canvas board - under the sea.

Oh my our sixth challenge at A Vintage Journey for 2017, that's half of them for the year!!!!

The lovely Nikki has chosen CANVAS for the theme and describes the challenge for us -

"Let's work with canvas this month in our vintage; shabby; mixed media, art journalling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk style. It doesn't matter how as long as some canvas is a dominant feature of your project. Perhaps you may use a canvas in the traditional way or use the reverse to create a shadow box? Canvas boards are fabulous to work on or perhaps you have some canvas sheets which can be cut and adhered to another surface."

As I'm still crafting from the sofa and chose to use a 5 x 7 canvas board that I love to work on and experimented with the doxide inks to create an underwater background. 

Begin by blending the colours over the board.

Flick with water and dry.

Blend the same colours over again in different places.

Flick with water again and dry twice more.

Blend with these two colours - spritz and dry.

Blend with broken china and spritz and dry.

Take the fish and seaweed stamps, spritz them with water and stamp onto the oxides to create this watery scene.

Finish by stamping the octopus onto card and painting it and die-cutting some greenery (I used left over painty card).

I also added some little glass cabouchons.

We're hoping you will be able to join us for the latest challenge and in the meantime |I recommend you pop over to the AVJ challenge to see what all the amazing Creative Guides have submitted as their inspiration projects - there is always an incredible amount of talent on show.

Less than three weeks now until I go back to the fracture clinic, I will be sooo pleased to get this cast off.

Have a wonderful weekend whatever you have planned.

hugs Brenda xxx

Discovery - canvas board

Happy Friday

This board started life as 'let's use up this paste' panel. I had a mix of white modeling paste and sand texture paste left over from another project and just couldn't let it go to waste, so I grabbed Andy Skinner's fossil stencil and one from Seth Apter and just used up the remains and left the board to dry.

Once dry I decided to use this as my February challenge sample for A Vintage Journey where the lovely Jennie has chosen 'Special Words' as the theme for the month. With the stencilled ammonite shape and word suddenly a walk along the beach came to mind and memories of various places where I have picked up shells and discovered beautiful patterns and designs through sea creatures, footprints and the print of the waves left in the sand. So the start of my creation began to emerge in my head and I gathered a few bits together to get me more focussed in.

 The colour combination I have chosen was from a palette I found on Pinterest and I added grey to each one to tone them in with each other. As always by the time I had finished the background I had added more which included some cobalt blue hue and prussian blue.

To get some colour on the board I decided to use a brayer, I haven't used it much for a while and I used several colours layering over the top of each other to get this background.

Then I dribbled, dripped and finger painted in some washes of the same colours to fill in some of the gaps before brayering over with some titan buff and titanium white mixed together to lift it all again.
WHAT DID I LEARN? - That next time I will brayer the paints first and get the background colour on before adding the stencilled texture. Hmm I might be trying that over the weekend lol.

So now I wanted to highlight the textured areas, I decided to replace the fossil stencil and add embossing ink and gold embossing powder. Great but again WHAT DID I LEARN? - I should have brayered over the raised area first with a brayer and a gorgeous deep golden brown colour because the gold has touched most of the texture, not all of it.

So that's what I did with the number and word at the top with prussian blue. But no that didn't work either ....

.... so out came the fine brushes and the titanium white to add to the blue to fill in the gaps. Yay, more contrast this time. So I went over the fossil as well.

Onto to creating the feature and embellishments. First I decided to paint the shells gold.

Next came the little box and I got so carried away I forgot to take any more individual photos but here are some close ups. To make it work with the background I decided the outside needed to be blues and the inside the yellows, I used the fluid acrylics and they blended in beautifully over the wood and kept the rustic  effects.

At this point I changed my mind completely on the design that you saw at the beginning of the post and decided to carry the fossil shape further over on the board, I just laid the stencil down and rubbed over the embossing ink pad and gold embossing powder.

I rubbed a cornflower blue and the coffee archival ink pads around the edges and gave them a good blast with the heat gun before using an embossing pen to add some gold over the numbers nd around the edges.

I assembled the box using some muslin dipped in the prussian blue and adhered it to the canvas and glued the little crustacean piece on the top.

With an easel on the back this stands beautifully.

What do you think of when you read the word 'DISCOVERY" for me it makes me realise that I am still learning new things every day, it might be when I experimenting with my paints, inks and mediums, it maybe in a discussion or chat with a friend, it might be something from the tv or even better when I'm away on a trip or holiday - when I'm exploring and learning about the past history of the place.

Do you think I am now thinking ahead to warmer weather? I could do with some sun on my back right now but that's always the case when January is out of the way.

Looking forward to seeing the entries for this challenge and I highly recommend this post for some amazing inspiration from the Creative Guides.
Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy your art.

hugs Brenda xxx

Lighthouse media board

Where else would you rather be than near the water, and especially the sea, if it's in the high 20's or more? I love the sun and the hotter weather and wish I lived nearer the sea so I could walk the beaches when the day is long and stretches into warm, sultry evenings. I made a small media board using DecoArt products to create this crackle background to remind me of the beautiful colours and sights of a coastal walk.

Process steps

Paint the media board with a coat of white gesso .... at the same time dry brush the chipboard lighthouse with gesso too. Notice the different effects you get.

Apply modeling paste through a stencil for texture and to begin background layers. When dry paint over with cobalt teal hue and titan buff. Dry that and then apply transparent crackle glaze over it and leave to crackle naturally. When dry rub over with prussian blue.

Take the lighthouse and add watery washes of cobalt teal, prussian blue, paynes grey and transparent yellow iron oxide and give it a coat of antique decoupage (my new fund vintage product from DecoArt).

Some cheesecloth dipped in transparent yellow iron oxide, some thread dipped in raw umber and paynes grey and some little die-cuts of birds, shells and starfish finish off the design.

Hope you have had some nice sunny weather recently and hopefully not tooooo hot but warm enough to walk by the river, sit by the lake or be by the sea.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx