arachnophobia ~ noun ~ extreme or irrational fear of spiders
Ever since I can remember, when I was a child and till this day I have a fear of spiders, or as I like to call them "eight legged freaks". Most spiders do no harm, catch bugs, etc. Don't notice them to much when I'm in the garden. The day my dad took me to see the movie Arachnophbia, his intentions were good, but in that moment I knew my phobia would escalate. Managed to watch the whole movie, mostly out of fear. In the early '90's I was taking night classes in drawing at the University of Art and Design. Received an A- on one of my pieces that incorporated my fears. One in particular, spiders. Was told by one of my instructors to continue putting my fears into my art. That being said, I made a Spider plant using TH/Sizzix dies and Stampers Anonymous stamps. Hope you like it.
Starting with distress watercolour card stock, emboss with 3D texture fades Brickwork. Then apply with watered down distress paints in frayed burlap and hickory smoke. Once dry, smudge in old paper distress crayon. My good friend Zoe Hillman, has an awesome tutorial of this technique on her blog. You can find it
here. Next I used the new fracture stencil and distress archival ink in frayed burlap to make cracked bricks.
Creating depth on the skull using TH/SA cms471 obscure, fussy cutting him 3 times, then using one of my x-acto knives to cut the eyes out. I learned this technique from my friend Juliana Michales. For added dimension used foam squares between the layers of the skulls.
To create more depth on the skulls, I blended distress pencil crayon in frayed burlap and distress crayon in old paper using a water brush.
Making the spider plant with distress watercolour card stock and distress watercolour pencil crayons in antique linen, frayed burlap and peeled paint, distress archival in black soot with fracture stencil. Using colorize graveyard plant leaves and adhering with collage medium to the skull.
Adding a couple final touches to the spider plant. One cannot have a spider plant without a spider (from Big Freights thinlits) and a silver cross from graveyard thinlits with metallic kraft stock, just because.... The background is kraft card stock blackout and 3D multi level arched.
I hope you enjoyed my back story and full tutorial.
Christina
