REVIVING A POSTER FOR THE CHERRY BLOSSSOM FESTVAL

This year the Cherry Blossom Festival begins March 20th and goes through April 14th.

While living in Washington, DC, one of our favorite tourist trips into the city was attending the annual Cherry Blossom Festival around  the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson Memorial.  Here is one of my most favorite pictures of the girls taken during that visit to festival.

                                                                      

Every year there is a contest to design the annual official Cherry Blossom poster.  Here is a sample of the 2010 annual poster.  The emphasis always revolves around the beautiful cherry blossoms.
          

                                                    
Because of the beautiful shades of pink usually found in these posters, I wanted to buy one to remember our memorable trip.  Once home, the poster laid around in the cardboard tube until settling in Alabama.  Another memento was a conch shell that Mr. Thrifty found on a scuba expedition in Cuba.  The pink in both the shell and poster seemed to compliment each other, so after a few days, the choice was made to marry them into a bathroom decor for my younger daughter.

I couldn't possibly purchase one of those flimsy poster frames with the Plexiglas.  I wanted something much more substantial, so off to Hobby Lobby.  I found a fabulous very ornate white colored frame for the base of this project.  The mat that came with it had the most fabulous white polka dots on it.  The frame was 50% off, so it came to $25.00.

                                                              
A normal poster sized frame is usually 24x36 inches.  The actual mat area in the above frame is about 12x12 inches.  That meant that the poster had to be cut about 12x24 inches.  I wanted to take the colored areas out of the poster and eliminate the wordage.  Others might think to keep the date especially for a memory poster.  The challenge was to keep as much of the cherry blossoms into the area available.  Trying to use a scrap booking technique, I began laying pieces onto of each other to get a more dimensional effect.  This created an explosion of the blossoms. Unfortunately, the light in late afternoon skewed the pink and gave the picture a coral cast in the new two pictures.

             Foam dots were placed under the top sections to give the picture the layered effect.

                                                                  

                                                    
                    I love the almost impressionist white dots mimicking  the polka dots in the mat.

                                                                          

                                                             
  The picture hangs in my youngest girl's bathroom.   Mr. Thrifty found the shell on an expedition while doing a tour in Cuba. The coral pink in the conch shell looks great along side of it.  A coral hand towel completes the look.