Ecoline Collage or Trowellling Makeup on a Warthog

Well, I hemmed and hawed and debated about whether to post this. I haven't decided if I love it or hate it. I have been browsing around looking at collage-type cards lately and thought I would try it out. I started with one of my ecoline sheets that I made using red and blue and pickling salt crystals. On its own it looked fairly revolting. I stamped on some collage-y type stamps (Tim Holtz - Stampers Anonymous) in black and lagoon versafine ink, and the scroll is in distress (tumbled glass and worn lipstick). The sentiment is embossed in black, and the corner stamp is stamped in India ink and pink grapefruit chalk. It needed some more something, so I flung on some twinkling H20s (rubilite, wild blueberry and pewter) using a big paintbrush. (The wall behind the freezer is getting quite colourful!) I felt the sentiment needed to stand out a bit more, so I dabbed it with Snow Cap white paint and rubbed it off the letters with a rag. I scuffed on some more paint here and there too. Collage-y cards seem to have some metal on them somewhere, so I added some brads. I fiddled with some ribbon, but took it off - wasn't working. So there you have it - an early effort at collage. I am sure that I will look back on this in horror at some point, either having gotten good at collage or having abandoned it in failure. I am trying to tell myself this would be a good masculine card, but maybe only for someone with very poor vision or deeply kind heart. DH wasn't at all fond of it and made no bones about saying so, but he's washing up, so I will forgive him. Possibly the moral of this whole card is that adding numerous blotchy layers to an ugly background will not make it beautiful. But I guess I wasn't really going for beautiful, I was going for grunge, which was certainly achieved. I'm still not decided whether this is hip-grunge, or swamp-grunge. I'll keep at the collage efforts if for no other reason than they are a lot of fun to do.