Earth Day and Cloth Paper Scissors Challenges

Earth Day Challenge - Diva's weekly challenge #164

I'm really enjoying participating in these weekly challenges; it forces me to do something every week, and also post consistently on the blog :).  You can see this week's challenge and all the wonderful submissions from other participants here.

Because the challenge was for Earth Day, I decided to use recycled paper - used tea bags - and because the Earth is round, I went with the round tea bags.  I used Sakura gel pens, Inktense, and colored pencils.

The challenge for me was then to create nature inspired art with tangles.  Some are very obviously organic in nature, but I enjoyed using others which may not be so obvious.  I definitely could keep going, it was so much fun!!!

Top:

• Left - Sedgling Forest
• Center - Angel Fish Tree
• Right - Isochor Flowering Trees

Center:

• Left - 'Nzeppel Flowers
• Center - Rain trees
• Right - Tipple, Printemps, Amaze, and Flux Mountains 

Bottom:

• Left - Aura-Leah Plant
• Center - Flux Plant
• Right - Eke Plant

Cloth Paper Scissors Magazine Reader Challenge

Cloth Paper Scissors is one of my favorite magazines; I absolutely love it.  Last year they had a challenge to create a mixed-media stitched square (6" x 6" - around 15 x 15 cm).  I decided to enter and submitted my piece below, which was then published in the January/February 2014 issue.

So, here is the finished piece and some of the in-progress pictures.  I hope you enjoy them.

Finished Piece

Finished Piece - close-up

Background - started with a piece of my husband's old jeans
and layered old book pages, stamped and drawn-on tea bags, gesso, and inks. 

Drew and stitched a tree, and then started adding flowers

Close up of the tree branches and flowers

In the end I added more color with Inktense as you can see in the finished piece and stitched it to a piece of felt.

It was so much fun to open up the magazine and see my art in it :)