acrylic paint marker.

Details, details...

I tried my Ranger Texture tools out for the first time, and I like the lines of texture it created.

Not quite satisfied, my final step was to go around the feathers with a water soluble pencil and my water brush to make them stand out more. Now, I am ready to say I am done.

Does that ever happen to you? You start working on a piece and are dissatisfied with it so keep trying different things and sometimes just are not sure when to say it is done. I guess that is really working through the creative process. 

I hope you will join us for our red, white, and blue theme, and if you have some Indigo Blu stamps, we would love to see them!

 Simon offers a very generous $50 shopping spree to one lucky participant!

SUPPLIES:

                                       

                                       

A great place to shop!!

Simon is on Instagram!

Are you curious about how the DT met the red, white and blue challenge? Be sure to head on over there to check out their beautiful work!