May flowers: gerbera

May 7 Day 7: Gerberas

this is another 'trash to treasure' assemblage / collage project

for the May Month of Flowers art challenge on Instagram.

this sunny bloom grew right outta' my recycle bin!

continue reading to see how i turned garbage into art...

i grabbed weekly mailers, ads, and coupons from the recycle bin,

and some saved magazine tearsheets from one of my files,

to cut out the petals, stem, and leaves:

the flower bloom itself was just an exercise in layering:

i began with a circle of poster board (which you can't see). 

onto that, i glued the longest/largest petals.

then i glued on another layer of petals - these slightly smaller - between the large ones.

another layer of even smaller petals was added,

finished off with a small circle cut from gift wrap and then fringed around the edge.

an even tinier circle was glued in the center of that.

i folded a few of the medium and small sized petals forward a bit,

to make them lift up off of the surface and give more dimension to the flower.

then it was time to create the background:

i used a recently-used piece of printer paper with paint on it,

adding the grass imagery that was cut from a magazine YEARS ago

( it has been on many of my pin boards / inspiration boards since then!)

and the stem & leaves cut from paper.

putting it all together was easy, and cost me nuthin'!

now THAT's fun!

i originally made the gerbera and photographed it against a different background - 

a piece of my 'painted paint chip paper' made in 2020:

it's cute... but the flower doesn't stand out as much as i wanted it to.

so i created the new background shown above. and i like it more than my original idea!

funny how art - and life - kinda' work out that way....

are you on Instagram???

click here to follow the #flowermonth2022 challenge

links to previous related content:

painted paint chip paper

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