Celebrate life, joy, laughter, love, family, friends

This was one of my most fun projects yet. I was nervous about doing this because I have no talent for painting, but this was more like playing with mixed media, not really sitting down to paint a picture. I used gesso, acrylics, inks, gelatos, stickers, stamping, dies, stencils, stucco-like media and sprays.

I started by gessoing over an old 9"x12" canvas. It took about 3 coats to cover the old painting.

To get the various colored background I used makeup sponges to dab on Daler-Rowney inks and used my fingers to smoodge around gelatos.

I took a home-made stencil and sprayed them with Dylusions ink spray.

When that was dry I used a store-bought stencil with a stucco-like Martha Stewart product. The neat thing was that it started out white, but as it set it absorbed the colors that were underneath. It was an unexpected, wonderful surprise.

My handwriting isn't the greatest, and the surface was too uneven to stamp words, so I chose to use word stickers. The colorful ones are cushiony-sparkly and the others are plain chipboard. I also used a word stamp and a few pieces of tissue paper to add more texture to the background.

The ruffle was made by spritzing and inking paper lace with matching colors. It was tucked up under the dress with some Glossy Accents for glue and lightly highlighted with Stickles. See my previous post on how I made the Julie Nutting doll.

The branch is a Tim Holtz die (with bird removed). The flowers were cut with a flower die from inked scrap paper from a previous project. I layered a couple of them and they all have a brad at the center.

I was glad to be able to use a Julie Nutting image I put together instead of tucking it away in the album I keep them in (because I don't know what else to do with them).

This is definitely not professional level art, but it's going to hang on the wall for my own self, so it's good enough for me. I'm ready to make another one, you should, too!

My Very First Art Canvas

 

Gah! I've started my very first canvas! After watching tons of YouTube videos on how to do backgrounds and such, I finally took the dive. I'm nervous to do an actual art piece, but really enjoying the process. These colors, I really like them. It looks so much different already. I've done several layers and I'm on the homestretch!

My Love For Julie Nutting Paper Doll Stamps Continues

I ordered a few of the newest Julie Nutting paper doll stamps and I love them all! I actually tried something I saw on YouTube with this one.

I stamped her on a piece of mixed-media paper with black Versafine archival ink, and instead of paper-piecing her outfit with an already printed piece of card stock, I stamped the skirt with a floral pattern using a pigment ink. This is important because I wanted it to soften the stamped image a bit and pick up some of the purple color when I brushed over it with a water brush. It wasn’t quite as dark as I wanted, so I gave it another coat with purple metallic water color.

It didn't matter that the stamping and coloring went outside the lines because it was cut out and pieced together later. I must say, knowing I didn't have to be particular while coloring it made it even more fun.

I used a gel pen to color her hair and the top of the dress and headband, and gave the top a once over with a clear Wink of Stella brush pen. A piece of lace and a flower made of confetti with a pearl at the center was added to her waist. Her face, drawn free-hand, finished it up.

The stamping/water-color process was new-to-me, and drawing features was is something outside my comfort zone. New goals met.