Summer Heat Mixed Media Project

I am really excited to be a guest at The Frilly and Funkie’s Challenge blog where the theme is ‘Summer Heat’.

Sue is the hostess and her brief is -

“July brings with it the heat of the Summer, so for this challenge we want to see those warm colours in your project. Think red, orange, sunshine yellow and as an added twist you need to include a summer bloom somewhere on your project. Have fun!”

WARNING – LONG POST with lots of photos but you do get a tutorial as well.

I really went to town with the hot colours in the Dylusions inks range to create my background and I used a linen textured canvas board so I can display this through the warmer summer months. I started with a layer of gold embossing paste by Wendy Vecchi. I love this not only for the texture it adds but the gold seemed to shine through the layers of ink and gives a gorgeous warm glow to the finished piece.

 I added some white gesso over the top of the embossing paste, but I think if I did this again I would leave this layer out.

Then I got started with the sprays, putting most of the colours on wet for the first layer and letting them run together a bit – you can just see that I spray into a pizza box which helps protect the small area I have to work in.

At this point I really wasn’t sure which way up my board was going to be – blue for the sky or green for the grass?

But I added more layers of inks by spraying and heat drying in various areas and spraying short bursts of colour over another colour to get mottled effects.

To finish I stamped some texture stamps in both distress paint and fresco finish paint.

The shabby bloom was inspired by Paula Cheney and you can see her version HERE.

I used Dylusions sprays rather than distress stains and you can see how I made my version below.

Paula Cheney inspired flower

I sprayed really hot colours onto a piece of card and pressed another piece into it, giving me two pieces to use for die-cutting.

I used both the tattered florals bigz die as well as the jumbo tattered florals die and chose the size petals I wanted.

Using four of each of these three sizes I inked the edges with walnut stain distress ink.

I then made a hole in each petal and put the two largest sizes together with a brad and curled each individual petal over with using my awl.

Taking the water mister I began spraying each layer and curling the petals upwards and scrunching them as I went along.

I then gave it one more spray of water to make sure it was wet through and really squeezed it in my hand until it eventually looked like the photo above. Using a heat gun I carefully dried and unfurled the outer petals to get the sort of flower shape I wanted.

Next I took the smallest petals and did the same to them and then glued this little bunch into the centre of the larger flower.

Finally I inked some of the edges again with walnut stain again to give the flower a more aged and vintage look. It now measures 12 cms across.

The leaves were made in a very similar way using the Dylusions inks…..

…. and the Garden Greens bigz die.

When I soaked them with water the ink mixed with it and coloured the reverse side of the leaves.

I scrunched them, dried them and inked them as before and added to the board with the flower.

It would be lovely to see you over at Frilly and Funkie if you have time, but thanks for stopping by and thanks for getting to the end of a long post. Apologies to Fliss and Shilpa who left me a message when I inadvertently published this post last week. A slip of the finger, but it has it's consequences duh!!!!!!!

Thank you to Linda and the team for asking me to guest today, I have so enjoyed making this journal board and it’s certainly a project I will do again.

Enjoy the rest of the week and have some fun creative time.

hugs Brenda