Rusted butterflies and dragonfly.

It's the start of a new challenge today at Country View Challenges and the lovely Evelyn has chosen the theme of rust. I wanted to use the idea of rusty elements in a different way and having had such a fabulous response to my abstract art a few weeks ago I decided I would go in that direction to create the background.

I cut a piece of card 8 x 8 inches and brayered layers of cameo, primitive, lace and eternal chalky finish paints.

I then took a palette of titan buff, paynes grey, burnt umber, raw umber, prussian blue and yellow oxide media fluid acrylics and with a babywipe blended and very lightly dabbed on the colours in random areas.

Next came black gesso spread with a palette knife and spritzed with water to get some contrast into the background.

I wanted to be a bit more random with visual texture than just using a stencil so I took some kitchen cling film and daubed on white tinting base randomly adding some medium grey and burnt umber to it.

Some white crackle paint in random places but mostly round the edges and left to dry before colourising with some watery quinacridone gold paint. To give it just a little more interest I added the tiniest amount of text stamping.

The dragonfly was cut from some card I had been brayering off onto, run through the embossing folder .....

.....  and then coloured with layers of burnt umber, yellow oxide, paynes grey, tinting base and quinacridone gold - some of the paint was neat and some was watery washes. I dragged the coffee archival ink over before I glued him on.

I love how the veins show up more with the archival ink swiped over.

The small tag was randomly wiped with tinting base and dried and then dipped into walnut stain distress oxide and some left over quinacridone gold and raw umber watery paints. When dry it was stamped with the Tim Holtz butterflies which were also stamped again on cream card and the wings cut out and edged with black archival ink, bent on the thorax edge and adhered to the background images.

From the side you can see the wings fluttering giving additional dimension.

I had intended to add more collage pieces but when I got to this point I rather liked the simplicity, so it stayed as it was.

Here is the finished project. I made it to go inside a shadowbox. I'm very tempted to colour the frame but still not quite sure.

April????? Where did that come from???? Another year speeding past so quickly, but let's take time to watch the butterflies as they emerge.

Enjoy your weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx