Hello sweet May ...

In the lead up to Mother's Day here in Australia, children of all ages (and their Dad's) will flock to florists, newsagents, fashion stores and day spas, on behalf of their mum, spending around $2 billion. A lot of them will get crafty too creating wonderful works of art in school classrooms just ready to present to Mum.

The biggest spending will happen at restaurants and cafes but around $200 million is estimated to be spent on flowers.  Selling flowers is an important business for Mother's Day!

So it appears we can all look forward to being taken to lunch and given a beautiful bunch of flowers - now what woman wouldn't like that!

So during May as a tribute to Mother's everywhere we invite you to join in our monthly challenge where our criteria is to use flowers on your page.  We feature this amazing artwork by New Zealand artist Michael Sass called The Garden as your inspiration.  If you would like to feature your own Mother, Grandmother or yourself with your children please do but it isn't mandatory - we just want to see those flowers!

CRITERIA - FLOWERS

A little about Michael Sass ...

Michael Sass migrated to New Zealand from South Africa in 2000 with his wife, Kathy to be with their two daughters. Having been in business all his life, Michael pursued art seriously for the first time when he semi-retired in 1998. Art has always been his first love and, although during his school career he won many prizes for art, he was not encouraged to do art as a career. He did two painting courses with the celebrated South African artist Dale Elliot in 1998 and has been painting ever since. His preferred medium is pastel but he also does oils and acrylics – mostly in landscape realism. Since arriving in New Zealand, Michael has exhibited at numerous exhibitions and was been honoured with a number of prestigious awards.

This year we are putting the ART back into ARTastic and our main prize each month will reflect that -  this month featuring a lovely apron to help you in your arty pursuits and some pretty flowers of course!

And as always a lovely prize pack for our random draw winner ...

Donated by Anna Uhras

And now some amazing inspiration from the first of our team ...

TANYA

I loved all the flowers in the painting so tried to use as many as I could on my layout. Seeing that it was a Mothers Day Tribute I have used a photo of my daughter who will miss her first mothers day with me as she is heading to Europe the week before!

EVELYN

For my layout I used a very romantic picture and I used the queen of flowers on it - the rose!

JUDY

I have chosen to use a monochromatic colour scheme using flowers. I have used a photo of my mother taken in the early 40's I think and I wanted a vintage feel.

HELENE

I have flowers on the background paper, used a flower patterned stencil, fuzzy cut flowers and layered flower embellishments.

ELAINE

I  just had to use a photo of my children as it is a Mother's day tribute . I loved how this painting had so many colours and I used that as my inspiration. I also challenged myself to use flowers on a 'fun' page.

MARIA

Flowers always inspire! On my layout, there are many different flowers : paper, knitted, metallic and chipboard.

TRACEY

I loved the colours in the painting and this old Bo Bunny paper was perfect for the background. I also found some old iron on butterflies that were a great colour and lets face it needed to be used. The something new is the Cocoa Vanilla accents and words. This is my beautiful Mum with two of her granddaughters.

Over to you ......

Please upload the DIRECT link to your actual entry with the link tool on the LEFT by 11.55pm on May 31st, 2017.  We'd love to see your new paper, digital, mixed media or off the page entries. Why not try doing a pocket page spread?  Please no back-dated submissions.  

 Please note:- You may combine our challenge with a sketch challenge only - no other combining will be accepted.  Please include our inspirational picture and challenge details on your blog post as well as provide a link back to us at ARTastic  ... and don't forget to tell us how you were inspired by our challenge.  You may enter more than once in any month as long as each submission is with a different creation.  International entries are very welcome. 

Please call past on the 8th for our announcement of the April winners and our ARTastic 3T's - Tips, Tricks and Techniques for May.