On my online workbook this week: Flying Lessons

Dear

This week's inspiration is how cunning hydrangeas are to still be all blue… at a time when everyone else is turning red, yellow and rust for attention!

Creative people are pretty smart. We look at things from a How Did You Do That perspective. Our brain knows when things are hard to do…even more so when things are impossible. And those impossible things are where we lean in closer to pay attention.

Figure out a way to add a bit of… but that is impossible! into every design. An easy way to do this is to just when everything is done go back into the design and add in a few twigs right over the berries and flowers. Now it looks like it would have been impossible for a designer to get the design details in there so it must have grown that way. Simple trick but very effective to craft realistic floral illusions.

Another way I added a bit of lean closer interest in this design is to use hot glue to glue the flowers- but the trick was not just for the flowers it was what it allowed me to do with the twigs. Hot glue makes it easy to attach the dried material in impossibly small spaces right at the back but hot glue has the side effect of… spider webs! Two jobs in one, and done. The trick is that these strands are actually quite strong and I can even go back and connect the strands by deliberately wrapping it around the broom twigs to subtly tame and reposition and keep the twig tips into the impossibly perfect positions I wanted them in. A bit like a hairnet.

Some types of hot glue make more strands than others. I save up those for Halloween designing when you actually want a few cobwebs blowing in the breeze.

Also: If you want to get rid of the hot glue cobwebs I have a Tutorial for you. And if you want to add a few more strands… of course I have a Tutorial for you for that as well. They are both linked below the design post

Enjoy!

Every good wish,

Christine