Variations Week : Sharon's View

 This week's chosen stamp is DREAMING OF AQUAMARINE TIDES by Katerina Koukiotis available here.  There is also a plate featuring this image and 3 others available here.

 My inspiration was limited by several things.  Firstly I have slipped some discs in my back and at least one of them is trapping a nerve so I am also suffering from Sciatica - hence any crafting has been very limited and things have had to be done a lot quicker than normal.  I usually like to play with ideas before finalising on the one I like the most!

I started my project by colouring the image and thought I'd go black and white for quickness - thinking that black and white would work with any papers - so would be able to save time by not spending hours sorting out colours etc.

Firstly, I coloured the skin tones with the Cool greys which looked OK and quite like a black and white photograph.  Then a day or two later I thought I would use the Warm greys for the eyes and lips - which I did.  Having coloured the eyes and lips I was unsure the cool greys worked that well so I decided to use one of the palest warm greys and completely cover previous colouring - warming the skin tones to work with the eyes and lips.

Still unsure I deliberately left the shell and girls nails white.  I decided to keep the contract and just add a little stickles glitter glue to the shell edges.

Feeling the image still needed something but not sure what - I decided to add some PVA pearl glue for faux pearls, adding these to the girl's eye lashes and hair strands.

Having finished the image I was left with the dilemma of WHAT NEXT!  Well I thought about making a note book using a tag and various connotations of this idea.  Having not been able to decide all day what to do I decided to leave.

This morning I remembered I had partly re-covered my telephone/address book but had left the project uncompleted as it just didn't work with anything I was working with at the time.  Today, I decided that I was going to make it work after all black and white would work with anything!

OK, not quite convinced plodded on regardless.  After re-attaching the index papers back to the cover it was just a case of decorating!

Hope you like it!  Overall I quite like it although I would have made the frame a bit more prominent.

The variations is the photo's are because some where taken on top of the photo tent and others in the tent!

For more information please check out my blog here.

Best wishes,