Mixed Media - Believe Canvas...

For this week's Mixed Media Monday I'm sharing a 4" x 12" canvas for my craft room that took me a while to get from start to finish. I knew what colors I would be using, and I had a big collection of "findings"  and bits and pieces that I was going to use to embellish the piece, but it just wasn't coming together at first.

Here's the finished canvas...

Here are a couple side views of the beginning of the process. I started with a few techniques I'd used on some of my art journal pages...tissue paper (I used aqua tissue paper, because I knew that would be one of the background colors) crumpled and glued to the canvas front and sides with gel medium, followed up with torn pieces of printed tissue paper glued on, and finally several different stencils used to add modeling paste to the front and sides (I think that doily stencil is going to be my new favorite). I started placing laces and doo-dads here and there to get a feel for where it would end up, but it wasn't working out...so I put all the embellishment pieces in a big baggie and set it aside with the canvas for another day...

And then I saw this canvas by Gabrielle Pollacco, and I copied many of her ideas...the chipboard chain across the top, the use of the wide lace, doubling up on the flourishes (I had started with the deep flourish at the top but was having trouble getting the bottom of the canvas to feel balanced until I looked at Gabrielle's canvas again), and the brown accents around the edges. 

They became the finishing touches to the embellishment layout I had started with, but put to the side when I couldn't arrange the combination to my liking.

  

Here are some detail photos of the embellishments and paint layers. I used both a teal and violet background paint - when the violet mixed with the teal, it made the deeper purple tone that you see. Once I had glued the embellishments to the canvas and gessoed them, along with a coating over the entire canvas area, I covered all the embellishments and the background with those two colors. You can see the unmixed violet on the side in this photo, before it mixed with the teal to make the purple on the front...

The next step was to dry brush a subtle metallic accent over all the pieces using Lumiere Halo Violet Gold paint...it gave a beautiful warm glow to all the purples. The final color was a turquoise craft paint...again dry brushed over some of the pieces to give the look of aged metal. To get just the right warm brown edge color I was looking for, I mixed a couple different LSG Magicals together - equal parts Sandra Dee Sepia and Cowabunga Copper - and the result was a beautiful brown with just a touch of irridescence...

The quote is a mixture of word stickers, outlined with Prismacolor pencils to accent and shade the individual words...

And finally, a couple closeups of the bottom of the canvas...

Supplies:

Color Mediums:   Lindy's Stamp Gang Magicals - Tibetan Poppy Teal,  Sweet Violet Purple Teal,  

Cowabunga Copper,  Sandra Dee Sepia

Lumiere "Halo Violet Gold" paint;   turquoise acrylic craft paint,   Prismacolor pencils

Stencils:   Prima "Flourish";   The Crafters Workshop "Mini Deco Doily" "Art Is" and "Mini Specimens"

Embellishments:   Maya Road chipboard flourishes and flowers;   Blue Fern Studios "Turkish Bits";   Dusty Attic "zippers" and "mini chains";   

Tim Holtz grungeboard letters, numbers, and hearts

Metal floral corners:   TheFunkieJunkie.com             Mini roses:   Wild Orchid Crafts

Word Stickers:   Paper House Fabric Stickers;   Tim Holtz "Chit Chat Stickers"

Gems:   Creative Imaginations and Kaisercraft          Miscellaneous findings:   buttons, photo turns, spiral clips

Thanks for visiting today...I hope your week is starting with a smile!