happiness is...

...loads of vintage paper, scissors, gluestick, stencils, spray inks, a sewing machine and-- especially-- using all of the above to make a freeform collage for this week's collage obsession prompt which just happens to be called, "happiness is..."! so here's what i made:

i had a blast with this one, though i confess that it took me (parts of) more than one evening to get where i wanted to be. i had the buddha and the random background the first night. the arch (from the second night) changed everything and got me in the ballpark. but the butterflies saved the day: punched ones from a hindi language newspaper, digital brush ones that i had printed out on clear labels but never used, and finally masked and sprayed ones. the tiny flowers were the very last thing i added, and they are the one truly premeditated element... i realized quite close to the end that i needed to pull the brown and gold colors from the buddha out into the frame area.

now i can't wait to check out the "happiness is..." gallery at collage obsession. wanna come, too?!