A little mixed media

This week I have been playing around with color.  Fall is inching closer and Michigan will be a flood of reds and golds in a few short weeks.  I love Fall colors and that's what I've used on this canvas.

I started with a layer of gesso.   Right after the layer was complete, I dipped my brick stencil into the wet gesso to leave an impression.

To better show the texture of the dried gesso, I smeared on a few light spots of Gelato to highlight the ridges.

The entire canvas was covered with Dixie Belle's Grunge Glaze.  Since I was going with a Fall theme I felt like the brown in the glaze would be a good fit.

The glaze interacted with the Gelato and gave me some different undertones.  Gelatos are water soluable so they are activated with paint just as easily as with water.

I chose a few more Gelatos that reminded me of fall and used my finger to apply them in random spots on the canvas.

Now to add some fun texture!  Punchinella is a great way to add dots to a background.  You can sponge or paint over the surface.  This time, since I was using Gelatos I chose to lay down the ribbon and wipe over the top with a baby wipe to remove some of the pigment.  This lets the spots remain the same basic color as the surrounding area.

I made sure the ribbon was going in a couple of different directions so that the spots would be random.

At this point I sprayed the canvas with a fixative to keep the Gelatos from reactivating in the next stages.  The gesso was still out so I dipped a paper tube and a pencil eraser in it to add circles and spots.  Gesso is thick so these are slightly raised.

A little water was added to the grunge glaze to form drips.

Our paper towels at work have a gear on one end to go on the feeder.  There was an almost empty roll on the counter so I rescued this little piece of plastic and used it here to create these gear circles in the copper Art Alchemy paint.

I applied a few patches of a white pearl paint with my fingertip .  They look really white in the bright light at this angle.  At other angles you can barely see them.  I like that effect!

These letters are from a tag alphabet.  I have them just laid on the canvas right now because I am thinking of adding more layers to it.

Supplies Used:

Your choice of canvas or art journal

Gesso

Dixie Belle Grunge Glaze

Gelatos in your favorite colors

Punchinella

Spray Fixative

Art Alchemy or other acrylic paints

Tag Alphabet

Art Journal Fun

Hi everyone!  I can't remember the last time I sat down and just played in my journal.  I've been making cards and canvas projects and those are fun, but art journal time is play time for me!  I received this awesome 2-part lotus stencil from Stencil 1.  I knew it was going to be a large stencil, but I was surprised when it came in the mail.  It's really big.  Just the perfect size for fairies!

I started with a background of Gelatos on a page that was coated with gesso first.  I randomly colored spring colors in patches and then smoothed them out with my fingers before using a spray mister to create some drips.

I wanted a textured background for the flower so I resized the text square to 5x7.  It has a creamy yellow background on its own and then I sprayed it with Dylusions ink in pink and teal.  Once it was dry, I sponged dark purple paint through the detail side of the stencil.  Flowers don't float in mid-air so I made a blue border at the bottom of the page to look like water and glued down the flower.  I added a touch of purple to give the "water" better definition.

I chose to use this beautiful image of a lady in a blue/teal evening gown to be the butterfly princess.  The wings and the bottom of her dress are glued directly to the page and her head and torso are attached with foam circles.  Although it doesn't show on camera, her headpiece is glittery from a Wink Of Stella pen.

There is a collage sheet with a butterfly that matches these fairy wings so I printed that out multiple times in several different sizes.  A spring quote completes the page.

I hope you like it.  If you'd like to know more about the Altered Pages collages I used please follow the link back to the Altered Pages Artsociates blog and check out the full post.