Mixed media canvas in the making

First of all, let me apologize for not being around. As you already know, I had been working on costumes but another unexpected event happened. A long-time family friend passed away and I have been in charge of managing the estate. So instead of bringing this down, let's just say I have been busy.

I did manage to finally get all the costume pieces out of my house. We did a quick trial run at the Urban Paradise festival at Riley's dance school last weekend. Here is a peek. I can finally breathe and can come up from "Under the Sea."

Now onto the canvas. I have yet to finish but I will walk you though how I am making this as I go along. A bit different than the way I usually show you things as completed projects. You'll have to excuse the photos as I took them with my phone.

First I started off with a 6" canvas panel. I've had a ton of these since Quick Quotes started making canvas projects several years ago. They get to be really cheap at Cheap Joes or Dick Blick (online). These are pre-gessoed and the sheet on top is a piece of left over pattern paper. I chose not to go with designs on the paper. I use the Tracy Bautista collage medium because I wanted to try it and it was cheaper than Mod Podge. It works well. So I squirted it onto the canvas and used a stiff brush to paint it on across the entire surface. See that wrinkle/fold? I left that and you'll see why. This all creates texture in the piece. I don't care for the brown pattern paper so I reapplied gesso on top so I'd have a white surface for brighter colors.

I then use watercolors to paint the sky and grass. The fold that I created was used as the line for the top of the grass.

I used Stamping Bella's clothes line and accessory stamps with Stazon ink. Don't worry about the messy stamping as we will cover up some of it later.

I used a new Hero Arts background stamp with chalk ink to emboss the impression with American Craft's Zing embossing powder. While wet, you may apply another layer of powder for extra dimension after you heat the first layer.

Here is where my mess began. I used another shade of Zing embossing powder and a Stamping Bella texture stamp to give the grass dimension. On top of that is Glitter Ritz glitter.

Use a stiff brush to wipe away the excess. It was a little too sparkly for me, so I applied collage medium on top of it. Not only to make sure it wasn't going anywhere but to dull it down. If you've ever worked with Glitter Ritz you know how wonderful and vibrant this glitter is. 

If you look close enough, I used another Stamping Bella background stamp (bubble wrap) in the sky. It is clear so it is difficult to see in this photo. To make it pop a bit more, I added a little bit of ink on top as a resist and some to the grass as an accent.  I wasn't getting exactly what I wanted because my blue ink was too dark, so I shot some Caribbean Blue Glimmer Mist onto the canvas. If you find that it is too dark in spots, wipe them away or even spritz with water to remove. Then I covered the piece with another layer of collage medium.

I cut a circle (My Mind's Eye Stella & Rose) and applied collage medium to the canvas. Next I put the circle on top and trimmed. Another layer of medium was used to seal the circle in. I next used a Close to My Heart glue pen (back from when I was a rep) and sprinkled yellow Glitter Ritz around my sun. 

 Finally my last step for today (I am waiting for my mom to call me to pick them up from the airport after a 3 week trip. . . they could almost be done clearing customs). . . was to add Dew Drops as my sun rays. Actually these are from Cat's Pajamas. 

I will be back with part 2 on Monday!

Chalk board paint shadow box and a layout

I've been meaning to try chalk board paints for a few years now. . .not that I've been scrapping long. My main intention was to use the colored paints but the pink and pretty colors come by the quart. So I had bought a can of the spray paint (Rustoleum)  in boring black instead. So last night yet again I could not sleep. Sorry you can't see the chalks that well in the photo.

I took a $1 frame I got at Big Lots and removed the glass. The backing of the the frame is wood pressboard. It took two coats to make the pressboard black like a chalk board. I used the heat gun in between the layers since the directions say it takes 20 minutes to dry each layer. I was really between whether I was going to put a photo in there but saw that I had a Hero Arts stamp which was perfect. So I dug out the white Stazon pad and stamped the image. Then I heat set that as well since it wasn't drying fast enough. I could tell because the ink was glossy. Next I dug deep into the drawers and grabbed the Pebbles shimmery chalks. Note: the darker colors show up better. The lighter colors tend to just shimmer and look white.

After that was done, I sprayed the chalk surface with a workable fixative. I shouldn't have done it all inside my scrapbook room but it was 4am and I didn't want to turn off the alarm to go into the garage.  Oh yes, and once you spray the fixative, you might need to either add more chalk and do it again or be happy with it because it dulled it out a bit because I used matte and the colors were muted a lot. The rest is pretty self explanatory. Hope you take this one for a whirl. Let me know how yours comes out.

Before I made the frame I completed a layout. I used mostly different pieces from Creative Imaginations, Dew Drops, Blue Moon elements and the tree is Meri Meri (they make retail cards --from a sale we went to before Christmas that had super cheap embellishments, ribbons, etc).