Two Flowers - A Magazine Project

Sometimes you just need to make something for yourself, you know? I love planning projects for the kids, and I am more than happy to help others with projects. But sometimes I find it so relaxing to make something without a deadline or a real purpose. Just because it's fun for me.

After a particularly hard day last week (I had several of those last week) I blew a sigh of frustration after the kids went to bed and grabbed a stack of magazines. I had a vision in mind, inspired by this pin.

Materials:

cardstock

scrap paper

magazines

scissors

pencil

thin paintbrush

Mod Podge

thin line Sharpie

Process:

I started by drawing and cutting out a couple of flower silhouettes, which I then used to trace onto cardstock.

Then I cut dozens and dozens of strips out of magazine pages. At first I was just going to use any of the pages, but since I had cut out flowers and I was working with Better Homes and Gardens, I headed for their garden section and found some amazingly beautiful spreads. So I stuck with my flower theme and used those pages only.

My plan was to fill in the silhouettes with the magazine strips, much like my inspiration picture. But after drawing them on cardstock I kind of loved how the flowers overlapped, and I thought it would be a mistake to cover that up. Then I thought it would be cool to fill the negative space with the magazine strips and leave the flowers white, so that's what I did.

I started at the edge.

I used Mod Podge and a thin paint brush to brush a little on my paper. Then I smoothed one strip on at a time. When I got to the edge of a flower, I painstakingly drew in the outline on the magazine strip, cut it out carefully with scissors and refit it onto the paper, making sure it fit like a glove before I adhered it.  I'm not exaggerating when I use the word painstaking. It was tedious. My back hurt by the end. But so worth it. 

The last step was to outline the silhouettes where they overlapped with a thin-line Sharpie.

I was planning on brushing Mod Podge over the entire piece at the end, but I changed my mind - for two reasons. The first is that I knew it would create terrible bubbles in the paper. When I was gluing down the strips, I did get creases every now and then, and I've worked with Mod Podge enough to know that that's a big no-no. Secondly, since I wanted to frame the finished piece I decided that it didn't matter whether or not it was sealed. 

So I just slapped that baby in a frame and called it a day. Or night. This was an after-the-kids-were-in-bed kind of project. And it took a few nights to complete. 

Two Flowers

Yay! I always love the satisfaction that comes from a finished project, especially when it comes out looking pretty much as I envisioned. That's always a plus.

As always, I'd love to know if you were inspired to make one of these yourself, and please send me a link if you blog about it! 

Thanks for reading!

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