J's July to Alessandra and Mia

Chapter 2 - Jean appropriates another idea from somewhere. I didn't capture the source for this and I didn't follow it very closely. I just needed a reference for some flowers along the side. I was very late sending these for the July exchange. When I'm late with international addresses, I usually tuck a second envelope inside - a bonus for being patient and it also gives me a chance to do things that are not postal scanner friendly.

Here is the inspiration: 

I don't even like the actual line drawings - but I won't go into detail about why - it's just a matter of taste. I do think the weight of the lines harmonizes with the chunks of color. I knew I would not have huge chunks of color. I just needed an arrangement with some variety in shapes - and I did not want to deal with stems. I did Alessandra's first -and started with the large orange flower. Then added three tulips and then a smattering of smaller flowers and finally the polka dots.

My first mistake was leaving too much space between the items. But, I forged ahead and did all the colors, then went back and did the outlines. I like the blue-green color on the ferns in the inspiration piece - but didn't like that color on mine. So, when I had to do a second outer envelope for Mia, I tried a different green. I don't like it any better. 

On the second one, I also tried outlining in brown, because the stamp had so much brown. And then put in just a bit of black. It's rare that I don't put any black in. That worked out fine, but these two barely made it into the so-so range. The fun ideas that I did for the inserts were a little better. 

My main issue with my version is that it is overworked. I like my marker flowers to be a bit wispy and these are scrubby. I did a Google search image and nothing came up - so, apologies to the person who did this. If you want to. contact me, I will be happy to add an attribution.

I had a heck of a time coming up with the word attribution just now and weirdly - the word that came to mind was attrubition. Such a weird flipping of syllables - and at first it sounded just right to altered-Jean. Spell-check offered the correction. Apologies to spell check over that other very weird incident and my rant.