Spring to me... is all about new life

I love spring! Things start to come back to life here in Colorado after a long and sometimes dreary winter. As the weather starts to change, a smile quickly comes to my face knowing that soon all of the “little people” (my kids included) will be playing outside again! The little babies in the neighborhood that have learned how to walk over the winter will soon be testing their new found skill outside – is there anything cuter? Days will start to magically become longer (or so it seems) as we take in all of the beauty & busyness of this season. Yes, spring is a wonderful time of new beginnings, new birth, and often new life.

One of our challenges as a design team this month was to design something around spring colors – or at least these colors spoke “spring” to me. The colors started my mind buzzing around the feelings that I have associated with spring. Spring to me is all about new life, new beginnings, and new hope all wrapped in the big bow of glorious beauty - so I set out to create something that represented the season to me. After thinking for a few days I decided on two things: 1. Give new life to something old, meaning use something that has been forgotten and tossed aside; 2. Tie in the color and sounds that can be heard & seen during this time of the year and incorporate them into my project.
In giving life to something old – I set my sights on the following two things:

I love incorporating different items into my altered art projects – and giving a “re-purpose for something that has been pushed off to the side and is often forgotten so the popsicle stick was the perfect fit! I couldn’t even begin to tell you just how many of these sticks I have around from years of using rub-ons (hmmm maybe I should build a bird house or something with them…LOL)
I chose the record because I like to “play on words” - I tend to do this in a lot of my art pieces, I find that it tends to spark my creative juices.
Now the fun part began as I reached for some beautiful Pattern Paper, some chipboard, and my Chipart Tool (for some added texture) all by GCD Studios!
Here’s what I came up with:

Here’s a close up of the popsicle stick – notice how I used the Chipart tool to add some dimension to an otherwise flat object:

Here’ a close up of the bird – can I just say how much I LOVE the Sparrow Alphabet!

I hope that I have inspired you to look at something “old” and give new life to it this spring.

Jennifer