/* */ Beulah Bee: Happy Place

April 04, 2017

Happy Place


Has spring arrived where you live?

It's full-on here in the southwest desert and pity the poor allergy sufferers as our winter rains have brought a profusion of flowers.

The tiny, yellow, desert-kind that flock every tree and bush like snow and eventually fall to the ground covering it in drifts.

The bees are having a heyday and so am I now that I've returned to my happy place and I've made a collage.

I took step-out photos of the project hoping to share my technique but they just didn't turn out (my camera skills are rusty). So if you are interested in how it was made please read on and I'll describe it for you instead.

I covered a piece of heavy-weight drawing paper with random bits (including an alphabet die-cut scrap), then white-washed everything with a light coat of gesso and pasted it onto an old textbook cover.

I enlarged then laser-printed an image which was transferred to the background using gel medium. I sanded the surface here and there to age it's appearance.


I stamped flowers (Tim Holtz Flower Garden) using archival ink then tinted them with acrylic paint.

For the sentiment, I used Tim's new metallic stickers (Quotations) which I distressed a bit with sanding and Distress ink. I used his new design tape (French) just behind it.


The striped lines you see in the tape are the result of scanning my artwork (since I am currently camera-impaired). This is a digital anomaly only--they do not exist on the original tape.