Summer of Color 3, week 3: Lime green and purple

It's time once again for Summer of Color 3, or as those of us playing along like to abbreviate it: SOC3.  This is week 3, and if I read correctly, our colors are lime green and purple.  Gotta love how Kristin our hostess from Twinkle Twinkle has given us choices this year.  Now I'm not sure who all those people were who wanted these colors, but I thought they were especially difficult.  Difficult not just to work with, but also to come up with ideas for.

So I started with wooden stamps I made during my annual April recycling.

To those stamps and lavender card stock I added both purple and green-gold fluid acrylics and two shades of purple acrylic paints, along with iridescent white, titan buff, and black fluid acrylics.  I wanted to have the option to tint (lighten) or shade (darken) whatever color I was working with at the time.

So, did I not mention these colors reminded me of puke?  OK, maybe not puke, but certainly not Colors of Summer.  As a result, I created a mess.

I tried to make an abstract piece using card stock as my substrate.  I plan to turn all my 8.5 inch  X 11.5 inch (21.59 centimeter X 27.94 centimeter) SOC entries this year into a book.  I'll add the three holes at the end of the SOC collaboration and decorate the book covers.

Things I learned while making this piece include:
1.  Although I had a definite design idea in my head when I started, I quickly learned I can't draw using a paint brush.  Instead, I made a horrible mess and had to figure out a way to make it salvageable.
2.  I'm not very good at abstract art.
3.  As I suspected when I first saw these colors, they quickly turn to "mud" if not used properly.  After all, they are practically across the color wheel from each other.  And when you mix purple with green, there's a good chance you're going to get brown "mud."

However, I was NOT about to only show that horrible abstract after my beautiful butterflies last week.  So, I first looked in magazines, then in my scrap paper, and when neither of those produced any viable images, went to the internet and found a lovely watering can at The Graphic Fairy's site.

After printing three images and fussy cutting everything, I came up with The Watering Can.  For the background I used some of my handmade shimmer mists.  The lighter color is supposed to be lime green, but looks more like lemon yellow when mixed with the darker red/purple.  Remember what I said about "mud?" 

At least I feel better about this one and they look more like what would pass for Summer of Color colors, this time being lime green and purple.  And of course, the watering can is just what we need to water our flowers on these hot days (if you live in the hot northern hemisphere like I do, that is).

Please don't forget to visit Kristin for links to others who are also playing in this Summer of Color.