The Craft Barn Alpha Challenge - Letter R

Hello everyone. I've been a little quiet recently mainly due to my daughter's 21st Birthday and various other events which stood between my desk and I! I'm back now though and I do hope to catch up with you all very soon. May I also welcome my lovely new followers to my blog too? It's wonderful to have you here.

I have managed to complete the latest challenge at the Craft Barn this fortnight. The challenge this fortnight was to use the letter 'R' and come up with an idea to depict the given letter. I've used a Tim image which I never thought I'd find a use for until this letter came up so at least my purchase of the stamp plate is now fully justified!

With a husband who serves in the armed forces, this word just sprang out from the page! I have chosen the word 'Regiment' and here's what happened in my dictionary this week:

Finally, I found a use for the Tim soldier! This is my little regiment on parade. I'm having trouble with my book already and the clip had to be put in place to prevent the pages springing closed.

The word definition left clear as the rules state.

The soldiers were stamped onto old book pages. Each was coloured using water colour pencils and a little distress stain. Rosy cheeks were added to each soldier for fun. The soldiers were then cut out and attached with matte medium.

The letters were die cut, stamped with versamark and embossed with white EP. Distress ink was used for the red letters and gold acrylic paint for the others - this ensured the stamped resist image remained visible. Shading was added around the letters with a black pencil.

The speech bubble was stamped and cut out leaving only the section required. The centre panel was painted with fresco for a matte look before the labels were printed and added to the space. Shading was again added for effect.

The background was created with distress inks using both sponging to blend and stamping (using the soldier image / text) to create depth.

Sequin waste and background stamping can be spotted in this image - just!

Soldiers can be seen stamped in the background to shadow the cut out soldiers in the foreground.

My husband was horrified that the uniforms were historically incorrect - in the case of the Blue Gent  - but I don't worry about such details when having fun! My apologies if you prefer your historical details to be accurate too. . . . . .

The challenge  can be joined anytime so if you haven't yet linked up, why not create something and link it up to the Craft Barn blog here. I think it's great fun because I find myself producing work that perhaps, I wouldn't normally do - so much fun!!