Sunday 20 December 2015

Mini Canvas - Merry Christmas!

Hi! Welcome to my blog and happy holidays!

Today I have a truly festive mini canvas to share with you! This is my first mini canvas, I really enjoyed making it and it didn't included any intricate painting at all! So if you want to make your own canvas without painting, this is one quite simple way!

I started by adhering 'soft' paper, like tissue paper and old book paper pieces at all the edges of the canvas, from the front to the back side. This helped to cover all the white space of the border of the canvas and make it look complete at the end. To do that I used gel mat medium between the paper and the canvas but also on the top of the paper to have a perfect coverage. 

For the background I used some paper pieces and I made a collage with them covering all the canvas surface. Again I used gel mat medium under and over the paper pieces and left it to dry completely. I also used some chevron and music notes washi tapes and some stamping to add interest to my background. Then I painted over the collage with watery white paint to tone down the background colors.

(click on the photos to zoom)

After it was totally dry, I used a stencil with some painted modelling paste and added the bubbles at some areas of the canvas. I wanted the bubbles to look gold so I mixed the modelling paste with some gold distress paint. But as my modelling paste is white, the gold paint color wasn't so bright metallic gold as it finally looks but it rather had a mustard shade. To make it look gold, I left the paste to totally dry and then I used the same gold distress paint with a brush to color the dried paste surface. It finally turned out GOLD! 


For my Christmas tree, I die cut scalloped circles of different sizes from a collection of papers with festive colors. I distress painted the papers edges, crinkled them to add dimension to them and put them together to the three different sized flowers. I added I gold gem to their center, made some shadow on the canvas with brown distress ink and glued the flowers on my canvas in a tree shape. To make the tree trunk I used some thick twine which I painted on top with some brown ink. 


To embody the tree and its colors with the background, I used watery distress paints and added a little bit of red and green colors to some areas of the background. Finally, I cut some stars of different sizes from a scrap paper with beautiful lettering. I distressed their edges with distress ink or glitter and I adhered them on the canvas using some golden string to make them look like hanging for the top and some foam tape.


For my quote, I used die cut letters from a black paper with small white patterns. 

Well that was my first mini canvas, I really enjoyed making it and I hope you like it! I think that mini canvases are a great idea for embellishing the house (this one for the holiday season!) and can be a beautiful gift for family and friends too!

With this mini canvas I participate to December's Challenge of the Pinterest Inspired Challenge blog
This challenge blog shares awesome inspiration ideas from the Pinterest and you can find it here! Check out this month's inspiration photo! Isn't it GORGEOUS?!!!


I also participate to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge "Just a Pinch" as my mini canvas has just a pinch of gold shimmer and glitter which I really love for the season holidays, and to the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge "Die Crazy" as my first mini canvas is full of die cuts!!!               


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Tuesday 8 December 2015

Art Journal Page - Love is magic! ...and troubles of art journaling!


Hi! Welcome to my blog!

Today I have a new art journal page to share with you. This style of art journal page is inspired by the amazing Vicky Papaioannou which is one of my very favorite artists! I LOVE her art journal pages and her cards, and I even learned about art journaling and started it because of her! If you don't know her already, you can find her beautiful art work here

One of my main trouble when I want to make an art journal page is that I can't find a focal point, or if I find a focal point I can't seem to find coordinating details to beautifully fill the page. I really struggled a lot with this issue in the past (and up to now!) so I have decided to think of a procedure that could help me, follow it and see where this gets me. The procedure I came up with is this: pick a beautiful thing from my stash that inspires me with an idea, then try to coordinate it with something that I like and I can make (also search in my stash if something combines with my idea), find a quote that I like for my page and put everything down. 

So this art journal page started following this procedure. I had these beautiful bottles' dies in my stash waiting and I really wanted to use them. The idea that I had in my mind for them was liquid flowing from one of them, so I started with it and this is what I came up with. 

(click on the photos to zoom in)

Here is a closer view of the book & papyrus shelf. I really loved making these small items!



For the bottles I used distress inks to color them and then I covered them with glossy accents to make them look like their are made from glass. Then I drew the liquid lake with TOMBOW markers and covered it with the Wink of Stella clear glitter pen to make it sparkle! Unfortunately, the sparkle doesn't really show in the photos but it is quite shinny in real life! 



Well that was my project for today. I would love to get your comments or your thoughts, troubles and ideas regarding art journal page making. I'm still experimenting with it, trying to find all the different parts and details that I love in art journal pages and combine them into my own style. I'm also trying to find a way to handle things that look like obstacles for me, like combining things around a focal point that I choose, and I would be really interested and happy to read your opinions or troubles or ideas on it!

Thank you for visiting my blog, wish you all many happy creative moments! 

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