Clarity Challenge 36 Mid-month Reminder

Clarity Challenge 36

Mid-month Reminder

Love

One Love, One Heart.
(Bob Marley)

        

Hi and thank you for visiting! I appreciate the time you take to 'blog in' and also any comments or questions you may have.

Last month's response was so good, it would be great to equal or even surpass the number of entries submitted. This is the ideal 'Love' month with Valentine's Day and I'm sure you can create some fantastic projects using Clarity stamps, stencils and Groovis'. As far as the latter goes, it's most enjoyable dove-tailing different plates and borders together to produce things which are slightly different.

For the mid-month example, I'm afraid there are only photos of the finished product as this project just 'grew' as stencils, papers, pastes and colours were added. 

Materials used:-

·         Clarity Canvas

·         Clarity Stencils:- Leafy Strip, Wild Grasses 1, Sunflower, Vine Heart

·         Papers:-Music Score, Tissue Paper, Parchment Paper, 
       Fresco Finish Acrylic Paints

·         Multi Medium:- Matte

·         Texture Paste

·         Perfect Pearls – variety from both sets.

·         Coloured Pencils:– Polychromos

·         Gilding Wax:- Silver, Antique Gold, Empire Gold, Renaissance Gold

Instructions:-

Canvas

1.       Tear up the music score and apply to cover canvas using the matt medium. Paste over this with matte medium. (N.B. I used the straight edges of the score to line up with the edges of the canvas, ensuring the pieces were horizontal and vertical time about.)

2.       Choose a selection of toning Fresco acrylics and paint in areas until the desired colour is achieved. (I watered them down slightly and gradually built up the colour.)

               

3.       Scrunch up a sheet of white tissue paper, then apply over the canvas which again has a layer of matte medium. Carefully smooth this over the edges, particularly the corners, before trimming the excess then apply a light coat of matte medium to the reverse.

4.       Place on the Sunflower stencil and pull through a layer of texture paste – the large flower head only. Allow to dry.  (I had a bit of an issue here as my new brand tub of grunge paste was too hard to use, so it was a case of rooting around and luckily I found a box of trial texture pastes in my stash.)

5.       Clean stencils immediately.

6.       Place the Leafy Strip stencil on one corner and repeat as in 3). Allow to dry then apply more paste to the diagonally opposite corner and allow this to dry.

7.       Place the Wild Grasses 1 stencil in the remaining corner, pull through more texture paste and allow to dry. (At this point, I applied some texture paste through the clean stencils onto sheets of parchment paper – I used an A5 size for each stencil and allowed them to dry.)

8.       Paint chosen Fresco paints onto the dry paste images and work in with a damp paintbrush. (I watered them down slightly.)

9.       Spray the canvas with a variety of Perfect Pearls – I used Turquoise, Berry, Plum, Red, Gold, Perfect Pearl, Biscotti, Blue Smoke – mixed a few until I achieved the depth and tint I wanted in spritzer bottles. Allow to dry.

10.   Highlight areas with gilding wax. Add gilding wax around the perimeter, blending it in with the colour scheme.

Heart

1.       Place the Vine Heart on a piece of grey board – mine was from the back of a spiral notebook which had been painted and coated with a crackle paint for another project - and pull through coarse texture paste, allowing time to dry. (I had to use the coarse paste as the trial pot was empty!)

2.       Cut out heart, leaving a surround. Paint chosen colours over the paste and allow to dry.

3.       Paint over matt medium and apply tissue paper as above in 3).

4.       Add gilding wax and Perfect Pearls as in 9) and 10).

To complete:-

1.       Adhere heart to canvas. (I used Cosmic Shimmer glue.)

2.       Colour the paste images on the parchment to suit and cut out. (I used the centre from the sunflower, some leaves and stalks up to the calyxes from the wild grasses) Add the over the stencilled images to give dimension, using glue as in 1).

3.       Add hints of gilding wax here and there and shade around the images with pencil – I used a soft black pencil – a 2B.

Many thanks for popping in and looking. Any questions or queries are appreciated and I will do my best to help out. This canvas was not that perceived in my mind's eye when I first embarked on this project and turned out less structured than usual. Despite that, I rather like it!

The Clarity 'Love' Challenge runs until 29th February - as it is a 'leap year,' you have an extra day to join in and remember - there is a £50 Clarity voucher for the randomly selected winner - bit of a no-brainer really.

Best wishes, 

SShelagh (The Making Lady.)