What The Dickens- The End of The Bears' 3rd Challenge

Hello there peeps. How are you all this breezy late September day? Today we end our third literary challenge, and show you what we came up with.

First though, we must say a very BIG thank you to our 'joiner-inners'

Ali

Butterfly

Kim

I hope you can take time to visit each entrant, as they all produced such lovely interpretations of the theme.

So, what did the bears produce? Well we tasked Pooh with this challenge, as he'd been mumbling that he wasn't being given enough airtime on the blog (!)
To stop him whinging on we left him to it, and this is what he came up with




Over to you for a walk through, Pooh.

Hello there lovely followers, my interpretation of the Dickens themes of Gentleman, decay, and neglect centred on Pip's idea of what a gentleman is, interspersed with the reality of Miss Havisham's neglected and decaying state of living.

To start, I took a previously worked on art journal page, and challenged myself to see if I could alter it to fit the bill. The page had a giant S stencilled onto it, and I thought I could use this to make the word 'Satis', for Miss Havisham's house. I started by covering the pages in yellow, to depict neglect and decay, and to interpret Pip's impression of Miss Havisham's appearance when he fist meets her.


The yellow was a little too bright for my liking, so I used a glimmer mist spray to introduce a more aged and decaying effect.


Then I inked over the pages in Walnut Stain distress ink. The more aged the page looked, the better.


Next, I just had to add a cobweb, what would a page with Miss Havisham be without one? I asked myself! I added some texture paste to our cobweb mask, using Horace's Itunes voucher (I think he'd used all the credit on it!)


I then created a crackled background effect using stamps without acrylic blocks.



Rolling the stamps randomly over the page produces a less uniform and more sporadic effect. Perfect for a page of neglect such as this.


All the random stamping left me a little lethargic, so I climbed into the bears' bed for a nap.



On awaking I felt like a new bear, however, we've just taken on Cedric, so I continued with the page instead!

I inked up some suitable images from various stamp sets


Using our tried and tested method of stamping, I stamped onto tissue paper


To produce images of a gentleman, Satis House, and a spider! What a random lot!


I wanted the images to blend into the background of the page, so applied some Mod Podge to the page and adhered my tissue paper stamped images to this.


I then applied a generous amount of Mod Podge, to completely cover the images. Left to dry, the Mod Podge, along with the tissue paper, should disappear, like magic!


Next I needed to cut Miss Havisham's heart (that sounds painful). I used the yellow Sizzix Originals heart die in the cuttlebug.



I tore, crumpled and distressed poor Miss Havisham's heart, to show that despite the passing of the years, she had never moved on and allowed it to mend.


I decided the page needed a sentiment, so chose 'In shutting out the light of day, she had shut out infinitely more'. I think this sentiment sums up Miss Havisham's life since her rejection perfectly.


Finally, my finished page, Pip is on the left. Looking down at Satis house, he imagines a grand life as a gentleman, but the reality is very different, as he finds out when he encounters Miss Havisham, and her sad, neglected life. Miss Havisham is shown surrounded by the detritus of her wasted life, her wedding cake is encrusted in cobwebs, as is the rest of the room. Her dress is tattered, and filthy at the ends. Behind her is a huge cobweb, with a spider dangling idly down, he knows he won't be disturbed.


I hope you enjoyed my little demo of my page. We'll be back tomorrow, with an October challenge, which we hope you'd like to join in with.

With love from the bears.