Friday, September 4, 2009

Birthday Present for a Good Friend

Been dithering about what to get a good friend for her birthday and decided to risk making a mini canvas for her. Started with 4"x4" canvas board. Painted over surface with small amount of red acrylic paint and super sparkle Lumiere paint. When dry, placed a Heidi Swapp floral mask over the surface and thickly applied more Super Sparkle Lumiere paint over the surface.
Used heat tool to heat up the thickly applied Lumiere paint to add texture.
Softened the contrast by painting over all the canvas with pearl white Lumiere paint and coloring the outer edges with pearlescent beige Brilliance ink.
Decided to add a bit more color. Rubbed some red poppy Brilliance ink over the surfaces and then wiped it off the raised areas. Rubbed tattered rose Distress ink over the raised surfaces.
Stamped a saying onto the upper left of the canvas and another saying on the bottom of the vintage image with pearlescent chocolate Brilliance ink. Used this same ink to color a piece of ribbon, then heated the ribbon with heat tool to warp the shape.
Used same brown Brilliance ink pad to stamp on French script to right hand side of canvas and along the edges on the right. Glued on pearl-like beads between bronze metallic letters on the right side. Adhered lacy daisy chain over brown ribbon and adhered a bronze butterfly to the center of the canvas.

Hope this mini canvas brings a small amount of joy to a friend how has added much joy to my life.

3 comments:

Celeste said...

This is gorgeous. Thanks of the inspiring tutorial.

chrissy said...

This is beautiful Carol!!! How do you come up with all the ideas and techniques you use on your art?
Chrissy

Carol said...

Thanks Chrissy. Often it will start with a vintage image I've fallen for, I'll make up a mood or story for the picture and go from there. I'm totally inspired by flowers and love butterflies/birds/images or possibilities of flight so you'll find them in much of my work.
Techniques often arise out of being inspired by what others are doing or just playing around or correcting mistakes. On this one, I realized my initial pink was all wrong for the colors in the vintage image, so I just painted/inked it over. I have loads of bits of left over ribbons that are easy to color and if I don't like how one turns out, I save it for another possible project, and grab another to experiment on. At first I colored the daisy chain brown, but missed the white contrast, so put that aside. Then I colored a piece of left over ribbon (from working on wedding invitations. I didn't expect the ribbon to melt and distort when I impatiently grabbed my heat gun, but it looked so much cooler than what I was going for. Serendipity!!! I have learned to embrace "mistakes", it has made art more fun!!!