Forever In My Heart

As usual, I've procrastinated to the last minute.  Seriously... I think I do my best work when I procrastinate.  That gets my juices flowing and I get inspired.  Or maybe it just motivates me to get off my butt and actually do it!  

So I've been wanting to do another canvas for awhile now.  I purchased more Lindy's Stamp Gang sprays a few months back and filled them up, but never used them.  I had bought some before, but found them to be too dark, so I bought the lighter shades, which is more my style.  I'm still learning, but I like how the colors ended up blending together.

Made this canvas for my Mother In Law for Mother's Day.  I had made a canvas for my mom earlier but never made one for my MIL. I hope she likes it.  Not sure this is really her style, but oh well.

Before I did anything, I painted a coat of Gesso on the canvas. I don't know if I need to do that, but I did anyway.  After that dried, I used my favorite Prima stencil and modeling paste at the top. It was a bit challenging because I'm not patient and wanted to start the next section, but had to wait till the first section dried.  It's not hard, just took awhile to dry.

After the pasting was done, I started working on the design.  I tried to pick out white or ivory colored flowers as much as possible so I could spray them up with my Lindy's. I saw a few videos where they gesso'd up everything before spraying, so I did that too.

Because Akemi's dress was turquoise, I had to incorporate it somehow into the project.  I have a LOT of turquoise, teal colors, but didn't want to go  too dark, so I opted for the lightest one and sprayed it closest to her so that it would blend well.  Then I worked my way out with green on both sides of the blue, etc.

After spraying up the layout, we went to go eat dinner.  By the time we came back, it was dry, but I didn't think it had enough color, so I did another layer.  This came out much nicer to my taste.

After that layer dried, I filled in the holes with my acrylic flowers.  I only used the clear ones so it woudn't compete with the rest of the layout.

The most challenging part for me was to fill in the "white space" with the sentiment or title.  I had something picked out from another stencil, but the words were too thin, I didn't want to risk it, so instead, I rummaged through my dies and found this PTI set that had dies that coordinated with the stamp set.  I thought "Forever in my heart" was a cute sentiment to add to the layout.

Then I got some floral wire and formed a heart. I was inspired after watching Bona's video when she did something similar using the Prima wire.  I had done something similar before  but didn't add the flowers and stickles this time- just kept it simple.

Hope you had a great Mother's Day!  I think I gotta play with my sprays more often!

Shabby Twinkles

Here's the other project I worked on for my other friend I was meeting up with on my trip home.  She recently got a new puppy!  I remember how excited I was when I got Kiki, so I thought I'd surprise her by making something she could use as her puppy grows up.

Since her new puppy is white, I immediately thought "SHABBY!"  Whoo hoo! I selected some butterfly paper that I think is by Pink Paislee (don't quote me on that- It may also be Prima) and distressed the edges.  I then did some pasting again using my Dreamweaver paste and Prima stencils.  It's hard to see the pasting that was done, but it's there.  It was meant to be subtle texture in the background so as not to overpower the focal point.  Sorry, not the best pictures, lighting was bad!

The next thing I did was punch some holes and added pearl brads with some twine in between to make a clothesline.  I have been wanting to do this for awhile now.  I thought it would be cool to make a canvas that you could change out the pictures as you want.  You can even print up the pictures smaller and add more photos to the clothesline.

When I asked my friend what she named her dog, she told me "Twinkles".  How cute is that?  Doesn't that just scream glitter?  So I finally took my thickers out of the hoard vault and used them for the title.  These thickers were sticky on both sides, so after adhering them down on the paper, I took off the other side and poured glitter over it to give it that shimmer.

Before putting the brads down, I added a Prima butterfly charm to the line.  I've been hoarding that charm too- was waiting for the right project and finally decided to use it!  My friend LOVES butterflies, so I knew she would love it as much as I do.  You can also see the mini clothespins used to hold up the photo that I covered with some leftover beaded flower trim that was also used on the edges.

I went through my flower stash and picked out flowers that would match the paper (and the puppy).  See that large pink flower?  I made that using Vicki's (TRYHEART67 on You Tube) puffy flower using rosette trim.  I think it looks better if you use the fluffier flowers from Lavish Laces. I also made that flower center using beaded trim following a tutorial by Muriel (Ms. Cooper's Coop on You Tube).  Love it!  Oh, and also made that gray rose using Simple Stories Vintage Bliss paper (my fave!) and Rosana's (Zoe2000rlh on You Tube) tutorial on how to make that pretty rose!  I used a different SU punch to make mine and almost broke my punch!  It was fun making roses for my friends. I used a lot of Vintage Bliss scraps, so it was a good way to not waste.  This one was an extra that didn't go in their RAK's.  Watching You Tube finally pays off!

Here's the flowers on the other side.  The flowers were from Prima, I am roses, Wild Orchid Crafts, All Natural Accents and Martha Stewart.

 And to top it off, I added one more butterfly I got from Michaels.  Added some pearls to the middle.

Here's a view from the side.  Wanted to show that I added some lace trim around the edge of the canvas and then some beaded pearl flower trim over it.  Love how frilly and girly it turned out!

I was so happy that my friend really liked this gift.  She surprised me by tearing up when I gave it to her.  It made me so happy to make a gift that she really liked.  Hope to meet her puppy in person one day!

Mixed Media Kittys

I missed seeing my friends who live on another island.  Since I had plans to meet up with them, I decided to make them something to show them I was thinking of them.

I've been meaning to do another mixed media canvas project using my sprays, so I thought it might be good to try to make one for my friend.  She has two cats- Girly and Maui.  Since they are both black cats, I decided to go with her favorite color purple and pink.  Didn't know if she liked pink, but I was relieved to find out she did!  Yay!

This project was such a challenge for me! First I painted the canvas with gesso. Then used some of my stencils to add texture using Dreamweaver paste.  I think next time I'll try to use texture paste to see how that works.  After drying both, I started layering chipboard, metal embellishments and flowers.  Once I got the design how I wanted it to look, I started gluing everything down.

After that, I went to work using gesso to completely cover all of the items. I didn't paint the flowers, though maybe I should have.  I decided to add on some clothespins that were glued down, but still functional. Wanted her to be able to change out the pictures if she didn't like the ones I picked.

I'm not used to working with sprays and found myself continuously spraying, drying, blotting, and repeating.  I guess I was too impatient and didn't really let the color dry and set in. After a few hours of spraying, drying, blotting and repeating, I decided to call it a night and go to sleep.  When I woke up, I liked the results much better than the night before.  I guess sometimes you just need to sleep on it!

Here you can see the clothespins I painted and sprayed.  After they were done drying,  I glued on an acrylic flower.

Decided to raid my Scrabble tile stash and use that to caption the project.  Dummy me did not check the spelling of "Girly" and first spelled it "Girlie".  After checking the spelling, I prayed that I could take off the tiles and I guess it worked because they popped right off without ruining the project.  Yay!  You can see Girly sitting on the throne... Yup, the toilet seat!

I gave it to my friend this past weekend and she seemed pretty happy with it.  What a relief!  I was so worried she wouldn't like it.  I think next time I need to take it easy on the spraying and maybe do it on watercolor paper instead like I did on my other projects.

Puppy Love

This is my dog Kiki.  She is our 11 year old daschund, but this photo is when she was just a puppy. While cleaning out my craft room, I stumbled upon some old photos of my baby.  She is also known as my first daughter.  Little did we know that she is an alpha dog, so it took YEARS to train her that she was not the leader.

Now that Kiki is old, she is more mellow and easier to handle, but I do miss those puppy days when she was so cute!  

So I've been very interested in the art journal/steampunk look for a few weeks now.  I saw someone post an art journal cover from a class they took from Anna Dabrowska.  I gotta say, once I saw how cool her stuff is, I was hooked and became obsessed with finding more and more samples of mixed media art.  If you have time, check out all her projects.  She is also a designer for Prima and Prima will soon carry her line of products! Can't wait!

OK back to the project.  So I started by applying gesso to some watercolor paper.  Then I applied paste (Dreamweaver) to the brick mask (Crafter's Workshop) in two corners of the paper.  This photo shows it pretty good.

After that I cut out a clock from a Tim Holtz die out of acetate and applied white alcohol ink (Ranger) to the clock.  I didn't want the clock to stand out too much, but I did want people to see it, which I why I opted for acetate.  I was hoping that the white alcohol ink would then allow the sprays to color it up.

Then I adhered Kiki's picture and distressed mat piece behind it.  Then I began gluing on flowers and metal trinkets (Tim Holtz) around two corners of the photo and painted them with gesso. Then I covered the photo and started spraying with green, teal gold and brown sprays by Lindy's Stamp Gang.  I used all of the ones with shimmer inside since I wanted the metallic look.  I don't know if it was the gesso or something else I did but I don't think I should've done that.  My friend Tracy told me that she thinks it was the gesso and suggested I use gel medium.  I guess I gotta put that on my list of things to try next time.  I ended up using a lot of spray but the white kept showing through.  Anyone know if the gesso was the mistake or if I did something else wrong?

After I gave up on the spraying, I completely dried the paper and then added my Puppy Love title using black foam thickers.  Since my watercolor paper was not a full 12x12 size, I distressed the edges, and then adhered it to a kraft cardstock and distressed those edges too.  Then I mounted it on a 12x12 chipboard.  I've found that if I don't do that, the corners end up curling.

So I'm open to suggestions.. if you have any recommendations on what I should do to not have so much white resisting, let me know.  I guess I'll have to wait until I get me some gel medium before I attempt this again...

I just realized I'm posting this on Friday... Yay!  We made it to the end of the week! Ready for the long weekend?