Journey Home

Oh what a wonderful day :) After Mitzi's very hard decision to close the The Aurora Wings Blog Challenge a few months ago I can now break my silence and let you all know the challenge is back, how AWESOME is that.  The challenge is not a blog this time but as a FaceBook challenge, very easy to enter into and a lovely friendly community ready to say hi to you on a regular basis - AURORA WINGS FB and will go live on the first Monday of each month.  The theme will always be Anything Goes and if you pop into the Photos Section then choose Album you will find the area to enter your creative artwork.

For my first creation as part of the Aurora Wings FB Design Team I have chosen to use the image 'Journey Home' which I thought was rather appropriate as the Aurora Wings challenge journey is now home :) :) :) I do have a second reason too which is my youngest daughter is about to be deployed, she is in the British Army and so care packages will be the order of the day from home.  One of her passions is scuba diving so I know she will love this card, and knowing it is full of 'Mummy Love' too will hopefully help let her know how very special she is to me.  Although her deployment is not a 'Journey Home' until she has done her time it is a part of her journey of life which she has such a passion for.  I do love making cards with special purpose and spending that little bit extra time into creating something that has multi-layered meanings.

The image was coloured with Prisma pencils and Pan Pastels for the background, card base and die cuts with some of my every friendly Stickles for the bubbles.  The fish, oh the fish, so overworked and still not quite what I wanted but almost there.  Many years ago I had the awesome experience of swimming with a shoal of tuna fish, I was snorkeling in the Indian Ocean when I found myself surrounded by tuna, the whole area around me was a mixture of beautiful clear blue water and wonderful silver, and experience I will never forget.  The fish seemed to match my slow speed, some swimming beside me for several minutes.  I was transported to another world in both mind and body, I could imagine myself as a fish, as one of them and was held in awe that they trusted me so much to come so close, literally so close I only used my flippers to propel me along as using my arms would hit them.  OK back to the colouring, I first coloured them in light greys trying to capture the light bouncing off them as I remember the tune but that did not work, I then lines with a silver metallic pen but still not enough shine, finally I added silver from my Pan Pastels and that helped but still not enough shine.  In the end I used spray varnish and that brought them to life.  It is unfortunate the led to the problem of capturing the shine when it came to taking a photograph of the card but I hope you can imagine the end result.  I needed some texture on the card so used a die cut border which I then coloured along with the card blank base using pan pastels, the same colours I used for the background of the image.  Simple matting in black and orange for the image and with the die cut borders placed behind and then foam take to attach this section to the card base completed the project.

I am entering this creation in the following challenges : -

• Crafty Sentiment Designs W, 1E, SIO -  Water
• Catch The Bug W, E3, SIO - Fairy Tale/ Fantasy
• Ching-chou Kuik Digital Stamps (M,P1,E3,SIO) June - Under the Sea