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.