What I've been up to

What have I been up to????.........Not a lot really!! Some of you who know me personally know that I had a touch of surgery ten days ago in an attempt to fix my dodgy shoulder. I am very happy to report that it has been nowhere near as painful as I had anticipated and so I am thinking lots of positive thoughts and have everything crossed for a successful outcome. The downside to this is that I am unable to drive for a while and I have discovered that I am not good at doing nothing. Daytime TV sucks and I found reading nearly impossible as I couldn't concentrate on anything.......boredom is not something that I can cope with at all. Having said that, a lovely friend of mine has a nasty broken arm at the moment and she is out of action for a much longer period of time than me so I really shouldn't be complaining at all.

Anyways, a couple of days ago, I discovered that I can actually hold a paintbrush again and thought I would try and spend a bit of time in my studio to create something. Well, I can manage an hour or two at a time then I have to give it a bit of a rest so it has taken me two days to make this piece but I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I found out that after stamping one image, I realised that I'm not quite ready to be stamping yet so I was limited to painting and assembling stuff......but that's OK, I actually quite like the finished project.

I thought it might be fun to make something with really neutral colours so selected Stone and Mud Splat Fresco Finish to start with. I painted my corrugated card and edges of the frame with Stone and then the Mud Plat on the front of the frame as I knew I wanted to apply some crackle glaze to the frame and I would need a dark, contrasting colour underneath..

Once I had finished with the Mud Splat, I applied a small amount of the Crackle glaze in just two of the corners, I thought this would be more interesting than crackling the whole thing. At this point I decide to change the colours a bit and opted for more grey tones so I painted some Concrete paint over some of the Stone for a more variegated look, taking this colour over the top of the Crackle Glaze and Mud Splat. It is very important to either let the Crackle Glaze dry thoroughly or dry it with your heat gun before applying the top layer of paint. I am glad I changed colours now as I really like the grey shades. I also dry brushed some Mud Splat and French Roast around the edges.

I painted a mini canvas with the Concrete paint and then sponged some Snowflake through one of my Green Pepper Press stencils. I stamped a phrase from PaperArtsy HP1204 on some tissue paper with an Archival ink pad and glued it to the canvas with Claudine Hellmuth's Matt Multi Medium. You have to make sure that you heat set the ink first though, otherwise it will smudge. I love this technique, the tissue just becomes part of the canvas, you can't see any of the edges at all. It is a good idea to tear the tissue quite close to the image though.

The next thing I did was to water down some of the Concrete paint and and apply a thin layer over a page torn from a book. I allowed this to dry naturally before scraping a layer of Grunge Paste through one of Donna Downey's stencils.

Then it was a case of rummaging around to find appropriate embellishments. I found a pack of window shutters which I think are by Prima and the butterfly is by Melissa Francis. With a touch of White Fire Treasure Gold brushed on the edges, the items were just perfect for my shabby project.

Then it was just a case of gluing everything together. Here are a few close up shots of the finished piece.

Who would have thought that grey could be so pretty??

I hope you have a fun and creative weekend.

Lin