Friday, July 24, 2015

Summer Play Days

The older I get the more I appreciate play days....packing in as many things as I can, usually in my studio. The messier, smellier projects can go outside.  I can enjoy nature, and my backyard is a lovely mixture of animals, birds and beautiful flowers, planted by my husband. Blessed......yes, I am blessed.

One of the messier projects I love doing is making papers to be used in collage work on canvas, cards, or ATCs. Yesterday I almost used up my supplies of Citrasolv™ and old National Geographic magazines. The results are always amazing as you can see here.


Sometimes I draw on them with a marker or pen, picking out areas that may look like an animal, plant, or some interesting abstract design. Otherwise I tear them up to be used as backgrounds in mixed media projects. One use I haven't done yet is to just use the pages as collage art on its own. Cathy Taylor is the master of that art form!

The next mess, which wasn't really too messy was pouring resin. I wanted a clean, level area,  and no breeze so I stayed inside in my studio. My friend Grace and I created the works shown here, then I used up the leftover to coat a canvas board.

Coating the canvas worked very well considering the base had dimensional paste, acrylic paint, markers, and a little watercolor. Looks like resin will be back on my shopping list!

One of the resin projects is for my 6 yr. old granddaughter who is coming to stay with us for about 2 weeks...the googly-eyed bracelet shown below. It is so cute -- now I have lots of idea for making more bracelets with this mold.

If you haven't done it yet, schedule a playday with yourself and/or a friend or two. Summer will be gone before we know it and if you're like me, you'll limit your winter outside time. So, Go Play!!!

Blessings.........
Candice







by Grace

Friday, July 10, 2015

Lettering Love on Canvas

Perhaps I should be creating and playing with my own lettering (and I have), but I enjoy this stencil (Alpha Doodles) by Joanne Sharpe and I decided to just play! Here are the playtime details:

The canvas on the left was covered with black Gesso.  I then laid the stencil down on top of the dried canvas and carefully applied DreamWeaver brand white Dimensional Embossing Paste. When that dried, I placed the stencil over the raised lettering and applied Winsor&Newton Galeria Iridescent Medium, which gives a bit of a glittery look to the letters.

The second experiment was taking a canvas that I had collaged awhile ago with various papers. This canvas is still giving me fits 'cause I'm not sure I like it. After brayering with white gesso to mute the collage colors, I covered the canvas with a yellow glaze. Then I placed the stencil on the canvas and covered it with the white dimensional embossing paste, making sure that I had a even coat of paste. After that dried, I placed the stencil on top of the raised lettering and coated the stencil (and letters) with red acrylic paint. I still didn't like it but didn't want to totally darken or lighten the background. I then I painted around each letter with a Payne's Grey Carand'Ache Neocolor II crayon. I'm liking it better but now I think I may block out more of the background (still pondering this idea).

The one on the right is my favorite and it was so simple. The canvas is coated with Iridescent Medium, the stencil placed on the canvas, and this time I used black Dimensional Embossing Paste. I went back and touched up the letters with a pointed tool to remove some black that ran together. This canvas background almost glows!

I enjoyed my play time. Dimensional Embossing Paste is one of my all-time favorite products and the Iridescent Medium gives just enough of a lovely glow.

Blessings........
Candice