Fantasy Film canvas

 So, a Fantasy Film themed swap.  I've used Fantasy Film many times, right? So why did I prevaricate for a month?  Who knows, but today the inspiration finally arrived - in the nick of time, it's the deadline for posting.

I painted a thin canvas with a mixture of micaceous iron oxide and purple fluid acrylic paint.  I coated it with PVA glue, and stuck two pieces of Fantasy Film down. Then I hit it with the heat gun, until it bubbled and changed colours, and started to become holey. It's hard to photograph, but the 3 images below give you some idea.

This is taken at an angle where no reflected light is visible.

This is taken at an angle where all you can see is reflected light.

I used impasto paste and a stencil to add texture down the left hand side.

I made a keyhole using air dry clay, painted with black gesso, coated with interference violet fluid acrylic. I rubbed copper Treasure Gold over the impasto and the keyhole.

I made a key from friendly plastic, painted to match the keyhole. I added a sticker ribbon, then used Brilliance inks to colour some paper, and stamped the words onto it with black Stazon. Hope my partner likes it!

Heart felt

Shh, don't want to frighten her off by saying it too loudly, but I think my mojo has returned from her holidays...

Here is a wall hanging, made for a swap on the theme of 'heart-felt' - it had to include a heart made from felt. This is all needlefelted, some by hand, most by embellisher machine, with a little hand beading to finish it off.

Firstly, I embellished two layers of organza together, all over but just enough to hold them together.  One layer was a light shimmery blue, the other was a bluey green shot with a yellowy greeny gold.

I'm not sure you can see the difference in colour, but this picture has the blue side uppermost:

 This picture has the bluey green side uppermost. I like this side better, so this is the top.

I used two colours of merino wool rovings, this colour matches the background colour. I spread it out on my base, and embellished it in.

The colour of the other roving is a much brighter turquoisey blue. I am blending more of the blue into the green with each layer.

Added some more blended rovings.

I decided I had enough general texture, and needed something to take my eye around the piece.  I twisted some of the blue rovings together and embellished them onto the piece in a curvy line.

I added some silk tops to bring in some more colour and a shiny texture.  These are hand dyed by Oliver Twists. I love their stuff. It's probably a good thing they don't have a website, because I *only* spend about £50 a year on their goodies at shows.  If they had a website, I'm sure it would run into hundreds....

You might have noticed that the theme of this piece is 'heartfelt' and there's no heart?  I have not yet mastered the embellishing machine to a high enough level to create shapes, so I got the hand needle felting equipment out. I laid a thin layer of red rovings vertically, another horizontally, and the top layer was vertical again. I put a heart shaped cutter on top, and needled the layers together. It's quite therapeutic, you can relieve tension by imagining you're stabbing voodoo dolls while you're being creative!

I wasn't intending to finish the heart by hand, just to needle it enough so that I could lift it off the brush in one piece. I used a dull red, a brighter red, and then added some more silk rovings down the centre  for a bit of shine and a different texture.

Next, I embellished it onto the background, layering some gold 'angelina' I bought about 10 years ago, when I didn't realise you could buy angelina that didn't fuse together. I knew it would come in handy one day! It just adds  little subtle glitz.

 Just a bit more glitz needed, so I put the piece in an embroidery frame and beaded around the heart, and also onto the curvy line. 

All it needed to finish was to be mounted on gold mirror card, with a mountboard backing for stability. I added a little fine brass wire hanging loop, and put it into the jiffy bag to mail before I could change my mind and keep it....

Hope my partner likes it.

Monthly ATC swap - greens

Well, I forgot to take step by step pictures. This one also looks better in real life. The theme this month is 'Greens'.

Here's how it was done.  The base layer is card stock, sprayed with Adirondack colour mists in lettuce and pesto and a Sticky Fingers mist in grass green. This was over stamped with a couple of texture stamps using brushed sage Distress ink.

The next layer is acetate.  I used a bronze Viva Perle pen to draw random lines all over the acetate, and left it  to dry overnight.  I painted between the lines with glass paint.  This didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped, and I wanted more variation in colour, so I added some alcohol inks, which didn't behave at all as I expected. *Note to self - don't use alcohol ink over glass paint*.  I painted some areas with an acrylic glaze - on the back of the acetate.  I decided it would do, even though it was less of a stained glass effect than I hoped for.

I cut it all up into ATCs and it looked good, but there as nothing in particular to focus on.  I tried laying a number of things on top, but nothing grabbed me, so I set to making a bird cage.  The shape is trimmed form die cut name place cards found in the wedding aisle of Hobbycraft. I spent a while painting the little birdies, and then realised the bars would have to be in front of them.... I mixed micaceous iron oxide with green acrylic and painted the bars.  This didn't show up well, I realised it works better on larger areas.  I decided I needed shiny bird cages to go onto the shiny background.  3 layers of embossing powder later, I had nice shiny embellishments, which I added with a brad.

I don't plan my art very often, it usually goes where it wants to, but this one took more diverse paths than usual.