Life Possibilities

Happy hump day everyone, it's rainy and chilly here today but despite that, look who I found just outside the back door.

Despite the weather, he was singing his little heart out!

Spring tends to bring that joy out in all of us, doesn't it?  No matter how gloomy the day, we feel that life is full of possibilities now that the season of renewal and rebirth is here.

And so to celebrate Spring and all she represents, I made this mixed media shadow box that I'm calling 'Life Possibilities'.

I was inspired by Tim Holtz's 'Bird Feather' stamp set and I wanted to gets lots of dimension in the piece, so decided to use the reverse side of an 8x6 stretched artists canvas.

I stamped the bird, nest, eggs and feather from Tim's stamp set onto Ranger Specialty stamping paper, embossed them with clear embossing powder after coloring them with distress inks and fussy cut them all.

Many layers of gesso, acrylic paint, torn strips of scrapbooking paper and antiquing medium were applied to the canvas along with some stamping with black archival ink using stamps by Ellen Vargo and Wendy Vecchi.

I cut some greens from Tim Holtz's 'Holiday Greens' die set and colored them with distress ink and the Sizzix 'Arbor' leaves were die cut and colored with distress inks as well.  I layered the greens and leaves onto the inside of the canvas, mounting some on pop dots.  I also die cut the branch from Tim Holtz's 'Bird Branch' die to give my little bird a place to perch and to build her nest and mounted the branch and the bird onto a double layer of fun foam over top of the leaves and greens.

I used the 'life' Typed Token and highlighted it with some 'Old Paper' distress paint for the top of the shadow box.

The 'Life Possibilities' label was created by painting a blank wooden tag white and gluing on the words that I typed out on the computer.  I then laid down a thick coat of Glossy Accents over the whole tag to give it the look of an old porcelain label.

I snipped the edges of the feather from Tim's 'Bird Feather' stamp set after fussy cutting it and gently folded it down the middle for a little dimension.

I am linking this mixed media shadow box up with these challenge blogs:

A Vintage Journey - 'Anything Tim' (Happy birthday AVJ!)
Mixed Media Monthly - 'Birds Of A Feather'
Mixed Media World - 'Anything Goes'
The Mirror Crack'd - 'Wings'

Thanks as always for stopping by and hope that Spring has filled you with the joy of life's possibilities too!  Happy creating,

Deb