Predatory At The Craft Barn Alpha Challenge. . . .

The Alpha Challenge continues at the Craft Barn and what good fun it is! The letter for this fortnight is P. I usually choose my word  by flicking through the appropriate pages and see what pops out at me. This time, for some reason, the word 'Predatory' jumped out. All I had to do then was dream up something to illustrate my chosen word.

With all the talk of Spring, Easter and Tim Holtz' latest tag, I decided to use a lovely bunny die and go from there. I don't have anything against bunnies but it was just too tempting to do something slightly on the dark side! However, for bunny lovers, you will note that my sweet little bunny is safe behind his chicken wire!

The only other thing I should mention is that I only had stamps showing crows. I believe they will go for prey which is dead or alive, so I hope that if the idea of crows attacking bunnies isn't quite accurate you will forgive my artistic licence!

Here's my page spread, hope it makes sense to you and apologies if you don't enjoy the subject matter:

Please excuse my thumb in the picture - it was the only way to stop the page flopping over!

The chosen word for my entry.

An extra little sentiment which many of you will recognise from childhood I'm sure. . . . . .  the words were printed out on a label maker and inked to match the background. Die cut letters from inked card follow the stencil design around in a curve. Punched flowers were made from inked and paint stamped card.

The rather dark and creep page was made by brushing with gesso then layering with stencils, stamps, paint, ink and a little washi tape. The little flowers are more punched shapes treated as before with a little bling in the centre.

Close up to areas of the background. The hollyhocks were created with versamark through the stencil followed by distress EP.

All the crows were stamped. The solid crow shapes were embossed twice: once with ordinary black EP followed by a layer of distress EP. The other crows were stamped, coloured with distress ink (I used lighter colours just so that they stood out better). Finally, the painted crows were embossed with a double coat of clear EP.

Bunny is a die cut coloured with distress and given a snazzy flower on his bow. I also gave him an eye so he appeared more alive and therefore in danger from the birds. He is protected by chicken wire which is attached to two fence posts. The posts were made by stamping a woodgrain image, adding colour and cutting into the post shape. I don't have the grass die so just cut a strip to show some very well cut grass!

The two crows on the fence are holding on by their claws - luckily they were part of the image but a bit tricky to cut out! This page was brushed lightly with gesso and then, same as the other page, stencils were used to build up layers in lovely spring like colours.

Background detail.

The detail shows the effect you achieve using versamark and distress EP. In addition, you can see a barbed wire stamp and the acrylic random stamping on one of the flowers.

Many thanks for looking and leaving a comment if you wish. I'd also like to say welcome to my latest followers and thank you so much for wishing to see more of my work.