Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

This is my finished piece for the Take It Further challange and I hate it. I really hate it. I would not normally put something this bad on my blog site, but I made a committment to the challange to post everything. This was monoprinted, then I outlined the mountains, then added some painted cheesesloth to the bottom. It was still ugly, so I stamped the mountains with various stamps I had, and then I did some free motion quilting all over. Still ugly, but I'm done. I went into this challange knowing that I was going to experiment and not try to make masterpieces which relieves some of the decision making pressure, and here are the lessons I've learned:

1. Start small. With a larger piece it can quickly become overwhelming.

2. Even though I'm experimenting, I should still take it seriously. On this piece I just wanted to finish it and move on.

3.If I'm not having fun with it, stop. Either start something new or just post the progress I've made.

I'm ready for next months challange now

Take It Further

I have joined Sharon B's Take it Further challange, found here http://sharonb.wordpress.com/take-it-further-challange/ . We get 2 choices each month, one is an idea - this month it's about someone you admire, or if we don't like that, there is a color wave to follow. Since I just came back from Santa Fe I decided to try something in the Georgia O'Keefe style and I am using most of the colors from Sharons list. This first picture is from a monoprint I did using thickened dye on cotton sateen.

I then added some machine stitching to outline the areas and add some interest. So far very boring

In this third picture I added some texture by stamping the mountain on the right - I'm not impressed by this , but I added some cheesecloth to the bottom and I like where this is going.

I'm trying to do things I don't usually do with this challange, such as the stamping, monoprinting , because it's a good way to explore different techniques, get out of my comfort zone, and it doesn't really matter if it doesn't work. I ususally start each piece expecting it to be my masterpiece so it's a strange feeling to just let this take me where it wants to