Unruly Paper Arts - Readers' Art Quest Challenge!

Hello and welcome to my Followers and Friends! Over at Unruly Paper Arts  today it's all blue skies and cactus flowers, as there is a challenge to create a project with either a Mexican theme or using the vivid colours of Mexico and Mexican Art. Do please pop over to Unruly Paper Arts to see the great inspiration and join in! There is a generous prize pack from Robin's Nest  to be won and you can create anything as long as it is inspired by the picture or creative prompt. Whenever I think of Mexico, Frida Kahlo comes to mind. It is a dream of mine to one day make a trip to see her home, which lives on with the vivid colours and objects she collected during her short life. Meanwhile here is the tag I created in homage to Frida!

Knowing how much I admire her work, my son bought me the perfect Christmas gift back in 2012 - A Frida desk diary! Each day has a full-page vivid and beautiful image. I am treasuring these and this is the first one I have used as part of a project. I really wanted to carry through the brilliant colours in this portrait and make my tag come alive - Frida style!

I challenged myself to really explore colour and to reflect not only the palette of the UPA Challenge, but also the exuberant shades which Frida surrounded herself with. I took a jumbo manila tag and spread it with a thick layer of Grunge Paste, leaving the middle for Crackle effect! I would paint this black, apply a thin layer of Grunge Paste and when this was dry, paint over with Spanish Mulberry. When I had used a pointy tool to create grooves in the GP and painted over with different shades of Frescos and Treasure Golds, I used Claudine Hellmuth, Multi Medium to stick my diary image and then merged it into the crackled centre area. The lace and Snowflake stenciling with a Prima stencil create the impression of Frida's dress and the roughly painted walls and cracked plaster of the artist's home.

I loved this parrot! I created curls of corrugated paper, painted one side with PaperArtsy Beach Hut and the other with Fresco Tangerine, which I think echoed his feathers! The tiny hand earring is a charm given me by my good crafting friend, Lucy Edmondson. Again I painted both sides of card and used the rather bold combo of orange and red for these tropical flowers. I created them by die-cutting the painted card with PaperArtsy flower dies and then roughly rolled them into rose shapes, edging the Tango ones with some translucent Blood Orange. The leaves are also made from PA dies painted with shades of blue and green Frescos like Sky and Hey Pesto, I think!

This fluffy, ribbon yarn seemed to go perfectly with the bright colours. For the butterfly I used some book text painted with the translucent, PaperArtsy Yellow Submarine! The pennant is from Lynne Perrella's PaperArtsy Collection 005, stamped in Onyx black Versafine onto PaperArtsy Bora Bora and then fussy-cut to give a final fiesta flourish!
Thank you so much for popping in and taking a look at the Magpie's Nest today! I do hope you will feel inspired to join in this month's Readers' Art Quest over at Unruly Paper Arts! Have a colourful, sunny and creative time whatever you do!