Dance Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee!

This is my next Creative Expressions design piece. It's a wall hanging that was inspired by the film Ali.....It had been on the Sky + for ages and hubby and I finally got round to watching it the other day!!!! I think it had been saved for months, but we needed space for the Superbowl!! Hubby's a huge fan. So dance like a butterfly sting like a bee....started to buzz round in my head....excuse the pun. Having a butterfly and a bee in the Eco green, Garden Chic set just kind of started shouting out for some sort of Ali themed project.

I started going through the sports section of our paper for the last few weeks to see if I could find some boxing related cuttings to make a background with...so now this piece is not just about Ali, but also a tribute to his trainer who died recently. My paper was full of Obits, so I have used these to cover a piece of mountboard. I was going to gesso it....but a certain daughter had not cleaned it properly when she used it last and it was completely stuck...

Then I decided to use Eco paint...I used the sand colour, a little watered down, I sponged it back off the areas that I wanted the newsprint to stand out more. I distressed the rest of the background by dry brushing a bit more Eco paint in the same colour. I distressed around the edges of the mountboard with frayed burlap and aged mahogany distress inks. Then I stamped the ragged robin stamp across the bottom of the mountboard. I stamped the bee onto some cream card and then punched it out. This was mounted in a bottle top and encased in UTTE before being adhered to the card. The butterfly was stamped onto Glassine paper and then heated with a heat gun, this kind of melts the surface and draws the ink into the paper which worked really well for the wings

The text is stamped using the Creative Expressions vintage typewriter set by Sam Poole that we were demo-ing a few months back..I just stamped the typewriter keys out a few times, cut out the letters I needed and coated them in glossy accents.

A couple of other stamps were used, a bit of vellum, some chain and some eyelets and that more or less completes the project.

I would like to enter this into the following challenges....

"Aud Sentiments Challenge - anything but a card"

"Charisma Cardz - Anyting with wings"

"Colour Create - Light and dark browns with white/cream", I'mm hoping I'm ok with this one, counting aged mahogany as my dark brown, frayed burlap as my light brown and stone as my cream.

"Crafty Ribbons - For men and boys", might be a problem with this, I'm not sure if entries should have ribbon on them...couldn't see anything in the rules?

"Craft us crazy - Anything goes"

"Just for Fun - Vintage Men"

"The Outlawzs - Masculine Project"

"The Poodles Parlour - Anything goes"