Altered canvas

I've been hooked on canvases since I took my first Quick Quotes canvas class a few years ago. Boxes, shadow boxes, books, unique albums. . . I've done way too many. I came across Melissa Elsner's suitcase a few months ago. Too bogged down with the potential layoffs. . . I never did it. Now that I have free time I gave it a whirl.

I had to find a place we've gone that I haven't done a book for. We go to Disneyland 6x/year and most recently Halloween. I haven't done much with the photos because we always go and they seem to be the same. Funny thing is that I never use acrylic paints on my canvas. I ink them so this time I wanted to do a color wash (watered down red acrylic paint) because it seemed so much easier. BTW don't use Distress Inks on canvas. I did one shadowbox and it never dried. You would think a dye-based pad would work. I generally use chalk inks.

Anyhow, I took out plain Grunge board and cut into 1/2" strips. Grabbed the texture hammer and started pounding them. They look like leather. I used Black Gold Glimmer Mist and well it didn't look how I wanted so I used Black Soot Distress Ink to fill in the gaps and tame the gold a bit.

We went to Home Depot that night so I bought a drawer handle for $2 and covered it with black alcohol ink. Glued it all to the canvas and thought that Melissa's straps didn't quite have the finished look I was after so I went into my Disney pile. I had some chipboard Mickey hands. I glued those babies onto the end of my Grunge board straps and put velcro on the inside as my closure so they would stay shut.

I have a lot of this 6"x23" paper I thought was great when I thought I was going to do 6" digital scrapbooking when I first started. So I but that down to 5.5"x22.5"and scored using the Scor-Pal. That gave me 6 accordion folded sections. I stuck two sheets together to give it some stability since it's just a heavy text weight. Then I used Creative Imaginations papers from the Mickey line and tried to use up loose embellishments. I went to an over-stuffed suitcase look with a flip flop and purse hanging out. No one ever said I travel light.

Hope you enjoyed today's peek at my unemployed time off. Ok not true because I'm still on payroll until next month but I technically don't have a job. I think I need one because I'm running out of things to scrap and create with photos.

BTW my lens on the point and shoot was dirty so the images were foggy. Tiny 3-year old fingers. . . .