Ode to Joy

I was so inspired by the musical freestyle my PATCH students were practicing, I've made them all canvases to commemorate and thank them for sharing their performances.  This particular one is for a young man who chose "Ode to Joy" and "Fur Elise" by Beethoven.  Great choices of music, but a little difficult to put together with a miniature horse running around the arena doing his chosen maneuvers!  We finally found a piece by a blue grass band that worked perfectly for the occasion!
 

Prince, fuzzy and ready for winter,
and his leader at the show!

Now, if you're thoroughly confused at this point, that's understandable.  Let me explain, PATCH is a therapeutic horsemanship program geared towards kids with life challenges of all types.  We just had a show where they competed in different classes.  It was great fun!  Now, you're caught up and we can return to the regularly scheduled blog post!  ; )

I started by going to the internet and pulling some pics of Beethoven's music.  Being an oboist, I don't have much Beethoven in my personal repertoire!  The large sheet is "Ode to Joy"; the music on the stand is "Fur Elise."  Then I found a letter signed by Beethoven.  I made copies, distressed, inked, and sprayed these papers.

 I had an idea the cuts I wanted from Cricut Design Space.  My horse, shoe and saddle are from Old West.

Now, the fence was a bit of a challenge.  I knew I wanted a 5 board fence to replicate a staff.  My student plays trombone, so I chose a bass clef for the first fence post.  I basically just imported a rectangle and copied it 5 times.  I changed the size to make my post and the boards.  Then I welded them together.  I then added the bass clef and welded it.  For some reason I had trouble getting it to work; but somehow it finally did.  I'm not really sure what we did to get it to work.  My son-in-law saw my frustration and jumped in to help.  He's not sure what he did either!  hahaha

I ran the fence through the CTMH Woodgrain Embossing Folder and inked over it with chocolate.

I made stencils from Acetate Alternative for my dots and bricks.  The bricks were cut from the CTMH Artbooking cartridge and the dots are from the new CTMH Artfully Sent; although, dots are also in Artbooking.  The bricks were put in with homemade texture paste.

Before adding my elements, I sprayed with homemade glimmer mist:  water, CTMH Chocolate re-inker and CTMH Create a Shade Paint (retired).

All CS is from CTMH.  CTMH inks include:  Barn Red, Chocolate, Slate, Archival Black.

CTMH embellishments include:  Mocha Gems (retired), Antiqued Gold Mini-Medley brad (retired).

All CTMH products are from KatiesCorner.

My Classical Cowboy is going off to these challenges:

Scrap and Play
THANKFUL
T Tone on tone stenciling and ink, texture paste
H Horseshoe, homemade shimmer mist
A Acetate Alternative
N No Stamping on this!
K Katrina original design (bass clef fence)
F Filly (the horse is a filly)
U Uppercase letters in Title
L Letter from Beethoven (Copy-not an original - hahaha)

Fantabulous Cricut Challenge - Anything Goes
Heart 2 Heart - No Stamping!
Take Heart Ideas - Anything Goes with CTMH products
613 Avenue Create - Anything Goes: optional twist is holiday thankful/hostess gift