Gung Hay Fat Choy / Asian Theme At Artful Times. . . . . .

Hello everyone. Thanks for all your comments on the Valentine skull. I think some people were just a little shocked when they saw it but it was such fun to make! I haven't started casting spells and wearing a pointed hat yet; I just felt like rebelling against hearts and flowers - even though I love both of these things!

Onto Artful Times. Naughty Von and Neet have completely tied me up in knots this time! When I saw the title 'Asian Theme' I had a few kittens because I don't really have anything in my crafting stuff suited to this. I looked at the lovely samples made by the girls and I thought they'd have to count me out of this challenge. I then got confused about Asian themes and Chinese New Year so I decided to attempt to cover both with my make. Not sure if it's right but it's always nice to get inky and play isn't it? (What it really means is that my brain is a little dense and I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do!).

After a rummage, I found a set of Creative Expression stamps consisting of peacocks and other related items. After doing some research, I can confirm that peacocks were important to both the Chinese (gung hay fat choy) and to those of the Hindu religion (Asian religion).

To the Chinese, the peacock is a symbol of good luck and good fortune so great for the Chinese New Year. It has also signified high rank status in the past too. I think this may be true for Japan as well.

To Hindus (there are large numbers of hindus in Asian countries), the peacock is associated with one of their gods called Lakshli and is believed to symbolise patience, kindness and understanding.

Phew!! Lecture over. Here's the card (yes, I did say CARD!!) that I've made:

The light was all wrong for photography by the time I finished so my apologies for the standard of the images.

I made three stamped backgrounds. The top peacock layer was made using Tim's custom stamp pad method and lots of distress inks, spritzing and stamping with both distress and archival. The word tiles were made from leftover card. After stamping the words, the edges were very roughly embossed and a coat of glossy accents was added.

Sorry about the blurred image. I hope you can see enough of the hand painted peacock to see that the stamped background is visible through the painting. I used water soluble wax crayons to achieve this effect. Some rough doodling was done with a gold pen to add highlights to the bird.

To add extra interest, a small bead was made from some left over card and coated with a layer of glossy accents (which dripped everywhere!). This was mounted using some twine and leftover card.

Kraft card was used for the base. Feathers were stamped with versamark then coated with perfect pearls. The green tones in beautifully although the light hasn't been kind here! I wanted to added lots of glitz because of the beautiful irridescence of peacock feathers.

The green layer started out life exactly the same as the yellow toned layer. I kept adding inks until I was pleased with the effect. I used a twining background stamp in versamark then embossed it with gold details.

I chose a circle image for the background to represent the 'eye' in the peacock feathers. Some stitching was added to all the layers using gold lurex thread.

That's what I made which I'm sure is so far out of the box it's off the wall but I know what I was aiming for and I had some FUN!

Do go over and see what Von and Neet have been up to and already, there are some super entries to give you further inspiration. Let me know what you think if you have time. Have a great weekend everyone. I'm off to the Craft Barn on Sunday for another lesson in the Andy Skinner Club - wooohoooo!!