Dancing Mud

At first glance, the CSI colors this week really freaked me out!  But after breathing into the paper bag for a bit, I thought of these boiling red mud photos from my recent trip to Yellowstone.

These photos were taken at one of the thermal features and this pool just had this vibrant, boiling mud! It was so cool.  I took many photos here, trying to get the best flare ups and droplet action.

Evidence used: lace, mesh, clouds, and mixed media

Testimony was done with the free write technique.  You set a timer for a minute and write whatever comes to mind, no worrying about spelling or punctuation.  "Boiling, churning, spitting mud.  Dancing in the steam and fog.  Red like the center of the earth, like some unearthly being."

The Case File

What Does The Fox Say?

Sketch week at CSI is my favorite week!  I love Em's sketches.  The colors this week are super fun too!  I had super luck with the animal sightings when I was in Yellowstone.  This morning, we watched a fox hunting.  That's what he is doing.  They listen for little critters, under the snow, then pounce where they think they will be.  It is so cute!

Evidence used: numbers, speech bubbles, circles

Testimony is in the speech bubbles.

Case File

U Color My World

I fell in love with this month's inspiration photo, at ScrapStuffz Inspired By, as soon as I saw it!  Such fun!  I tried, a few times, to re-create some of that artsy, lined, fun color, but with catastrophic results! Then I remembered the Story Teller line by Crate Paper and this great piece that is colored pencils.  I had no clue what to do with it, but I really liked it.

I just took a whole piece and cut out various sizes of hearts and clustered them together. I made three groupings, then built a layered matte for my photo, all on a black base so everything would just pop off the page.  I also used color as part of my title and story.  Funny, I haven't made a layout that is only paper and no mixed media for some time, but I really like how it turned out!

I can't wait to see what you create this month!

Here We Go!

We have done a collaboration, at CSI, with Archi-Scraps, a challenge blog that focuses on architecture layouts.

I LOVED this colored stripes on the building, in the photo, so I knew I wanted to do something with colored stripes.  One of the prompts was to use zig zag, so I decided to turn stripes into zig zags.  I penned the lines with a cool new stencil I have, then colored them in with watercolor paint, and added a layer of crackle on top, for added texture.  Love how it turned out!  So high energy, perfect for the start of my amazing trip to Yellowstone.