Flowers & Bees ~ Rick St. Dennis altered trading block

Hi there. I'm here today and on the Sparkle and Glitter blog with a mixed media artist trading block. I have been fascinated with these since I first saw them. They are cubes of different sizes with five or six (if you do the bottom) slices of real estate for altering and showcasing wonderful Rick St. Dennis images. This particular one is 3.25" on all sides...I knew just what I wanted to feature, too.

I coloured all of the images with Prismacolor pencils, adding in a few Polychromos for the skin shading. The flowers are from the Clippings series: Clippings Rose B; Clippings Rose C; Clippings Daisy, Clippings Shasta Daisy. The bees are Standing Busy Bee Kid and Seated Busy Bee Kid. The flowers remind me of Alice in Wonderland's garden and the bees just make me smile. I fussy cut them all and then matted each in black cardstock trimming them out a second time. The wings of the bees were coated with Diamond Stickles for a little sparkle.

The ATBs that I purchased from Joggles came as 2 flat, scored, and cut pieces of mat board. I spritzed the good sides with Lindy's Stamp Gang Starburst sprays in Hottie Patottie Hot Pink, Marigold Yellow Orange, and Yellow Rose of Texas, also available at Joggles. The colours were allowed to blend and drip which I facilitated by tipping the mat board in different directions. I also picked up some of the over spray off my craft mat to create splotches.Great shimmer from these inks. I love being messy! Background stamping was done with some texture stamps and Ranger Magenta Hue and Brilliance Rocket Red Gold. White embossing paste was scraped through TCW Halftone borders stencil. Then the pieces were folded along the score lines, the edges coloured with Big brush pens, and the flaps glued in place to create the cube.

Originally I was going to place one image on each of the six sides but I couldn't bear to choose an image for the bottom which would be hidden. Instead I combined the two roses on the top section. Green grass was die cut and applied to the bottom of each side so the images were grounded (pun intended). A few punched flowers were added to the grass on each side and the centers were dotted with black Pearl pen. TH rub-ons were added to the bee panels. Some black splatter dots were stamped randomly on each side to finish them off.

I love this fun little ATB. The bees make the flowers happy, the flowers make the bees happy, and they all make me happy. I can't help but smile when I look at it. Thanks for stopping by today. I hope they made you happy, too.

Life is good; so is art.
Bonnie