It's June on ARTastic ...

Welcome to our challenge this month - gosh are we really nearly half way through this year?  Again we had some lovely entries last month so many thanks for your continued support.  Don't forget to pop back on the 15th when we announce our May winners and offer you some more wonderful team inspiration.

This month we are being a little light-hearted with our choice of inspiration.  Every year I like to introduce one artwork that represents the rural Australian landscape - it might be a modern landscape or a more nostalgic look at a time gone by.  This month I am sure you will appreciate this gem and I certainly look forward to seeing how you might be inspired by it.

This month we have two main sponsors - each offering a $15 voucher to their stores.

 Julie from Time to Create

and Donna from Mystical Scrapbooks

and of course every month we also offer a prize pack totally by random draw.

and now onto our challenge ....  introducing Max Mannix with The Jam Session.

Criteria is  to use distressing on your work.

Hint - think colonial Australia, country pubs, shady veranda's, musical instruments, watching bands, weatherboard houses, lanky boys and faithful dogs!

A little about Max Mannix.

Max Mannix is an Australian artist who paints stories or ‘yarns’, based on his years growing up in Victorian country towns and working on cattle stations in the Queensland outback. These experiences and the colourful characters along the way have provided Max with an endless flow of inspiration for his artwork, depicting Australian country life in a light-hearted vein with keen insight and gentle humour. Max is a highly collectable and published artist, whose work is exhibited in one-man and group shows and owned by private and corporate collections around the world. Max’s work is predominantly painted in oil on specially prepared canvas board, but he also uses acrylics and pen and inks as well as creating etchings and figurative sculpture.The Mannix Studio Gallery is located in, ‘The Sandstone Church’, at the front of his residential property in Kenthurst, New South Wales.

http://www.maxmannix.com/

and now onto some terrific pages from our creative design team.  I'd also like to make mention that this will be team member Kylie's last month with us as she completes her term and moves onto other pursuits.  Thank you for being part of ARTastic Kylie and sharing your talent with us.  While we might be bid a sad farewell to Kylie we will be welcoming the lovely Wendy O'Keeffe to the team this month.  Wendy will join us with her first layout on the 15th.

KYLIE

 As I didn't have anything Australian colonial or even pub or get-together related that I thought  would fit I went outside the box a little :)

DEB

I was inspired by the timber side wall and window of the hotel and the colours in the artwork.

TONE-LILL

It was the feeling of outdoor activity that inspired me to make a page with holiday photos for my niece's album and I loved the colours on the inspiration picture so I tried to use the same on the LO and did both paper distressing and colour distressing on the paper edges.

ELAINE

I love distressing, it adds dimension to the page with not much effort. I distress on most layouts. I have a little stressing tool but before that I used the blades of a small sissors. For this page I distressed the white edging paper from my photos then inked them with brown to soften the edges. The rest of the papers, including the tags, I left the white edging distressing gives. For my colours for this layout I was inspired by the warm, earthy, rustic colours.

JULIE

One of my favourite techniques for creating unique papers is Extreme Distressing.

I enjoy that each time the paper is created exclusively to support the theme that I have in mind for my layout.

A visit to my blog will have you wanting to be extreme too....with your distressing that is!

HELENE

I have been sanding the cardstock used behind the photo.

Please upload the DIRECT link to your actual entry with the link tool on the LEFT by 11.55pm on June 30th, 2014. We'd love to see your new paper, digital, or off the page entries.  Please no back-dated submissions.  You may combine with a sketch and/or colour/technique challenge and international entries are always welcome.   Remember we are Australian based so you need to allow for the different time zones - if in doubt check our clock.  

Please pop back on the 8th for The ARTastic 3T's - Tips, Tricks and Techniques brought to you this month by our extremely talented and very arty team member, Aubrie Wancata.  I am sure she will inspire you.