Zen

When I saw this month's inspiration at Scrapstuffz Inspired By, I instantly thought of gardens and spring.  Lots of flowers and butterflies.  But then I went to the Portland Japanese Garden and my thoughts turned to stones.  The Zen garden was the perfect place to highlight stone!

The day was gloriously sunny and the mix of the well placed stone, the raked gravel, and shadows cast by the overhead trees was so interesting, that I grabbed my camera and began to shoot the contrasts and design.  I knew I wanted use these photos for my layout.  I knew the colors weren't going to work, simplicity is best, but I did think I would add dragonflies and butterflies, from my Japanese die cut cartridge.

I applied some black paint, to watercolor paper, with a brayer, then took my comb tool and mimicked the lines of raked gravel.  I pulled a simple green piece of patterned paper and arranged my photos.  My cartridge has a bunch of Kanji letters, and one for Zen, so I used this as my title piece, with a little stamped translation underneath.  I added a coin to the title tag, and began to think about dragonflies and such.  Then it hit me, the piece was done, other than a little simple journaling (I wrote a haiku.  It just seemed fitting).  A layout on a Zen garden should, in fact, be utterly simple,  with no extra bits, that just don't support the story, so I was done.

The inspiration photo

                                                       

Let's see what you come up with!