Craft Barn Alpha Challenge - Letter A

At last, I have something to post - seems like ages since the last one (I always seem to be saying that these days!). We're really busy here preparing our house for sale so you can imagine that I don't get much time to sit and create. . . . .

My entry for the Craft Barn Alpha Challenge has been under construction for quite a few days. I knew what I wanted to do but as with the best laid plans, it took some time to get onto paper what I wanted to achieve from my head! (Hopefully that makes sense!).

For my letter A, I've chosen a very obvious word: Angel. I have a number of Crafty Individuals stamps which depict some very pretty little 'angelic' girls with wings and I wanted to use one of those.

I've toned my colour palette right down and I really like it but it was a devil to photograph. Trying to get the subtle details of the background in proved a nightmare! Anything with sheen or metallic shine gives problems but I almost gave up with this one; it seemed a shame to waste it after enjoying the make, so here it is:

I wanted to create a background that looked like old plaster with a worn and faded painted design. I used a combination of DecoArt acrylics, Fresco acrylics, archival ink, distress ink and metallic gel pens to achieve this. Excuse the black clip again - it's the only way I can keep the pages open.

The chosen word and definition as required by the challenge rules. Various colours of metallic gel pen were used to highlight areas; here you can see the silver one. The stamping in the background was all done with DecoArt acrylic paints and champagne gold from their metallics range. I hoped to create a very timeworn appearance.

Die cut letters were inked with archival, randomly stamped with versamark and taupe EP applied. The metallic look of this EP works well with the metallic acrylic which shows quite well here next to the die cut letter.

The main image was stamped with archival onto card coloured with Fresco paint. Pencil was used to shade around some edges of the image.

I love this image and as the word 'Angel' is part of the stamp, it seemed perfect for this challenge.

An Andy Skinner stencil was used in two corners with archival ink and metallic gel pens.

I think the metallic acrylic works quite well with the normal acrylic paint. Thank you so much for looking today. I really appreciate that so many of you stick with me during my absences! Hopefully, I'll be catching up with you all soon and fingers crossed for the house sale!