ART Canvas - Guest Post by Lisa B

Good morning, Kirsten here, I hope you've had a great weekend. I'm delighted to tell you that we have a guest post by Imagination Crafts' chief designer & Hochanda guest presenter, Lisa B, on the blog today. Those of you who were at the recent trade show will have seen this incredible canvas created especially for the Imagination stand by Lisa, it was a major talking point during the entire show.

Here's Lisa to tell you how she created it..............

Hi everyone, Lisa B here, I'm delighted to be on the Imagination Crafts' blog today. I thoroughly enjoyed creating this canvas and it took me a number of days as there was a LOT of moving embellishments around, painting, dry-brushing etc., so I'll just give you an overview of my process, otherwise we'd here 'til next week! :-)

I'll begin with the papier mache letters, which I had originally painted with white gesso for another project. Rusty Patina is completely opaque, so priming your surface with gesso first is not necessary.

I gathered lots of embellishments - metal flowers, bottle tops, cogs, butterflies, drawer pulls - as well as beads, paper and fabric flowers and whatever else I could find from my stash, spending some time arranging their placement on the letters, before gluing them down with hot glue. I added drips of hot glue and stencilled Structure Paste on some areas as well, my idea was to have lots of different textures. 

Once the glue had set hard, I began to apply the Rustique Rusty Patina with a paintbrush.................

I used smaller paintbrushes to make sure I got Rusty Patina into all the nooks and crannies of the embellishments.

When the Rustique RP was completely dry I added Duck Egg and Verdigris RP by dry-brushing tiny amounts to certain areas. That dried almost instantly and I was able to begin highlighting the embellishments, etc. with Alchemy Waxes.................

Once the three letters were finished I set them aside to work on my canvas.

 I had prepared the canvas by die cutting cogs and gears from my stash out of card and gluing them on to the canvas. I also added pieces of Art-Cutz, air-dried clay embellishments and stencilled with Structure Paste.

I mixed Rustique RP with Cafe Creme Rusty Patina to give the canvas a lighter colour than the colours. It's hard to give you a step-by-step of what I did here. There was a lot of adding RP, wiping it away and repeating to create shading, until I liked what I saw. When I was happy, I dry-brushed Verdigris RP in areas and around the edges of the canvas, then highlighted all the textured areas with Alchemy Waxes................... 

When I had the letters onto the canvas I decided that it needed extra shine in the form of Sparkle Medium, so I dry-brushed very tiny amounts of Gold Shine on to the canvas and the letters. I also used Black Starlight Wax in areas, outlining areas of texture and the edges of the letters, then adding more Alchemy Waxes as shading.

Here's the finished canvas in place at the trade show last month..............

The finished canvas once again................ 

I really enjoyed the two/three days it took me to complete and happily, Sue and the Imagination team liked it too - always a bonus! :-)

I think my canvas might be on display on the Imagination Stand (A12) at the Hobbycrafts show at the NEC this weekend (March 16-19) and I will there, demoing alongside Sue, so I will be delighted to answer any questions you have.

Have a great week and I'm looking forward to seeing some of you in Birmingham in a few days.

Hugs, Lisa B x

               

                 

Wow! That is a stunning piece of art. Thank you very much to Lisa for a fantastic guest post. And thanks to you for visiting the Imagination Crafts' blog today, we'll be back soon. 

Kirsten