Gone Fishing by Chris Sexton

The challenge for September at PIXELS and PAPER was an "anything goes" project based on a photo of a fisherman. Considering we celebrate Fathers' Day in September and I had recently taken a photo of my almost eight year old great- niece Lilly and her dad fishing together, I figured it was the perfect photo to use. Lilly was incredibly excited about catching her first fish (even though it was too small to keep) and has decided fishing is a great past-time (although I think its more about spending time with her daddy than anything else.)

I used a gorgeous background paper from "fabscraps" called Lighthouse 1, scraped some white gesso through a stencil, spritzed with some "Glimmer Mist", then stamped over the top with a Kaisercraft stamp called Hessian. To add some texture, I used some torn corrugated card coloured with blue and brown acrylic paint and brightened up with a touch of "Kindy Glitz". I also added the torn off sections of the corrugated card to the top right and bottom left corners of the layout to act as a frame.

I used some brown mesh to represent the rocks at the river's edge and some gauze to represent a discarded fisherman's net. To finish I added a couple of charms, a wooden anchor, shells and some string and raffia. The trickiest bit was placing the journalling tag because of the various layers and the angle of it. I wrote on the back of it so that the tag just looks like an embellishment. I used mounting tape under the main photo to lift it off the page and make the lighthouse appear to recede into the distance.
I'm quite happy with the way it all turned out. Thanks PIXELS and PAPER for the inspiration and 10 points to the Design Team, who all had fantastic and very different interpretations of the challenge photo. Thanks for looking. I really appreciate the comments you make.
Cheers, Chris.