A Perk Me Up Project!!!

Christmas day seems ages ago now and apart from a few poorly sick people (me included) Christmas Day was magical. There were 13 of us this year and we all descended upon Kelly, my oldest daughter, as she has the biggest house. The children were all so excited on Christmas Eve and Amillie who is four was probably the most excited but sadly on Christmas day she was not feeling at all well. She would perk up after every dose of medicine and then slowly go downhill and have another snooze, I felt so sad for her as she is the one who makes the most of everything. I am glad to report that she is now much better and it's just me that has been feeling rubbish ever since. I got so fed up with just sitting around, I decided to head out to my studio and make something just for the sake of it.....no deadline....no theme....just pure self indulgence. It took best part of three days to complete but it was so nice to just sit and fiddle around.

This project was all about the paint, Fresco Finish paint. I started by covering a canvas with some 12x12 scrapbooking paper, making a bit of a collage which I stuck down using Claudine Hellmuth's Matt Medium.

 

Then I started adding layers of paint. The trick of course is to actually see through the paint so that you can still see some of the paper below so after adding my first layers of Fresco Finish paint which had been watered down, I dried it thoroughly and pasted a thin layer of matt medium over the whole thing. this seals everything underneath the matt medium and protects the paper. After all, paper is not really designed to withstand the many layers of wet paint, so a gentle helping hand is always a good idea. The other bonus to doing this is that you can always wipe back to this layer if need be.

I'm a little bit in love with big foam stamps at the moment as they are fantastic for adding interesting layers. I used two different ones here, one giant leafy one that I got from Leandra at Paperartsy and the other one is a Donna Downey one. I applied some Honey Dew Fresco Finish paint to the stamp with some cut'n'dry foam and printed it on top of the matt medium along with some stencilled images too. When dry, more layers of paint were added, this time I used a baby wipe to apply my paint, that way, I get nice, splodgy patterns.

Now for the embellishments. This was one of those white and very pretty windows by Prima and one of Wendy Vecchi's Art Parts as a window sill. I painted it with Chocolate Pudding Fresco and added some Classic Treasure Gold for highlights. The image is a Lynne Perrella one (LP008) and I coloured this with my trusty Prismacolor pencils.

Another Lynne Perrella image, this one is from LP004

The main image here is from LP001 and is one of my favourite Lynne Perrella images.

I hope you can see the texture on this arch (the arch kit is by 7 Gypsies and the trim at the bottom by Tando Creative) it was achieved with another old favourite.... Ferro which I applied with a palette knife. I then sprayed it with some Fresco paint that I watered down in a spray bottle and sprayed over the texture. When dry, I rubbed some Classic and Spanish Copper Treasure Gold over the high points. If you haven't got any Treasure Gold yet, you need to get some of this stuff, it's a seriously amazing product!!! I use it on everything, it makes everything look rich and luscious.

The doors had the Ferro treatment too, only this time the Ferro was scraped through a stencil before all the paint was applied.

 

 

And finally, the bits'n'bobs that add those finishing touches to a project. This is the bit that I find the most time consuming, searching for the right items that look balanced and work well together.

I really enjoyed making this piece, I just need to go and tidy up the mess that I made in the process!! In case I am not back here before the end of the year, I would just like to wish each and everyone of you a very happy and creative new year.

Lin x