Welcome to my addiction!

Thank you for stopping in and looking around. I am an admitted paperholic and try to participate in all things stamped. In the past I have taught classes on unique techniques at our LSS and have loved every minute of it. My mind continues to want to create and share. I garner my inspiration from fellow bloggers, our LSS, and some of the horticulture magazines that come in the mail. Simple pleasures in life make me smile and that includes a simple yet elegant card or piece of paper that I see potential. Please feel free to share your work with me as I share my work with you. Enjoy your visit!



Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Jamaican Bobsled!

Good morning blogworld!
    Yes, I know lately I have been gone from my blogging post.  But it has been with good reason, and those reasons you are going to see in the next few days.  I have been busy with some multi-media art work :)  I love to create, and a couple of weeks ago as I was continuing on my cleaning/organizing journey, I found a picture of our youngest son and DIL on their honeymoon in Jamaica.  The picture was so fun that it instantly told me that I needed to get all my "stuff" out and produce a memory for them that they could show off.  So the first thing I did was make a larger copy of the picture they had, grab a brand new fresh canvas, gesso of different sorts, all my many brushes, paints of all sorts and anything I could find that might fit the scene.
Here is the final piece of work, which I think my hubby is going to deliver this next weekend (when he goes to see his father.)
Hopefully as I do the close ups, you'll be able to see the vibrancy of this.  It is so bright sparkly and inviting.  While the kids were in Jamaica, they went to a theme park, and one of the rides was the Bobsled.  The picture itself was bright with colors, the sleds are black, chartreuse and yellow, the foliage is a myriad of greens with bright pink flowers interspersed throughout, and then touches of the blue sky peeking through the trees.  These are the colors I tried to mimic the most.
The canvas was painted with acrylic Luninaire paints - Green, purple and blue.  They were allowed to dry and then were sprayed on the following day with Lindsy's Cornflower blue, Fern green, and Tattered Angels purple.  The edges of the colored mica sprays were allowed to mingle, making the colors fade in and out of each other.  This was allowed to dry for half a day.  Later that evening I took string gel mixed with metallic silver acrylic paint and drizzled over the canvas in swirls and dots.  This was covered and sealed with a plain coat of gesso.  The flourish above is a Fancy Pants chip that was covered first with black and then with Tim Holtz DI Fired Brick.  After drying I took a Viva decor pearl pen and placed the bold highlights, then covered the flourish with goosebumps.  You will recognize the SB vine and foliage die cuts out of cereal box board.  Letters for Bobsled are some leftover things I found in my stash.  Again I tried to keep all letters in the same colors as the picture.  The small butterflies on the piece are from PizzazzAplenty.  The metal flowers are left over from the Oriental Trading company years ago.

As I work I like to wrap the media around the sides of the canvas, it just makes me feel like it's more 3D.
As I mounted the picture on the canvas, I wanted to muddy the definite edges.  So in keeping with the chevrons on the fronts of the bobsled, I put gesso chevrons on the sides of the picture.

I also let the foliage and flowers go over the edges of the picture to make it harder to distinguish between painted and captured.  Look at those faces -  They are having a blast :)  I smile every time I look into their faces.  You can see on the pink flower that the Gesso isn't quite completely dry yet, but by the end of the day it will be.


Above you can see the letters for Jamaica.  I chose a larger and different font for the J versus the rest of the letters.  I just felt it needed to be Big and Flamboyant like every thing you could see in this picture.  Needless to say, chartreuse was the natural color to fit the size and fun.  I chose to let the rest of the Chip Chatter letters be plain white and full of sparkle (sorry you can't really see the sparkle).  A little glitzy, but not overbearingly so.  I also felt I needed a balance in the colors without over doing it.  Here you can see the chevrons lining the edges as well.

The upper right corner has three metal bands, one silver, one an antique gold and the last is one bronze.  Lots of fern fronds every where (Cheery Lynn Dies) I've lived in the deep south(Naples/Marco Island, FL)  and ferns are just a natural thing to find in a jungle type setting. 
     I had a lot of fun with this even though it took a lot of time (not bad really, just more than I had planned on).  I am excited for them to get this, I wish I could be there to see their faces (Hubby has instructions to film as they open).  Oh well, I'll wait to hear and in the mean time, I am going to finish up another project I have been working on.  Until tomorrow :)

Blessings!


1 comment:

Sandie said...

Very creative Cindy, I even spied a Cheery Lynn Designs die in your creation ... :-)