Textured Canvas - Wednesday 15th August

Hello Blog Friends!

I'm back today with a canvas that I worked on over the weekend, it wasn't difficult to make, just a little time-consuming! I have had floating around in my head for a while and when I decided to apply for the Creative Expressions DT, which required a project displaying 'texture', it seemed just the right time to transfer my idea to canvas....

As I said in Monday's post, I do like Steampunk, best of all when I can feminise it so this stamp set by Sam Poole ticks all the boxes. I used this stamp on Monday's post, but took all the Steampunk away from it, for this project I have created a feminine Steampunk canvas, with a touch of vintage.

I started with an 8x8 canvas, which I primed with the wonderful Claudine Hellmuth studio Gesso (lovely stuff) and once that had dried out, I masked off a square measuring 15cms x15cms and then used some Viva Croco Gold and an old plastic membership card (to use as a palette knife) and worked the medium all around the frame to create the texture, once this had dried (I left over night), I sprayed with some tarnished gold cosmic shimmer mist to cover any white areas. I was a bit disappointed that every photo I took still shows a few white areas, but actually in reality the misting did work!

Whilst the canvas was drying, I could get on with all the other elements:

Background: for this I used  milk white card and embossed the That Special Touch Of...Cog Mask through my Grand Calibur, I then inked over the entire card with Antique Linen distress ink.

Flowers: these were made using Glassine paper following Tim Holz's instructions in Compendium of Curiosities 2 (page 39), but to explain: I applied Ranger Butterscotch alcohol ink, gold Metallic Mixative and a drop of Blending Solution to my ink applicator tool, then I inked one side of the Kraft Glassine in stamping motions, repeating until it was how I wanted it to look. I then dried it off with my heat tool and crumpled it to create lots of wrinkles. Finally (as instructed by Tim!), I inked all over the wrinkled glassine. I chose Vintage Photo for this project because I didn't want to add colour, just emphasise the wrinkles.

One of the flowers was die cut using Spellbinders Spiral Blossom One and the other flower and smaller petals using some of the dies in the Spellbinders Blossom Five set. I also added a layer from an old book I often use for making flowers ( I know some of you will be cringing at the wanton destruction of a book, but at least the book is still being used!). The flowers are held together with Creative Expressions Faux Screw Brads, which are also used around the frame.

At the same time as cutting out the flowers, I also cut out the wings, using Spellbinders Wings of Hope and then using Cosmic Shimmer Iridescent MIca Pigment (Tropic Blue) mixed with a little water, I painted them to give a shimmer. Just to make it a little 'grungy' I dipped the smaller wings in black archival ink.

Stamping: I used Sam Poole's Steampunk Dreams stamp set for all the stamping on this piece of work, except the butterfly which was a free gift with Craft Stamper magazine recently and is by Indigo Blu. I stamped all the elements, including the sentiment with Archival ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder to create both texture and gloss. The dress form and butterfly were then coloured with the same Mica Pigment mix as for the wings. I wanted to make the bug quite dark so I coloured that with Aubergine Promarker. The wings of both the bug and the butterfly were folded to make them stand out and look more 'mechanical'.

I die-cut the sentiment using Spellbinders Labels Four Small and inked the edges with Antique Linen distress ink.

When I added the sentiment label to the canvas I felt it looked a little 'flat', I really wanted an additional element to hang off the edge of the frame; so I took some gold Craft Foil (Spellbinders), cut it using Classic Rectangles Small and then using a piercing mat and the tiniest ball tool I could find, I stippled it randomly all over to give it texture.

Finally, the key - I just saw this as a key to unlock dreams, maybe wind up the clock work dress form! Oh goodness what do I sound like?! I made it using a mould and some air dry clay, which once dried I coloured with a gold metallic Promarker. The final touch was to add the little cogs and watch parts,all from my stash box.

Thanks for stopping by, I'll be back tomorrow!

Carole X

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